Do you make it easy for potential clients to find, commission and pay you? (Part 2)

(This is the second instalment of my article on online visibility, pricing and communicating your services. You can read Part 1 here.)

Do you make it easy for prospective clients to work out whether you’re a good fit, early in their customer journey?
Photo by Mike Meyers on Unsplash.

Back to my initial website research: several of the pieces I liked initially had “POA” on them. I enquired about the cost of these items, and the figures provided were well outside my budget, so I elected to not visit that particular store. It just wasn’t worth my while when I knew the items cost more than I was willing to spend.

In old Yellow Pages parlance, “I let my fingers do the walking”.

How does this relate to architecture fees and pricing?

Most architects use a form of “POA” instead of clear pricing signals on their websites, and there are complex and mostly justifiable reasons for this.

The main one is that most practices tend to use a fairly antiquated pricing model, where fees are structured as a percentage of the total construction budget. (There are some exceptions, such as fixed-fee pricing, or by-the-hour pricing, but despite all the changes that have happened elsewhere as a result of e-commerce and disruption, updated pricing models are relatively rare in architecture).

From the client perspective, this percentage based fee pricing structure can be quite difficult to understand, and in some cases even alienating, because:

• The percentage figure usually tends to decrease as the overall construction budget goes up, and vice versa; if the construction budget goes down, the percentage figure goes up. This is counterintuitive for most clients, and it can be hard to quickly and easily explain this mechanism in your marketing and sales messaging, especially at the early stages of the customer journey, when clients are trying to get a ballpark idea of whether your service is a good fit, like the jewellery store example above. 

• The total construction budget often increases over time - from the early stages to the project completion - and clients have an (unrealistic?) expectation that architects can design to a certain agreed budget level. They therefore experience fluctuations in cost - and the ever-changing / increasing fee - as an irritation. Novice clients probably don’t understand that a bigger footprint / increased scope / added inclusions = more work for the architect, meaning that the complexity of the fee model can lead to tensions between client and architect. Often the architect chooses to absorb higher costs instead of issuing variations, which leads to problems around practice profitability and sustainability. In short, there is a lot of elasticity around pricing, and this leads to uncertainty on the part of the client, especially when contrasted with the simple pricing of a project home builder, for example.

Clients sometimes approach an architect without a clear idea of the scope or brief, making it hard to identify the budget or fee at the outset. Photo by R ARCHITECTURE on Unsplash

• A third issue is that many clients will approach an architect without a clear idea of what their total construction budget is. They may be looking for help to work out what’s required, how best to achieve it, and what it might cost. It’s obviously hard to provide an idea of cost on a project that hasn’t yet been defined - especially if you’re using the percentage fee model - and this can lead to frustration on the part of the client. (The cost/outcome certainty of the project/custom home builder model - and the ability for people to experience display homes before making their big commitment - both provide marketing advantages that architects find it hard to compete with).

So what’s the lesson for architects about “POA” and pricing? 

6.     Communicate your pricing in a clear and legible way, and provide ballpark figures for typical project price points, plus all the other costs – ie approvals, external consultants, total construction budget, etc - that a client is likely to incur.

Find a way to clearly and easily describe your fees, what they cover, how they are calculated, whether you use a single fee method or a combination of two or more types, (and what triggers each of these), how and when your fees might vary, and what cost increases could occur that are beyond your control.

Make sure you spell out:

• what’s included (and not included) in each stage of your process;

• which process stages – if any – you would be happy to eliminate from the scope (eg: some architects won’t do sketch or concept design unless they’ll also be engaged for documentation; some are happy to relinquish contract administration while others won’t take on a project unless it expressly included, etc);

• what the project contingency is, and what it’s typically used for;

• where additional costs might arise (at the moment they may result from material and/or labour shortages, or from unexpected site or existing fabric conditions on alts&adds or adaptive reuse projects, for example); and

• how you deal with “scope creep” and additional costs that will result as clients opt to add extra rooms, more complex detailing, or more services, such as interior design or landscaping.

When you spell out what’s included and what’s not included, it’s clear from the outset and you have documentation that you can refer back to - when the goal posts start to shift - later on.

Are there other ways to make complex pricing models easier to understand?

You could also cost out some typical project types, based on your recently completed projects. Say you often do renovations between $400-700k, or you’ve done a few $1m new build homes, you can create estimates for those parameters so that potential clients can determine whether your “POA” figure is within their ballpark.

You might also set up referral relationships with local colleagues so that if you get enquiries from people with budgets below your minimum level, you can recommend an architect who may be able to help, and vice versa.

That way, when prospective clients who are at the early stages of their research journey approach you, you can easily provide them with the information they need to determine whether they should continue the conversation with you, without wasting both your time and their time.

This method also allows you to only produce more detailed fee proposals for those clients who are further along their customer journey, ideally closer to the point where they’ll make a decision to actually engage you.

What’s the final takeaway for architects?

Make it easy for people to purchase a low-cost, low-risk service before they commit to a high-cost, high-risk service, as a way of testing the working relationship. Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

So, back to my jewellery shopping example. After visiting the two jewellery stores on Saturday, I faced a difficult decision around which piece to buy – a ring or a bangle – and I was struck by a new observation, which is particularly relevant to architecture services.

I loved the service and attention that I received at the first store, where I was given the impression that I could easily return and discuss future jewellery purchases. I got the sense that they would be willing to help me source gemstones and make future selections, especially if I chose to purchase a higher-ticket item later. 

Which leads to my final point:

7. Make it easy for customers to become clients by purchasing a low-cost, low-risk service - like a feasibility study or a masterplan for ongoing works - as a pre-cursor to a high-cost, higher-risk service, that forms the basis for additional stages at some point in the future. 

Many architects boast a range of skills and expertise that you don’t even recognise as being unique and valuable to your prospective clients. You can package up your knowledge, skills and experience into fixed-price services – such as feasibility studies or masterplanning options – that can provide immeasurable value to your future clients.

This type of fixed price service – which could even be purchased and prepaid for via your website – provides your future clients with an opportunity to test a working relationship with you, before committing to a larger-scale project that could cost hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. 

A few examples of your unsung expertise include:

• Your understanding of federal, state and local building codes, and how they interact to inform what’s possible on a particular site, in terms of building envelopes and development opportunities;

• Insights about how to conform to or exceed permitted Floor Space Ratios, to maximise the yield on a given site through investments in careful, responsive and considered design;

• How to use certain materials or products to achieve design efficiencies and/or embodied carbon savings, which can increase yield and/or produce better quality outcomes for occupants and end-users;

• How to orient and site buildings to take advantage of passive solar attributes, thereby increasing energy efficiency and delivering reduced running costs over the proposed lifespan of the building; and

• How to co-ordinate the input of various consultants – structural engineers, heritage, DDA, energy efficiency experts etc – to achieve the most efficient outcome possible, and to provide maximum amenity for building users and the wider community.

Don’t discount the value of this expertise, just because you rely upon it everyday. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how extraordinary your knowledge and skills are, and how valuable they can be to future cleints. 

As Aristotle said:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit."

So make the most of your hard-won excellence, and make sure that your future clients know how they can easily tap into it, by engaging you to work on their next project.

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How else can you work directly with Rachael Bernstone of Sounds Like Design?

I offer three services to architects, ranging from two-hour Acupuncture Sessions to the three- month Review + Reset consulting package.

• If you’d like a short, sharp injection of architecture-specific expertise – to talk about any business development or marketing issues you’re grappling with – you can book an Acupuncture Session here. You can choose the topics we discuss, and tap into my knowledge, experience and connections to access insights that are customised for your practice.

• You can enrol in the self-guided online program - Architecture Marketing 360: a CPD course for architects - and get started straight away, here.

• If you’re interested in my consulting package, you can find details about Review + Reset here. (I have a waitlist for new Review + Reset clients, and that’s what I aim to help you achieve for your architecture business, too).

• Lastly, if you have any questions about this blog post, or any of my services, please click here to email me. I’m always happy to hear from architects who want to improve the way they communicate their value to future clients.