July 28, 2022
Kris: Today we are unpacking what to do when a client can’t afford your graphic design services, you’re listening or watching the design and prosper podcast, episode 61.
[00:00:18] Donna: welcome everybody to episode 61. We’re so excited to be here.
[00:00:25] Kris: Hey everybody. Hope you’re doing very well.
[00:00:27] Donna: Yes. So a little while back we recorded an episode, episode 31, your design quote is too expensive. So essentially that one was all about how to deal with a potential client who isn’t seeing the value that you provide. this episode addresses the flip side of that. So when a client wants to work with you they see the value that, that you provide. You’re the Chanel bag that they’re coveting. They think you are awesome, but they simply don’t have the funds to work with you. You are, you are the, the thing that they want, but they, they can’t afford you.
[00:01:02] Kris: Yeah, it happens. You’ll have this dream client present themselves, but they just can’t afford you right now. So what do you do?
[00:01:10] Donna: yeah. that’s it. So today we are gonna unpack a few things, a few ways to handle that because we wanna make sure that you are honoring your business all the time. We are going to make sure that your business is on track and that you’re not swaying and bending to, to meet somebody else’s needs.
[00:01:29] Kris: So what can happen is you’ll grow your business, right? And you will be attracting a higher echelon of client. That will just naturally happen as you progress through the years in your business. That’s what happened in both Donna and my design businesses, but then you still want to do those beautiful startups. You still wanna do those startup businesses that to be honest, they just haven’t made any money yet, but they’re beautiful people. They will come along and you will want to work with them. So we want you to have some options. If you do want to work with them, what can you do?
[00:02:07] Donna: Yeah. absolutely. So the first one would be to match your service to their budget. So we have to talk about money. We have to talk about it upfront and straight away and not be fearful of that conversation. Especially with clients who, you know already may not be able to afford you, or they’ve alluded to the fact that they want a cheaper production or whatever the case may be. So they might want a complete branding suite, for example, and perhaps they can only really afford stage one. So you could look at the whole branding suite and go, okay. Normally I would deliver these five elements for your budget. I’ll deliver these three elements as stage one. I’m confident that your business will grow because I’m a branding specialist and I’m good at what I do. And I know that in time you’ll be able to afford stage two and we’ll be able to add those extra two things that you didn’t get onto the next rollout of collateral that we work on for you. So it’s just a matter of customizing your offering to their budget. So instead of saying, okay, I’ll do the work at a reduced rate and I’ll give them everything I give client A who pays full budget. You can’t do that because you are disrespecting client A who has paid for everything and you’re giving them everything and they’re paying full price. You can’t turn around and do that for client B who doesn’t have the budget and just do it at a reduced rate because you wanna do the work. So we match services to budget. So we just customize it.
[00:03:41] Kris: Another way you could do it is just so they wanted a really big profile or a big brochure to showcase their services or whatever it might be or products. And you could say, well, I can’t do that for this budget, but for your budget, I could do a little postcard series, which would be really impactful still. so you might be just changing the nature of the service, but it would mean that you wouldn’t be having to invest as much time into that particular project. So there’s a lot, lots of different ways you can do it, but so adjust that’s the first one, adjust your service or your offering to their budget. We’re not saying for you to work more hours, or, you know, cram all this stuff into their budget, but they get less, essentially because they get less than perhaps what their wishlist was and that’s the conversation that needs to be had.
[00:04:32] Donna: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The second option is to offer a template based solution. Now your beautiful design business may already have some templates ready, set, go. You might already have a passive income model set up with your business, but if you don’t, this is a wonderful opportunity where you can actually say to your client, look, I would love to do this particular job, however your budget doesn’t match the type of work or the extent of work that is required to get this done. But what I am willing to do is I’m willing to create the first initial few pages for you. I’m willing to work out your color palette, your typeface and layout and hand you a template for then you to go off and populate and finalize and get it already.
If you’ve got some budget, it can come back to me and I will address the finished art for you or finish it off or whatever, but maybe that’s a solution where they can get your services, get your creative excellence ,but then they do the, they do the, the legwork within it. They finish it off and, and get in and get the nitty gritty done. They populate it with their copy. They populate it with their, um, images and things like that.
[00:05:42] Kris: Yes. And also it might look like you’re having this conversation and budget comes up and they want this beautiful branding package. And you realize that their budget is much lower than what it needs to be to actually be able to utilize your full services. So if you have templates ready, to go. You can say look, having taken this brief and understanding your business, I really think this template would be beautiful for you. And a lot of designers have, um, one off ready to go templates as well, or they might have a limited edition template. So only three businesses can use it. And you could guarantee that it wouldn’t be direct competitors and that sort of thing. It’s tweaked and adjusted to suit their business and their business model. So that could be a way to go just with template based work. It is a valid way for some businesses to get started.
And to be honest, we’d rather them use a strategic template from you rather than just flying blind and picking one themselves off creative market or doing it themselves off a template in Canva, so it’s going to be better. It’s gonna be more strategic. It’s going to be more successful, even if it is template based from a designer who has taken a brief.
[00:06:57] Donna: Yeah. absolutely. And I’ve actually done this in the past before. I’ve done a lot of big, um, uh, publications and things like that. Annual reports and brochures, company brochures, and, the like, so lots of big document work and they have come to our design studio and they haven’t been able to afford our services at all. And we’ve offered this as a solution. Look, we’ll set it up. We’ll get you started. We’ll get the content spread done. We’ll roll out six double page spreads, we’ll address the layout. All of that will be done. And then you just have to populate and honestly, mostly, they would then get through that process and they would find more budget. No, we just want you to keep going. Could you just keep going? And it was, it was, it was a bit of a strategy, I guess but we genuinely wanted them to have a gorgeous strategic brochure, but then they would be like, oh nope we found the money. We, we can see what you’re doing.
[00:07:49] Kris: Interesting how they found the money for the Chanel bag after all, ins’t it?
[00:07:52] Donna: Exactly. Yeah. Once I took it for a test drive that’s it. So it’s, it’s really interesting when you do offer these services as a creative professional. They really see you as that. And I think that they do tend to come up with the money in the end eventually. So we’ll get to that. We’ll get to how no now doesn’t mean no, always and no budget now isn’t always no budget all the time.
Actually flipping back to what Kris said at the beginning. A lot of these gorgeous people are starting up and they’re growing their business. So it’s baby at the moment and it’s gonna grow, grow and you kind of wanna be a part of that because their budgets are gonna get bigger. So it’s actually worth it for you to think about, think strategically, how can I participate in this journey with you and honor my business? You know, you’re always thinking, how can I honor my business and be paid what the project’s worth. So we’re always thinking about that and, and wanting to be a part of this beautiful journey.
[00:08:49] Kris: Yeah, how can I, how can I support them in the, in their current stage of business? yeah. I love that. And they’re like, they’re almost trying before they buy. And that’s a really interesting concept that works for so many other business models. Like you think about the netflix business model and the audible business model where it’s like, they’re almost trying before they fully invest and then they they’ve, tried it. They’ve invested. You’ve been very well compensated for your time and, and your value. And it’s a bit of a win-win and, but then they’ve gone. Hang on. This is too good. What, I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna do
[00:09:22] Donna: it. I know literally once they’ve tried it, they’re like, oh no, I wanna keep this chanel bag going now. So, um, yeah, the only thing, uh, to add to template based solutions is that you must include a video tutorial with that so that they are then completely autonomous with that template. It, it only needs to be a little loom video or something like that, but it needs to be budgeted. You need to be paid for it. So we always got paid for the training that we deliver to our clients when we delivered templates. So make sure you add that in at the beginning.
[00:09:56] Kris: Yes, we love a little loom video. It makes all the difference.
[00:10:01] Donna: Yes, absolutely. Okay. So another option to try is to use formula based design strategy. This is where you tap into your wealth of resources, but it won’t be a groundbreaking approach. You won’t be basically uniquely looking at this client’s work and creating a bespoke unique solution for them.
So what you’re saying is it will still be done by me. It’ll still meet your brief. It’ll be designed beautifully. It’ll be gorgeous. However, I’m extracting the research phase. I’m gonna lean on some research that I did over the last 10 years. The last two years, the last two projects, whatever the case may be, wherever you’re at in your business. We’re always working as designers.
We’re the masters of general knowledge. So we’re always sort of storing things away for later. We’re we’re collecting samples, we’re looking at different things. Our Pinterest boards are exploding, so we’ve already got some things that we can lean on. And that’s what Kris and I like to call formula based design. So we can just lean on the things that we already have existing in our repertoire, in our toolkit and provide something that’s really elevated, without taking that deep dive into research, which makes the whole project a lot more affordable.
[00:11:24] Kris: Yeah. So this approach we’ve had this conversation with clients. Like they, they don’t have the budget to go this highly, highly conceptual, strategic, uh, groundbreaking award winning design route, you know, and that’s what we always aimed for within our design studios. So we’d say that, you know, it’s, it’s not going to be this highly conceptual thing. Right. But it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be appropriate. It’s going to help you move the needle in your business. It’s going to set up the foundations for your business beautifully. It’s going to be highly functional and it’s going to appeal to your target audience and that’s okay. It doesn’t always have to be the big, you know, award winning guns a blazing, groundbreaking, creative for every client. It’s not always appropriate as well. So, and then you are tapping into your internal resources or previous concepts that kind of didn’t quite work out or something that you’ve utilized in. We like to recycle, right? We’re very environmentally conscious. We’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, recycle some things that kind of didn’t quite get to that final stage. But they had potential, you know, so we are tapping into our pool of resources that we’ve got. But you need to be upfront about it. You need to talk to them about what their expectations are going to, to be for this. You’re going to create something beautiful. You’re gonna create something that’s really appropriate, but you’re are not going to need as much conceptual time. So they’re gonna save some money. So you’re gonna be able to do, it within their budget.
[00:12:50] Donna: Absolutely. And, I love, the transparency around this because we had a lot of startup people come to us and could not afford us. And we would say, look in order for us to give you the 10 K logo, this is what it takes. We were clear. We were really honest about the, the, way that we would absolutely get lost for three weeks in research in order to deliver something that was a really beautiful brand at that level. And then we’d say, but what we can do is we can do it this for 5,000, for example, and then they would go, okay, that, budget feels good. The deliverables feel good. And the promise of transformation feels right. Because we were able to ensure that we would give them that growth based on what we’re going to be delivering.
So It’s exciting to, to know that you have got a wealth of knowledge to lean on as well, that you are experienced experts, that you are a professional who has got a repertoire that you can lean on. I love that whole idea of recycling. And if you follow the one concept rule delivery like Kris and I do, then when you work you do, branch off in a few different avenues for a client and you only present one. So that’s not to say the other, say, say we branched off in three that the other two are just sitting there begging to be used and tweaked and transformed for another client. So it’s beautiful to know that that work is not wasted. I love that idea.
[00:14:15] Kris: Yeah. we actually, um, it was probably about seven years into our business. We implemented this as a part of our business model. We had a simple branding starter package and the understanding with the simple branding starter package is that it wasn’t gonna be highly conceptual. I I hadn’t even considered the idea of formula based design before Donna mentioned it, years ago to me. and I was like, oh yes, that’s what it is, It’s formula based design because you’re a designer. You you’ve got the goods, you know what to do. So it’s a really great way to help and assist start up businesses for sure.
[00:14:52] Donna: Yeah, for sure. Okay. and another one it’s, it’s quite controversial, Kris and I actually discussed, do we, do we talk about this or do we not talk about this? Because it is so controversial. So this one is all about offering to do the work at their rate. So to their budget, but it’s in exchange for a few things. So what we would like you to say is. You’ve got $5,000 and, and my package is $8,000. That’s a $3,000 gap. All right. Let’s talk about this for $3,000. What are we, doing? So why would I give you such a chunky discount? If I’m going to do that then I have prepared for you a marketing plan where I’d like three, dedicated posts on your social media channels. I would like a video testimonial for my website. I would like a written testimonial for my website. I’d like some messages sent to me that I can screenshot, so that I can put onto stories. And then have a think about what it is that they are giving to you. That is marketing value for you. Now, the other thing is it could be just a a really cool job and you’re like, this is gonna be such a cool job. I really wanna do this, but again, Kris and I are always bring it back to honor your business and make sure you are being paid, so never, ever just do the work at a reduced rate, Kris and I are like, no, no, don’t do that.
[00:16:22] Kris: Yeah. Another thing you could, um, negotiate with them is to have full creative control. Now that might appeal to some of you as well, but you’ve got to be careful. You’ve gotta have it very clearly stated they need to sign off on that condition. I understand and accept that the designer will, um, be making all the conceptual and creative decisions with this project. That it’ll meet the brief of course. So just make sure that it’s very clear because, I think that oftentimes we might take on a job thinking I’m gonna do it cheaper because it’s gonna be a really good portfolio job, but then it kind of never works out that way. It can happen. It It, rarely ever works out that way. And then the gets their, their little hands in it and it’s like, oh great. You know, now I have to show this to the world instead. Um, so it’s, it’s really important that you are very clear as Don said at the beginning about, having an agreement in place. So it could be marketing. It could be creative control aspects
[00:17:20] Donna: could be both.
[00:17:21] Kris: It could be both. Yeah, that’s very desirable to designers, you know, to have one that’s like exactly what you want, but still being paid, not, not doing it for free, never, never, doing it for free, but just meeting their brief. So, yeah, as Donna said, it’s a bit controversial because it can get messy.
[00:17:39] Donna: And also what we did as a business, we actually chose two or three projects a year where we were like, okay, these are our charity cases. if you like for, for want of a better description, but, we will actually do this twice a year where we will put in an agreement for creative control or for all of those things that we’ve outlined, so that we get to do this beautiful work and help move the needle of a startup business. So it was our way of of contributing as well. But you can be clear about that as well. Say we actually only allocate space for two of these projects per year, and you could even have an application process. So would you like, to apply for that process? It really sort of elevates the level of, gratitude for. what your business is contributing to their business. And they really understand the value of what you are giving them and always, always mention the actual value. The value of it should be on everything. It should be on the proposal. It should be on the invoice when they pay the invoice, it should be everywhere so that they understand that even though there’s been an agreement, the value, the actual value of the work that you’ve done was 8000, 2000, 1000, whatever it is, it’s clear that the value is there. That, that’s what they would have paid.
[00:18:58] Kris: Yeah, we’ve got a, um, a podcast episode. It’s an early on one, which I think it’s titled beautiful designer, please don’t work for free. And um, we’ll link it in the show notes. The thing with that episode is that we would really prefer you to make a really great income in your business, make a really great profit and then donate to organizations that are really dear to your heart rather than giving away design for free. So what we are saying with this case is not for free. There’s still, there’s still a budget involved, but it might be a lesser budget. But they still need to have skin in the game and that’s putting their money into it, some money into it because people just don’t show up or they don’t respect if they don’t have that skin in the game, if they’re not, if they’re not paying for it. And we’ve found out that the hard way with um, doing work for charitable organizations for free. So you can absolutely have a beautiful, generous business model where you’re donating. But when it comes to design projects, like that, be very, very careful about it.
[00:20:01] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, finally you could just do nothing right now. And just accept that they can’t afford you and stay in touch with them, nurture them, keep connecting with them and make sure that you are on their radar. And remember that a no now does not mean no forever.
[00:20:23] Kris: Yeah. So if you think about it like this, they’re saying no now, because they can’t afford you, but you wanna be on their vision board. Right. As long as you’re on their vision board, it’s gonna be sweet. It will work out and building a graphic design business, building a successful long term graphic design business. It does take time. It does take time. You can move the needle really quickly and get a really great income quite quickly. But investment in relationships and investment in time. It will pay off in, in the future. And that’s part of the reason why three years into a design business, you are more likely to have unexpected projects come through because you’ve been nurturing these relationships from the beginning of your business. Or you’ve got referrals or what have you, but yeah, definitely, no now doesn’t mean no forever. Get on their vision board. That’s what you want. You wanna be this beautiful designer, they just can’t wait to work with it’s gonna happen.
[00:21:19] Donna: It is gonna happen. We had a session with a, um, a potential academy student just the other day. And she said, would you mind if I take. A photo of us in this zoom meeting, because I wanna put you on my vision board? And we were like, yes, we love that so much. And we popped her on our vision board. So it could be a mutual vision board thing. If they are a client you’d love to help. And you’d love to do the work for, they go on your vision board and that’s where the nurture comes. You’re reminded to nurture them because you wanna work for them. You wanna do this work for them in the future when they can afford you.
[00:21:56] Kris: Yeah, I love it. It’s so exciting. Just think of the future, it’s a future investment in these people, all these beautiful hearts that are gonna work with you in the future. So that brings us to the end of this episode. Um, before we go, we just wanted to mention that since we last recorded a podcast, our freebies page has had a makeover.
So when you go to our freebees page now. So if you just head to design and prosper.co/free, you’ll find three goodies there now. We’ve had a few freebies, but we’ve got our free pricing guide, which is a must have download. You’ve got to get that. Then we’ve got our client changes suck scripts, which have some really great scripts to use when clients come up with those changes. And put you on the spot. Then we have our client portal template, a free template that you can use. It’s a Trello template. it’s game changing. Go and get them go and get those downloads.
So if you can’t remember the link, we’ll have it in the show notes, but if you’re thinking, what was that thing? And you think about it in a couple of days, time or whatever, just DM us the word free. In Instagram and we will, send you the link. We’ll get it for you. So just DM the word free. We love. Yeah. We love it when you reach out to us in Instagram too. And sometimes when you message us, it helps us to know you you’re out there as well. Cause sometimes we might miss following you back and we love to follow you. So we love to follow you back. So just send us a DM so that we know that you’re out there and then we can follow you back. Okay.
[00:23:27] Donna: Yeah, absolutely
see you next time.
[00:23:31] Kris: Bye everybody.
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