The #1 Process You Need in Your Interior Design Firm: Presentations & Design Approvals

In this short but impactful episode of Resilient by Design, Rebecca reveals the most important process that every interior design business needs to scale successfully.

While there are numerous processes essential to running a thriving design firm, Rebecca shares her insights into the one process that can make the biggest difference: the design presentation and approval process. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the hats you wear as a business owner or looking for that one key to elevate your client interactions, this episode is a must-listen.

Episode Highlights

• The importance of having structured processes in an interior design business.
• The significance of the presentation and approval process in scaling your business.
• Examples of chaotic processes and their impact on client satisfaction.
• Rebecca’s journey from an unstructured to a structured presentation process.
• The impact of a clear process on completing projects and attracting larger-scale projects.

Episode Resources

Learn more about Power of Process

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

Rebecca:
Hey hey hey, it’s Rebecca, and you are listening to Resilient by Design. Today is a short episode, and I’m going to share with you the number one process that you need in your interior design firm. There are so many processes, I know. That’s the whole point of my course, Power of Process.

But if you’re feeling overwhelmed and wondering, “What is the one thing? Where do I need to start? What’s the most important?” That’s what today’s episode is all about.

A process is essentially a step-by-step way of doing things. It’s a system—a structure for your business. You can’t call it a business if you don’t have structure; it’s just a hobby. That’s not tough love; it’s just reality. Think about any business you’ve worked with as a client. You want to feel taken care of. You want to feel like they know what they’re doing. The best way to feel taken care of and confident in the person you’ve hired—whether it’s a lawyer, dentist, or car detailing place—is knowing they have their act together. The best way for you to feel like they’ve got it covered is when they have a process, a system, or a set way of doing things.

In our business, whether you’re a decorator, stager, designer, or architect, there are so many hats you have to wear as a business owner. You’re not only creating designs and making selections, but you’re also managing trade partners, running around, on the phone, managing a team, placing orders, dealing with clients, calculating proposals, figuring out margins, and trying to decide, “Should I photograph it? What about marketing? How do I get the word out?” It’s super dizzying.

When a client hires you for a creative interior design service, the one process that, in my opinion, is the most important—and this wasn’t even where I started with process creation, but it became my biggest goal—is the presentation process. You see them on Instagram: people with their beautiful acrylic trays (mine were from West Elm, by the way, if anyone’s asking; I don’t know if they still sell them). You see people wining and dining their clients. I remember seeing that on Instagram back in, I don’t know, 2017, thinking, “Wow, I can’t even imagine that being me.” I couldn’t even picture myself in that scenario. I thought I needed an office space, a team, and a $5 million project. Turns out, all I needed was a process. The process I needed, the one that was going to help me get there, was the presentation and approval process.

This is the number one process you need as a creative in the interior design business. You still need all the others, but this is a great place to start: you need a process for design presentation and approvals.

Why did I pick that? I could have picked anything: your onboarding process, how to qualify new leads, how to onboard a new client once they’ve signed on, how to actually put the design together, a process around ordering, or a process around deficiencies and closing out a project. There are so many processes and systems, but this one is so important because this is where you are doing your creative work. It’s a pivotal moment. They’ve hired you for something tangible, even though there are all these other soft skills you’re doing behind the scenes. This is the pivotal moment where you cross over from “here’s what’s in my brain” to “I’m showing you.” And when they say yes, we’re off to the races.

A process for how you present your ideas and designs to your client is integral to a successful business. It’s integral to making money. It’s integral to your sanity. I used to just show up at their house with a couple of fabrics and a floor plan, and they’d be like, “What’s next?” I’d say, “Okay, well, I’m going to get prices, then I’ll pick some fabrics, and then we can decide about the drapery. Maybe I’ll get the drapery guy to come next week, we’ll do a check measure, and then we can talk about what we want to do there. But let’s get that order placed for the sofa because it’s a long lead time, and then we can look at carpets. Do you want to meet me at Weavers Art next week to pick carpets?”

There was no process to present my ideas. My process was a process, I suppose, but it was chaotic, and there was no system for approvals. It was all verbal. If you’re listening right now, just nod along. I can’t see you, but I know many of you are thinking, “Yep, that was me.” There was a process in my mind, sort of. We were continually moving forward; we had momentum, but we got decision fatigue, second-guessing, and, “I didn’t say that; did I approve that?”—you name it.

Having a process for how you present your ideas is going to be very, very important because, once you present the ideas, tied into that is the approval process. For me, that has changed over the years. I used to do what I just told you—kind of go with the flow. Then I was like, “I’m just going to present everything. I’ll meet them on trade day, take all their ideas, and two months later, I’ll present them.” But then I was over budget, or I missed the mark on something.

So our new process is a concept and budget review, followed by a full presentation. Whatever the process is for you, and there is no one-size-fits-all way of doing this, I do share exactly how I run my entire presentation process inside POP, which is my course on process. I share exactly how I do it. I have checklists for you, templates, and everything you need. Whatever you take from that, if you’ve taken POP, you know you tweak it, you take what you see that you like, and you modify it for yourself. And then, after that, the approvals and sign-off. That is really important. That is something I did not do for a long time.

I used to have designers ask me, “How do you get your clients to sign off? Do you get them to put their signature or initials on every page of your drawing package?” I used to think, “That’s crazy, no!” Or, “How do you know if they like that fabric?” I would say, “Well, they send me a check.” I mean, that is a process, I suppose, but you need to figure it out because that is going to be the game changer in fully completing a project, satisfying your clients, and making you feel satisfied as well.

I’m super curious what you guys think. What is your process for design presentations? Do you do a presentation? You’re all doing a presentation whether you formally call it that or not. This is something I didn’t realize: you are presenting your ideas, so it’s actually a presentation. It may not be formalized with trays in a studio, but if you can come up with a process and then communicate that process early and often to your clients—before they’ve hired you, once they’ve hired you—they can build anticipation for when they get to see your ideas, and they’re going to get excited. They’ll probably even pay you more because it looks like you’re so organized and professional.

So there you have it. That is the number one process that I think you need in your interior design firm, from all my years of running my business over the last decade and working for other designers before that. I quickly scaled my business to seven figures when I figured out that I needed to have structure and present my ideas the way a professional would. It was a game changer in being able to fully complete projects and attract bigger-scale projects.

Let me know! Send me a DM on Instagram. I’d love to know if you do presentations, what they look like, and if this episode was useful for you. Of course, if you want to learn a little more about the Power of Process, come on over and join us in the next cohort. Just go to rebeccahay.com/powerofprocess, and I’ll see you soon.