One Simple Email Can Dial Down Budget Stress –Here’s how…

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Historically, re-setting client budget expectations has been fraught with challenges and risks for design professionals. See how one simple email template can make your life easier…

When a client first contacts your practice they arrive with expectations, hopes, dreams, visions …. and probably a little baggage.

Unpacking that baggage inevitably involves re-setting client budget expectations with some contemporary pricing realities.

Traditionally, these conversations have been high risk for design practitioners because the client is still in the process of selecting their designer or architect. This sets up a misaligned (and ill-informed) dynamic whereby the client confuses budget indications with a ‘construction estimate’ from your practice.

Additionally, clients have often been told by a well-meaning friend or relative, a TV personality or the internet what their project ‘should’ cost and have based the enquiry with you on these budget expectations.

Its little wonder client budget expectations are hard to manage.

Here’s What to Do – Solution

Most architects and designers have a sense of their ‘ideal’ client. They might consider project type, location, client attributes, budget and more.

In the first client contact, design professionals explore these elements to determine the client’s fit for their practice.

Often a comment by the design professional to the prospective client of “our practice specialises in [project type] with budgets above [budget threshold]” initiates the client budget expectation management in the right direction. However, it’s your next communication with them that will help them understand likely budgets.

At this point, the prospective client has likely seen your work, feels comfortable exploring your services and is trying to understand construction costs.

To progress the client’s expectations, experienced design professionals send a templated email (soon after the first contact) that includes images of their work plus indicative construction budgets. This helps clients understand the budgetary requirements to build the designs they’ve already been attracted to – most likely on your website or portfolio.

This is often the first-time clients receive budget indications for your work and it resets their expectations without an awkward conversation after you (and them) have invested time and effort into the project.

If clients get a surprise, they can re-visit their scope, have another conversation with their financier or assess the timing/staging of their project.

In some cases, the client will cancel the initial meeting after receiving this email but this is because they don’t (and won’t) have the budget to support their vision.

Importantly, they do all this before you’ve even met them.

That means clients who meet you are well qualified and you’ve already addressed difficult budget conversations in the early stages of your engagement.

The email template also includes confirmation of meeting times and your expectations for that discussion.

You can download the email template here.

Obviously, the client will require further touch points throughout the concept development process to feel comfortably informed.

To do this book a ProCalc Free Trial & Tutorial.

The idea is to constantly inform the clients about budget to check and re-check their comfort levels.

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. Historically, re-setting client budget expectations has been fraught with challenges and risks for design professionals. See how one simple email template can make your life easier... When a client first contacts your practice they arrive with expectations, hopes, dreams, visions …. and probably a little baggage. Unpacking that baggage...