Unlocking the Profit Potential of Your Design Studio: 3 Key Ideas

Article written by Jane

If you came across an opportunity to boost your brand recognition, increase your home sales, raise your customer satisfaction and boost your profitability… would you be interested (if not a little skeptical)?

What if I told you that this opportunity is ready and waiting for you, right now?

This is the power of a smart, streamlined and strategic design studio. (By the way, a profitable design studio is about so much more than the “design” itself… but we’ll cover that idea in next week’s article.)

Your Design Studio is One of Your Biggest Selling Points. Are You Using it Wisely?

Today’s homebuyers value choice, control, and personalization more than ever before. This is especially true for people who’ve made the decision to buy a brand new home, rather than a used home.

The design studio is one of the greatest opportunities you’ve got to support homebuyers in creating a home that matches their lifestyle needs and personal preferences (and if that’s not a huge selling point, I don’t know what is).

This means that a strong design studio experience is an opportunity to stand out in your market by doing what we call “front-loading” inspiration: so that the studio becomes a compelling reason to buy from you in the first place (rather than simply executing the narrower task of selling options to consumers after contract signing).

First impressions matter.  Chesapeake Homes Design Gallery in Virginia Beach, VA, immediately sets the tone for an inspirational, world-class design studio experience, from the moment the front door swings open.

When you have a world-class design studio and an exceptional personalization experience, you give people a reason to choose you over the competition. Unless you want to leave money (and happy customers) on the table, this means that the days of treating the design studio like an afterthought in the homebuying process are well and truly over.

A strong design studio doesn’t just help you build your brand and differentiate yourself in a crowded market (important, but a little hard to grasp and measure).

When leveraged to its full potential, the design studio can and should become a core piece of your sales, profitability and marketing machine… not to mention one of your most powerful tools for skyrocketing your customer satisfaction ratings and word of mouth referrals.

(We weren’t kidding – it’s powerful stuff.)

Here are 3 specific ways that your design studio can become one of your best business assets:

Increase New Home Sales (And Get Better Buy-In)

When your sales team  helps homebuyers get excited early in the buying process about the design studio experience (and the amazing options they get to choose from), you’ll not only give yourself a competitive edge: it also means that when the time comes to select options, homebuyers will arrive more prepared and empowered to make a confident buying decision inside the studio.

When you give homebuyers an opportunity to become emotionally connected to the options available to them, you create an unbreakable bond with your prospective buyers.

If given the choice between another builder who hasn’t leveraged the design studio as a compelling reason to buy, and you — the builder who has helped them create an emotional connection to the unique, one-of-a-kind home that only you can provide — who do you think they’ll choose?

Cultivate a World-Class, Personalization Experience

A common concern about selling more options is whether buyers will become less satisfied as their financial investment in their new home goes up.  After all, nobody likes to invest more money in their home than they need to… and we don’t want to be perceived as the ones who “pressure” our customers into doing it… right?

Well, not quite.

Consumer psychology tells us that when it comes to buying decisions, the opposite is true, and here’s why:

When people are supported in investing in a home that they’ve created and is uniquely theirs, they become delighted with their choices and the value received. Partner this with just the right amount of guidance and stellar customer service, and you’re onto something great. No pressure necessary — and your customers will thank you for it.

For builders, this means one thing: when the design studio (as well as your sales and design team) are leveraged to their full potential, customer experience and per-home revenue will grow in the same direction.

When buyers are given the opportunity (and guidance) to personalize their home with options that match their preferences and needs, and are provided with a positive buying experience inside the studio, they invariably feel more closely connected to their home — and, therefore, are more likely to be satisfied with their purchase. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

And, Yes… Raise Your Profits!

We find that even with a fully operational design studio, the vast majority of builders have several unseized opportunities to increase their profitability (some our clients have seen design studio profits increase by as much as 30 percent or even 40 percent — or higher — after our work together).

To put this in context: what could it mean for your bottom line if you were able to add an additional  (ie beyond current design studio option sales) $5,000, $10,000 or even $30,000 or more on every single home you build –- year after year?

For all builders, this represents a substantial increase in both revenue and in profit –because  often the design studio profit is  higher than the profit on the base house itself.

THIS is the unlocked potential of your design studio. And the best news of all? It’s ready and waiting for you to seize, right now.

Ready to Unlock the Profit Potential of Your Design Studio?

Our INFLUENCE Design Studio Training Event is back by popular demand!

Developed exclusively for design and sales professionals (and their managers), INFLUENCE will give you and your team the proven techniques you need to increase your design studio profits and deliver the world-class customer experience your buyers want and deserve.

Over 2 days, you’ll learn the exact sales and rapport-building techniques you need to turn options into “must-haves”, overcome objections and make your products irresistible.