The final reveal was a great success. Your new portfolio photos are amazing. The clients are impressed and ready to resume their lives. And you and your team are celebrating! Then at the peak of your client’s trust and excitement, you and your team get sidetracked. Suddenly, within a few days, you’re consumed by the logistical emergencies of your next several pipeline projects. It may be unintentional, but you turn away from that ideal luxury residential client at a critical time.
The 100 days after a reveal offer a premium revenue opportunity, and you need to take advantage of it. Stop leaving money on the table by creating and implementing a post-project marketing plan. By doing so, you can transition your firm from a mere transactional service provider into a high-yield lifetime asset.
The Economics of Client Lifetime Value (LTV)
Client Lifetime Value is an important consideration. It is the total net profit a client generates over the course of their relationship with your business. It’s important to remember that, depending on your industry, it can cost 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new client than to retain or upsell an existing one. While that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule by any means, the point is the same: it’s more difficult to convince new people to buy your products or services than to convince past buyers. Once you have invested the time and money into building a positive relationship with an ideal client, the value continues to build ― if you take full advantage of what you have built. Shift your focus from stressing over where the next $2M project will come from. Instead, step fully into the role of a strategic CEO. Maximize the revenue yield of the high-net-worth (HNW) clients with whom you have already identified as ideal clients and have built a relationship.
Days 1-30: The Punch-List
Take advantage of a punch list and the value it can hold for a client. A punch list, or checklist, is created when a project is finalized. It details remaining tasks, minor flaws, or incomplete work that needs to be resolved before final sign-off and payment. It is important as it ensures all parties agree that the work meets the standards as contracted. For many stressed designers, the closing 30 days of a project are a major challenge of tracking damages, freight claims, and minor touch-ups that can claim part of the firm’s net profit.
Rather than looking at the punch list as an administrative burden, instead view it as yet another way to showcase your professionalism in communication and execution. It’s another opportunity to build a positive long-term relationship with the client. While your team is on-site finishing punch-list items with meticulous precision, teach them to use that opportunity to identify immediate secondary needs. Those needs might be custom window treatments for an overlooked guest suite, styling a home office, additional outdoor accent lighting, or creating an outdoor living area.
Days 31-60: The Curating Window
Once your clients have lived in their newly designed home for 30 days, they will naturally find gaps ― gaps that your firm can address. They realize there is a need for a specific scale of fine art for the entry, or that some of their heirloom pieces may need updating, or that additional accessories and art pieces are needed. Be proactive rather than letting your client turn to galleries or retail stores. Create and schedule a 60-day check-in and have a junior designer or procurement staff handle the styling needs. Curating high-margin, turnkey art and accessory packages will take minimal principal design hours, but the return offers significant procurement management fees.
Days 61-100+: The Concierge Service
Ultra-high-net-worth clients are not interested in maintaining their homes themselves. They are looking for convenience, exclusivity, and the preservation of their multi-million-dollar asset. This need is an opportunity for your firm.
Create a concierge service that begins after the final reveal ― a standardized, recurring retainer program. Offer some or all of the following:
- Bi-annual seasonal styling and holiday decorating refreshes.
- Coordinated deep-cleaning schedules for custom textiles, specialized wallcoverings, and high-end surfaces.
- Post-occupancy furniture rotation and lifestyle adjustments.
Adding this concierge service creates a predictable subscription-based business model for your design firm and smooths out cash flow fluctuations between major projects. It also expands your clients’ view of you and your firm’s expertise, seeing you as more than just an interior designer who gets hired once.
The Right Team
Some designers have trouble letting go, and if that is your problem, you need to adjust your thinking. You cannot implement a 100-day aftercare plan if you are personally ordering replacement pillows, scheduling upholstery cleaners, and arranging for refinishers.
As the CEO of your firm, you define the signature aftercare packages, set the pricing strategy, and present the “Concierge” concept during the initial client onboarding phase.
Developing a functional tech stack for your firm will save you a lot of time and frustration. A tech stack is the combination of technologies used to build and run an application, usually across four layers: frontend, backend, database, and infrastructure. Then your integrated tech stack and your team of proactive action-takers will run the automated post-review sequence. They also manage logistics and client touchpoints flawlessly ― all without your daily input. You need to have enough trust in them that the process just works without you micromanaging. Then you step back in to review the revenue data and maintain the high-level, peer-to-peer relationship with the client, which ensures their experience remains excellent.
True Business Mastery
True business mastery means you have become a CEO of your business and have built a well-oiled machine that functions with or without your direct input. It means your business will generate profit long after the heavy creative lifting is over. A successful CEO of a design firm looks beyond the final reveal. They do not see the final reveal as the finish line, but as the beginning of their firm’s most profitable, low-friction relationship.
Avoid the massive, industry-wide tendency to abandon a client immediately after the final photo shoot to rush off to the next client. Stop leaving money on the table and implement a predictable lifetime value strategy.