Is it possible to cultivate a waitlist of ideal clients for your architecture practice? – Part 2

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

-       Aristotle

This article is the second in a three-part series about architecture practice waitlists and project pipelines.

Part 1 dispels the myth that you need to be a world-famous architect to generate a waitlist for your services, and it outlines several Australian practices that have cultivated waitlists of dedicated and committed clients, who ONLY want to work with them. 

This instalment outlines some of the benefits of cultivating a waitlist, and in part 3 I’ll describe how you can start creating your waitlist, to enjoy a steady pipeline of your ideal clients and projects.

So, what are some of the benefits of having a waitlist for your architecture services?

1.     Perceived exclusivity leads to increased demand

People queue to buy luxury goods, concert tickets and architecture tours. Why not cultivate a queue for your architecture services, too?. Photography by Melanie Pongratz via Unsplash.

Earlier this year, architects were invited to attend The Architecture Symposium at The Daylesford Longhouse, a highly awarded project by Partners Hill. Tickets for the one-day event in February sold out – at $800 per person – and those who missed out had the option to join a waitlist, for any spaces that became available.

Imagine how you might have felt if you wanted to attend the event, but didn’t get your ticket before the allocation was exhausted. You probably would have experienced some FOMO, and your desire to obtain a ticket might have increased once you became aware that they were sold out and hard to come by. You might have worried that you might not get another chance to visit the project and experience it for yourself, let alone hear the architect and client talk about the process of designing, delivering and using the building.

If a waitlist slot became available – you would have gladly paid the ticket fee and rearranged your weekend plans, to be among the lucky few attendees.

It's possible to generate this kind of buzz and excitement around your architecture services too, especially if you have:

a)     a strong and unique selling point that differentiates your practice from others;

b)     a clearly articulated process, outcome and transformation, which makes it easy for prospective clients to understand the specific benefits they’ll enjoy as a result of working with you; and

c)     a limited number of new client slots per year.

When potential clients see your offering as unique and available only in limited quantities – the appeal of that offering becomes even more highly desirable – and you can create the perfect circumstances in which to establish a waitlist.

2.     Human resources become easier to manage

A lot of architecture practices struggle to find the sweet spot around team size, keeping their project pipeline at a comfortable level, and overall profitability.

If you win too many new projects at once, or you have too many projects in a particular stage of your process, you’ll experience a crunch point in your workflow that has the potential to place extra pressure on your team, and spread your resources too thinly.

But if you don’t have enough work to keep your team productively occupied, you might have to start thinking about reducing your team size, even though you’d rather not lose the skills, expertise and experience that your people have built up over time.

Running a waitlist enables you to cap your team numbers at your ideal level: the sweet spot that feels comfortable, sustainable, profitable and manageable for your practice.

Having a steady flow of your ideal projects means you can avoid the challenge of having to quickly recruit and train new employees – with more control and predictability around your pipeline, you shouldn’t need to scale up quickly to cope with an unexpected workload – and you can also avoid the prospect of being forced to part with valuable and talented team members. 

A waitlist means you can maintain a steady core team, and expand or contract the size of your workforce according to your own choices, variables and timeline. Having a waitlist puts you in the drivers’ seat so you can be proactive around your practice’s profitability and growth, rather than having to react to workflow challenges on the fly.

Having the sense of stability and predictability in your practice provides the ideal canvas for you to develop and invest in a practice culture that encourages employees to stay and pursue professional development internally, rather than looking for greener grass elsewhere. 

3.     Steady and predictable cashflow shifts your practice mentality from scarcity to abundance

Having a waitlist of ideal clients leads to a steady, predictable and manageable pipeline of the work that you most want to do. It can also help you gain more control over your project stages and phases, and smooth out the peaks and troughs of feast and famine on line with your practice revenue targets.

That means that when you have a waitlist, you can shift your mentality out of scarcity into abundance – you’ll soon realise there there are always more projects that you enjoy and find suitably challenging, when you have a queue of ideal clients who only want to work with you.

And that leads to the next benefit: discernment.

4.     You can become more discerning about the projects and clients you take on

A waitlist means you can become more discerning about the clients you choose to work with. Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash.

Have you ever been forced to take a job that wasn’t ideal - perhaps the budget was lower than your break-even-point, or the scope wasn’t as large as you’d prefer - while you waited for the next “proper” job to materialise?

The problem with taking on those sub-optimal projects is that the clients don’t understand you’ve actually done them a favour by taking on their project; they expect to receive the same value and service that your ideal clients demand, and they want more and more deliverables from you, while at the same time they baulk at your fees and quibble over the details.

Chances are, they weren’t a well-aligned client for your practice from the outset.

And this become a recipe for stress and anxiety on both sides of the client-architect relationship, especially if the clients tell their friends about you, and what a great job you did for a paltry fee. Then you start to get more inquiries from people who are not ideal for your practice, thus perpetuating this cycle.

In contrast, when you have a waitlist, rather than being forced into accepting every job that comes into your practice, you can be discerning about which projects and clients you take on.

In order to become well-known and sought-after for a particular typology or approach or result, you have to define the terms of your ideal projects: your preferred typologies, project size, budget, location and any other factors that determine what types of work and clients are the best fit for your expertise and knowledge.

Once you have a clear sense of your ideal clients and project, you can establish firm boundaries around the types of projects you will and won’t do, and the types of clients you’ll happily work with and those you see as less appealing or even problematic.

You can refer clients who are not a good fit to other practices, where they’ll get a more aligned service, knowing that you have plenty of future clients lined up to work with you.

Being able to cherry-pick the clients and projects that you prefer to work on has a range of benefits for team morale, professional development, and your reputation in the marketplace.

And because you only work with clients who share your values – and see the value in the services you deliver – you should both enjoy smoother projects and more satisfying results.

5.     Refine and continuously improve your process and outcomes

Interior designer Chelsea Hing used to design and deliver hospitality and commercial projects, but she made the decision to only work on residential projects. Photography by Rhiannon Taylor.

Once you choose to intentionally become an expert in one particular typology, or you develop and hone a unique process to deliver certain projects, or you are viewed as a thought-leader around a relevant issue – such as #TrueNetZero housing, for example – you’ll naturally develop and enhance your skills and experience as you do more projects in your area of specialty.

Melbourne and Daylesford-based interior designer Chelsea Hing provides a great example of the benefits of focusing on one project typology – in her case, housing – and of deliberately keeping her studio small. 

Chelsea says: “I had very strong hospitality skills and worked on restaurants, and commercial projects for years, but the lead times, work flows, expertise and contractors are not necessarily transferrable across those different sectors,” (in this article that I wrote for Australian Design Review)

“We were able to fast-track how good we were in resolving common problems, because we’d build the projects and quickly see what worked and what didn’t, across 10 to 15 houses we delivered each year, versus, say, only three homes, when we worked on other projects as well.

“We also built better relationships with tradespeople because they rotate across our projects, so they became better at it and faster too,” she added. “I think there is an advantage to focusing on what you are really good it, recognising that and honing your own craft.

“Now we are only competing with ourselves, coming across the same sets of issues and refining them each time.”

When you choose to deliberately set yourself apart from the field of architects, building designers, project managers, custom project home suppliers and other so-called “competitors” who are vying for the same clients as you, you provide a strong point of differentiation. So many new projects are sourced via referral and word-of-mouth that you can quickly become known as the go-to person for your chosen expertise.

And your ideal clients will naturally gravitate towards you and your services, and actively seek out your unique approach. Then, once you have enough ideal clients to fill the available capacity in your practice, you have the makings of your waitlist.

6.     Pre-register and pre-qualify your future clients

Moving from scarcity into abundance by establishing a waitlist means that have time to get to know your future clients before you commit to working together.

You can pre-qualify future clients before accepting them on to your waitlist, to ensure that they are aligned and a good fit for your services, and that you’ll be able to deliver the outcomes and results that they are seeking.

You could use the waitlist time to find out more about their needs and wants, aspiration, brief and budget, values, and to get them thinking about the best way to convey those wishes to you, once the project starts.

You could encourage them to become more informed and empowered clients by doing a course like the ones offered by Undercover Architect Amelia Lee (especially if your future clients have never worked with an architect before).

You could provide them with information about your process and resources for them to review and consider, that will become relevant and useful when you enter the design phase. You can also share inspiration and design prompts to encourage them to think laterally about the project.

Then, once you are ready to commence working together, your pre-qualified clients will already have a clear sense of the value you’ll bring to their project, and both parties will get more out of the process and outcome.

Do these benefits sound appealing? Are you keen to find out how to cultivate your own practice waitlist?

• You can read part 1 of this series here.

• And in Part 3, I’ll provide suggestions about how to position your practice and market your services so you can start to generate your waitlist of ideal clients.

• Sign up to receive SLD’s newsletters using the Subscribe box at the top right of this page if you’d like to be notified when the next article is published.

• If you’re ready to join the waitlist for Architecture Marketing 360: a CPD course for architects, you can do that here.

• And if you have a friend or colleague who may also benefit from reading this article, please send them a link and encourage them to subscribe.