How the Internet Has Made Selling Design Services Harder (Instead of Easier)

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The internet can be an invaluable tool for research and acquiring knowledge. It can also be hazardous, a place where consumers can find just enough information to make them dangerous to themselves. This can make an interview with a prospective client difficult in the extreme because it forces you to overcome misconceptions from sources. In short, and in many ways, the internet has made selling design services harder than ever before.

While it may feel counter-intuitive, experiences teaches that the more choices an individual has the more difficult it is to make a decision. While this is not always true, it is the case often enough that anyone with experience in sales of any kind will agree that they watch out for it.

According to PsychCentral.com, this is a real phenomenon that is known as decision making paralysis. As a quick example, consider your own experiences when shopping online. You will likely begin with a Google search for a new leather jacket, let’s say. You type in “women’s leather jacket” and Google, always eager to help, takes less than a second to offer you – more than 500 MILLION choices!!! (At least that’s what we got.)

Non-plussed (and not a little amazed), you decide to narrow the search a bit by adding the phrase “near me” to your search query. Whew, that helped. Now you only have 1.4 MILLION choices to consider.

Do you begin to see where the “paralyzing paradox” created by too many choices comes from – and how it can impact your design business?

Google Searches May Create Buyer Objections

Of course, this example has little to do with interior design so, what happens when you search for a local designer? Uh oh, we got nearly 6 BILLION returns to our query. Needless to say, there are not 6 billion design businesses in the world but, these results include a plethora of sites that offer advice on how to choose an interior designer, which could lead to even more confusion for the searcher.

So, human nature being what it is, most potential design clients are going to stick to the first page of the search results so they will only have to consider 10-15 choices. Despite this, however, there are still going to be “expert advice sites” that will tell them what to avoid when hiring a designer. This is the type of thing that may lead to objections you’ll be forced to overcome that have little or nothing to do with your business.

Well, now that we have you deathly afraid of buying and selling anything online, we beg the question about how you might overcome the biases your prospects may develop from their “research.”

3 Quick Sales Tips for Designers

Since this is the first in an upcoming series about selling design services, we are going to offer a few quick selling tips that we will expand upon in future posts.

  • Do NOT offer solutions prematurely – Until you know what your prospects think of as their individual pain points or needs, you do them and yourself a disservice by providing advice before they are ready to receive it.

  • Practice active listening for clues to closing – Far too many salespeople forget to listen. The most successful salespeople will tell you that every client they work with literally tells them how to close the deal, if only they listen actively.

  • It’s all about them – Got invoices to pay; inventory to get rid of; contractors to keep busy so you don’t lose them? So what! This is not about you, and all they want is to find someone to hear them before offering any design advice. (They want you to shut up and listen to them.)

So yes, thank you internet for making life more difficult by offering too many choices to all of us! On the other hand, now that you’re aware of the problem, with tips to overcome it, selling design services should become much easier.

Are you looking for more design sales tips, new design trends, new products, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today.