Create Winning Marketing Strategies: an Interview with Fred Berns
Cindy: I’m really curious, how did you get started in coaching?
Fred: I’m a former journalist and I worked in Washington, D.C. I wrote a book called Sell Yourself: 501 Ways to Get Them to Buy from You. I was speaking around the country promoting the book, and 9/11 took place and my career really tanked as an author and a coach. In fact, I was speaking in New York City when the towers got hit. You could see it in the background from where I was speaking what was going on. But I lost a lot of business. I lost a lot of clients at that point. And I realized that I had to make a decision and I realized the importance of sticking to the interior design industry, which was who had been the most receptive to my message. Interior designers had been the ones who turned out in the biggest numbers at my presentations and they bought the most books, so I decided to zero in on interior design after 9/11.
As far as coaching is concerned, I started to ask, “Why is it that so many designers struggle financially and so many stages struggle financially?” It’s not as if they’re not putting in long hours, because they do. That became my mission as a coach to try to help staging professionals understand the importance of selling themselves as a way to become a lot more profitable. That’s been my coaching program pretty much ever since.
Cindy: In your experience with coaching designers, what are some of the biggest mistakes that they make when it comes to selling themselves and promoting themselves?
Fred: I think first and foremost, they undersell themselves. They take themselves for granted and they don’t establish their value. Another big mistake that design professionals make is they don’t tell their clients all that they can do. You know, a lot of times in our industry there, there’s way too much that’s wanted done.
In other words, the stager comes in and designer comes in, does a project, and that’s it. They shake hands and say see you later. There’s so much money to be made in up-selling and cross-selling and add-on selling. But designers and stagers in general don’t do that because the clients are not aware of all that they do. I always tell my clients — I do a lot of copywriting for staging and design professionals — it’s not their fault, but they don’t know all that you can do because you have not promoted all your services, all your value. It’s your job as a professional to share that information with them.
Cindy: How do you work with your clients on how to deal with that? To focus on what they really have and can offer to clients?
Fred: Because I’m a former journalist, I am good at asking questions and I really say, “Let’s put your career, your business under a microscope and let’s dissect what you do, let’s talk about how you save your clients time.” You save the clients money, you save your clients the headaches, for one thing. Let’s talk about your education background, and then maybe your previous career. A lot of stagers come from different backgrounds. Don’t hide your background if you’re a staging professional, highlight it.
I was doing some copywriting work for a new stager, and she was saying, “Well, I don’t really like to talk about my past because it doesn’t really relate to my staging.” So I said, “What did you do? She said, “Well, I was the international marketing director for HP and I went around the country and I went around the world to and did their international marketing.” I mean, wow. Let’s highlight that! Let’s talk about the fact that you gained invaluable communication skills, problem-solving skills. You traveled the world. You’ve got to know the different design trends around the world.
And that’s what I mean — people really take themselves for granted. I write a lot of bios for staging professionals. I look at the original bio and I tell people, “You’re cheating me because you’re not telling me the whole story. You’re not telling me all that you can do and all that you have done and all that you are doing now.”
Cindy: In your opinion, what makes good marketing?
Fred: I have a one word answer for this: pain. Speak to, talk about, tweet to your client’s pain. Stagers and design professionals who do the best job of solving the problems of their clients are most successful in their marketing. When you think of your clients, they don’t have much time. They’re very stressed. They don’t have the resources to know who to go to and where to go to furnish their homes. They don’t have a clue how to get started. If it’s a major remodel, they don’t even know where to begin the process.
They feel as if they want to keep up with the Joneses, so they want to come up with something unique and one-of-a-kind. In many cases, their space is outdated and doesn’t really reflect who they are and what they do. Maybe they’re homeless, maybe their lifestyles have changed, but they don’t work anymore. My point is, everyone is in pain. And your job as a staging professional, as a design professional, is to talk about that. Address those pains in your blogs, in your tweets and your texts, and all of your social media activity. Write articles, do guest blogging, do podcasts, do YouTube videos all geared to pinpointing the biggest challenges your clients face and come up with some solutions on how they can overcome those challenges.
Cindy: I think one of the struggles a lot of people have with selling themselves is they feel that marketing is sleazy. They don’t like to talk about themselves. So how do you work with your clients to overcome that obstacle?
Fred: I try to reframe what marketing and self-promotion is. I tell people, think of it as client education. When there’s so much noise in the marketplace, when there’s so much competition out there, you need to educate your prospects and your clients as to what makes you different to make it easier for them to choose. So by promoting yourself, you’re doing them a service. You are educating them as to what you offer that others don’t and therefore, it helps them in this selection process. So it’s not about you bragging. I know stagers equate sales promotion with bragging. It’s about client education, prospect education, letting people know what you bring to the table, how you can help them overcome this pain that we talked about a few minutes ago.
Cindy: What are some of the ways that stagers can promote themselves effectively?
Fred: As a former journalist, I can tell you that publicity is the best advertising that the stagers can buy. There’s so many opportunities to get free publicity. Do news releases every time you sign a new client contact, every time you celebrate an anniversary in your business, every time you win some kind of award. That’s the kind of news that online and in old-fashioned print publications we’ll run all the time.
Writing articles and guest blog posts are really important. You know, I was a journalist for 25 years. I can tell you, they need you more than you need them. In other words, if I’m a real estate editor for a local outlet or local publication, every day and every month and every year, I’m trying to fill space and feature information that’s valuable to my readers or to my viewers or whoever. They are looking for
experts to quote on a regular basis.
Savvy stagers that I work with are contacting media outlets that are important to their marketplace and offering to be a resource to those reporters, to those bloggers, to those the industry influencers. Every time they were going to write something or do a podcast or something and they need information, these stagers offered their services and then as a consequence, they get quoted and promoted all the time. And it doesn’t cost them a penny by offering themselves as a resource.
Get your foot in their door. That has to do with what I call an introductory program. It’s a lot easier for a client to say yes to a 30-minute or 45-minutes in-home consultation than a $25,000 remodeling job. So what I suggest to professionals is that they offer some kind of consultation program. It can be paid or not. For example, one of the most successful designers I know in America offers a kitchen conversation. She goes in there for 30 minutes and gives some ideas for your kitchen. And the process, she generates so many jobs, so many big projects from that 30-minute consultation that that’s the only marketing she has to do. So those are examples of just some of the many ways that you can make a big splash for a little cash.
Cindy: Can you talk a little bit more about bios? I’m really intrigued because that’s not a marketing tip I often hear about, but is very, very important because it really does help to sell you and explain what your services are.
Fred: Your bio on your website and your social media is your single most important and essential personal promotion tool as the staging professional or design professional. This is what tells your story. This does the heavy lifting. No one wants to go around and tell people how great they are, but their bio is what does it for them. This is where you share your experience, your expertise, the awards you’ve won, the types of clients you work with, and the services you offer. This is a great tool for doing that and it can and will get you bigger project from better clients.
Cindy: What are some strategies that people can use to make sure they are charging what they’re supposed to be charging in the marketplace, but at the same time make them happy?
Fred: I think you have to a a play up your credentials. Attach value to yourself by that. That’s really important as the first step in the process. You have to kind of just decide your own budgetary needs, what kind of money you need to live, the kind of lifestyle you want. Maybe even attach an hourly value to your services, how much you want to make per hour and just go for it. I mean, if you talk to 500 staging professionals, you will get 500 different permutations about how they charge for their service. And same thing with designers. Some designers charge by the hour, some designer charge a flat fee. There is no right way or wrong way to do this. I think you need to figure out what is the kind of money you need to make and then charge accordingly.
Cindy: What are some of the strategies that you may have for your clients when it comes to pricing objections from their clients?
Fred: First of all, I want to point out that I think most homes stagers would rather crawl on hands and knees around the desert than face price objections. I think they’d rather swallow formaldehyde. I don’t get it. Price objections are a buying signal. Your clients and prospects have to be at least somewhat interested in your staging services. So price wouldn’t even come up in the conversation if they weren’t interested.
Do you know that your chances of closing a sale are 30% higher when at least some price objections are raised because that indicated they’re interested if they’re discussing price at all with you as opposed to saying nothing at all? When someone raises a price objection, that’s basically them saying you may not be a priority right now. So it’s your job to educate them as why you are. It should be a priority, right?
Cindy: What is the number one tip that you’d give to stagers when it comes to self- promotion?
Fred: Understand that once upon a time, if you had a good portfolio, that’s all you would have to count on. Pretty pictures on your website would be all you would need to be a success in staging or design. Those days are long gone because every decent stager and every decent designer has wonderful pictures on their websites and their house sites and the social media.
So much great information on how to market ourselves as home stagers! What is the most valuable tip you learned?
About Fred
Fred Berns is the only interior design industry business coach and speaker who creates personal bios and other promotional materials for design professionals worldwide. Fred has more than 25 years experience training design professionals from Dallas to Dubai, and creating their online profiles, website and social media copy, blogs and marketing forms. In addition, he offers a wide range of business coaching services.
