Interior Design Positioning: Know Your Value Before You Quote

TL;DR

A prospect calls and asks what you charge. You answer with an hourly rate before you know what the project is or what it is worth to them. That is guessing with extra steps, and it drops you into a race to the bottom nobody wins.

Positioning is the fix, and it is the first pillar of the Profitable Studio Framework. It is built from seven value factors most design firm principals have never seen in one place. Do that work and three things change. You stop apologizing for your fees, you stop negotiating against yourself before anyone objects, and you start turning down projects that were never right.

Highlights

➜ 02:00 Why working one piece at a time keeps failing you

➜ 04:00 The Profitable Studio Framework and why pillar order matters

➜ 07:30 The exact sentence to use when a prospect asks what you charge

➜ 10:00 Why discovery wins the project and your renderings never do

➜ 12:00 The 7 Design Value Factors, with the notebook exercise

➜ 22:00 How Erin in Spokane exploded her business by being fully herself

➜ 36:00 Your assignment, and why 90 minutes may be the most profitable you spend

Why One Piece at a Time Keeps Failing You

Last episode I handed you the five shifts, and I know what happened next, because it happens every time. You looked at all five, decided doing everything at once was impossible, picked the most urgent one, and hoped.

That is the challenge in scaling. Not laziness, not a lack of ambition, the sheer size of it. It is the design equivalent of buying a gorgeous sofa before you have a floor plan. Stunning purchase. No idea whether it fits.

Because the pieces are connected. Raise your rates without upgrading your positioning and you attract the same clients, who now think you are overpriced. Build systems without a team and you own documentation only you use. Hire without a pipeline and you have payroll with no work against it. Each one is a design firm principal who did the right thing in the wrong order.

So, I built the sequence. The Profitable Studio Framework runs six pillars in order: Position, Price, Process, People, Pipeline, and at the center of all of it, Profit and Freedom. As you scale one piece, you move seamlessly into the next.

Positioning comes first because it’s the foundation for everything that follows. Your pricing inherits your positioning. The clients who reach out found you because of your positioning. Your ability to say no depends on it. Get this one wrong and every other pillar sits on sand.

What to Say When a Prospect Asks What You Charge

Most design firm principals price backward. They look at what the designer across town charges, guess at that number, shave a little off, and call it a strategy. You are guessing against a number that designer probably guessed at too. The whole thing is a game of telephone.

This is why I am a huge proponent of a robust inquiry form. And please, keep a phone number on your website. There are well-heeled, affluent clients who will call before they will ever fill out a form.

When they do call and ask what you charge, this is your answer:

We custom quote each project based on the scope of work and the complexity of the design.

That’s it. No hourly rate. No square footage rate. Nothing off the top of your head. Take nothing else from this episode, take that one. It is your writer-downer.

A square foot charge is based on deliverables, and you don’t know what those are yet. And when someone unqualified has started telling you what to charge, sometimes a well-intentioned spouse, call me. I have rescued designers from that.

The blurting is not weak sales skills. You haven’t defined your own value, so when someone asks for a number you reach for the only thing you know.

Why Discovery Wins the Project, Never Your Renderings

Your renders, concepts, and presentation all happen after the client signs. That work is gorgeous, and it wins you nothing, because it has not been seen yet.

Discovery happens before the agreement. That is where the prospect is won or lost.

So your positioning must do its work before they have seen anything you designed for them. They decide on how you show up, your portfolio, your personality, your social proof, your values, and how clearly you communicate your worth.

And this is never a purely logical decision. It is emotional. Even at the top of the market where there are often no limits, clients want reassurance about their return and confidence they are hiring the right firm.

Confidence is contagious. So is uncertainty. Beware.

Your 7 Design Value Factors

1. Education 

Your degrees, in design or not. Certifications, when you have them, are never mandatory. Every workshop, conference, book, and training. Coaching counts. School of hard knocks counts. One caution: plenty of designers are over-certified and under-earning, because clients do not know what those letters mean. My own Bachelor of Science from Cornell is in hospitality management, and I spent five years as a purchasing agent for five-star properties. Nobody called that a design credential, and it made me faster at sourcing than almost anyone I know. Everyone has gold to mine, degree or no degree. And I’m a master gold miner!

2. Experience

Years in business, on your own, inside another firm, or in another industry. Projects, types, square footage, regions, styles, renderings created. And the part that never reaches your website: the mistakes you no longer make. Your client is best served hiring the firm that already ordered the wrong sofa once, because that firm never will again and the client does not pay for the lesson.

3. Talent

Your designer eye and your intuition. Seeing a room transformed floor to ceiling through all 10 layers, each one a profit expander. Knowing a proportion is wrong before you measure it. I once based an entire home’s color scheme on a client’s cat, charcoal gray with lime green eyes. Talent is the factor designers undervalue most, because what comes easily gets discounted. Charge the most for what comes easiest, because it is hardest for everyone else and impossible for your client. And stop saying oh, that’s easy, I’ll take care of that. When you make it look effortless, they decide they could do it themselves. That is your profit leak.

4. Personality

Stop being generic. This is where you fly your freak flag. I have my Melissa-isms and you have yours. You will be in this client’s home, marriage, and decisions for 3 months to 3 years and often longer. They are hiring character and values, not only skill. Are you calm in a crisis? Decisive? Funny? Do you make people feel capable instead of foolish about what they do not know?

5. Team

Everyone beside and behind you. Assistant, project manager, bookkeeper, installers, workrooms, trades, artists, reps, contractors. Your client is hiring your entire bench, and that bench is why their project stays on track. They say it takes a village. In design it is closer to a small country. Even when your team is one part-time assistant and a contractor you trust, that is more than your client has alone.

6. Hats

At last count we were over 36, and you are officially compensated for one. Purchasing agent. Contractor liaison. Investment manager. Expediter. Chaos wrangler. Crisis manager. Marriage counselor. Occasionally psychic. Flat fees are how I get you compensated for six or more of them. You can’t itemize the marriage counseling, though you can say it out loud: one of our gifts is keeping our clients together during a remodel. Every hat is work your client would otherwise do badly at 2am morning while arguing with their spouse.

7. Resources & Access

Your trade-only vendors, workrooms, artisans, showroom relationships, and the fabricator who takes your call. Yes, most design centers have opened to the public, and I remember when stepping inside meant breathing rarefied air. Everyone breathes it now, and they still lack your gift for curating the right piece, finish, scale, and proportion. They make costly mistakes, then hire you to clean them up.

They Did Not Say They Liked Her Style

My coaching client Erin Haskell Gourde, principal designer and CEO of Design for the PPL in Spokane, WA, built her business on being herself in the biggest of ways, in stories on Instagram.

At a divine restaurant sipping craft cocktails, playing with her dogs, leading her team, sweating bullets over a roofer who fell and broke his leg. She shared it. And a steady stream of clients reached out saying the same thing.

Erin, we follow your stories. We feel like we know you. We want to work with you.

Not we like your style. We feel like we know you.

That was the coolest growth curve I have ever watched, and being known created it. When you can see where you started being who you thought you were supposed to be, bring yourself wholly back into your business. Being you is the greatest gift you bring your clients.

Positioning Is a Decision, Not a Discovery

Count your seven value factors and read them aloud. Most designers go quiet here, because they have never seen all of it in one place. It has always felt like a scattered pile of things you happen to do and be. Written down, it is your Mount Everest of value.

That is positioning. Not a tagline. Not a logo. The clear-eyed accounting of what you bring to every project, in language you can state aloud proudly, without flinching.

And it is a decision. You do not wait to be selected by whoever calls. You decide who you want to serve, what you want to be known for, and where you stand. Then people sort themselves toward you or away from you. Both outcomes are wins, because the ones who sort away were never going to value you.

Not everyone deserves your talent. Pull out the ginormous sticky notes, because the small ones are too easy to miss. Monitor. Dashboard. Bathroom mirror. Your forehead for a while, when that is what it takes.

Your Assignment This Week

Twenty focused minutes and a notebook. When you want to blow this out, invest 90, and it may be the most profitable 90 minutes you ever put into your practice.

Be specific and be generous. You will undercount. You will discount. You will be tempted to negate your value. Stop it. You are magnificent.

Then read the whole thing aloud, and it had better be richer than a list. Go into the cleaning closet when that is what privacy requires. Hear the impact.

And do not skip ahead to pricing. Uplevel everything else while leaving your positioning alone and you stay trapped with poor fit clients, projects you do not enjoy, and revenue that is too low.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does positioning mean for an interior design business?

Knowing the value of the transformation you deliver before you share any number. It is built from 7 value factors: education, experience, talent, personality, team, hats, and resources with access. Never a tagline or a logo.

What do I say when a prospect asks what I charge on the first call?

We custom quote every project based on the scope of work and the complexity of the design. No hourly rate, no square footage rate, no number off the top of your head.

What should I do when I have no formal design degree or certifications?

Your other degree, prior career, and life experience all count, and certifications are always a choice. Many designers are over-certified and under-earning because clients do not understand the letters. Prospects cannot evaluate whether you are a good designer. They evaluate whether you are credible.

Should I skip positioning and go straight to pricing strategy?

No, and it is the most common mistake. Pricing built on undefined value is a train wreck. Positioning is the foundation everything else stands on.

About Melissa Galt

Melissa Galt is an interior design business coach, marketing consultant to designers globally, and a former residential designer with her own practice in Atlanta for 3 decades. She is the author of four bestselling books, Marketing Luxury Design, The Language of Success, Design Discovery, and Proximity to Profits, and hosts the weekly Design Business Freedom™ podcast. She is the great-granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, so building things that last is somewhat in the blood.

Ready to know your value and quote with confidence? Schedule your complimentary Design Business Assessment. It is a high value, 1:1 conversation on Zoom where Melissa shows you how to close the gap between where your business is now and where you want it to be.

Go deeper on positioning and attracting clients who already value what you bring in Marketing Luxury Design: Attracting Affluent Clients, at melissagalt.com/books.

Listen to this episode on Design Business Freedom™ Podcast, Episode 207.

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