ARCHITECTURAL BUSINESS STRATEGY

What you can do or offer that will increase the value of the services you already provide. Knowing what you do well and the value that it adds to your clients is just a starting point. You can pile on the value for a given project in ways that your competition cannot match, then take it even further by enhancing those services.

 

These focused efforts on superior services should include optimization efforts to ensure these enhanced services are easier to produce than the less valuable services they supersede. Value of services works both ways, to provide a more valuable service for your clients at a loss in your profits or productivity will not help provide the proper incentive to put the best effort into the service.

 

This can also mean reducing the number of services you provide in order to increase the value of the premium service. This is advice for almost every firm. We have all taken on work for a client to “keep the doors open” or because we thought it would be a good opportunity to “get our foot in the door”. However, providing services that you are not well suited for or have no experience in is not helpful to you or the client - and I bet we can all name more than a few times this strategy backfired.

 

On the other hand, if you can weed out the services you shouldn’t provide and pile on value to the ones you should - your clients are not going to notice the things you say no to, but they will notice the massive value in what you do!

 

It is important to realize that the value really lies in the eye of the target market. Museums, schools, hospitals and apartment developers all see value in different aspects of design - know who you serve! Positioning yourself in terms of value to a market sets you up to base your services on value rather than on price, but it requires you to prove yourself in terms of that value to the market. 

 

Benefits

• Increased Profitability - Providing more value increases the amount of money people are willing to pay you for your services

• Service Options - Gives you a more robust value ladder

• Higher Margins - Gives your clients more options and incentives to pay you more for higher value services

• Expertise Recognition - Gets your clients to view you as a resource that is necessary for all aspects of the project

• Team Development - Helps you to train your team as to why things are done a certain way 

• Agreement Alternatives - Gives your sales team options for negotiation

• Selling Options - Provides greater leverage when negotiating with a new or inexperienced prospect

• Competitive Awareness - Sets your company apart from the competition

 

Misconceptions / Mistakes

• Trying to provide “full-services” - This often leads to promising things you can’t deliver

• Everyone of my competitors already does this - no one in the market is looking at how they can add more value, most companies are focused on how they can reduce costs or increase productivity.

• All our clients want is the lowest cost - clients only focus on cost when they do not understand how a product or service benefits them

• Our clients already know what they want - everyone wants more value they just need to understand how a product or service benefits them

• Our clients don’t know what they want - Your clients have an idea of why they are pursuing a project, you just need to show them how your services enhance that outcome.

• Clients wouldn’t know value if it it slapped them in the face - unfortunately this may be true for some clients, but often we find that they are not presented with value, only prices, services, and deliverables.

• I can’t do more than I am now - Adding value does not mean adding work, often it is a simplification of things that do not add value.

 

Solutions / Best Practices

• For each service you provide ask, “what stands in the way of this producing a much better result?”

• Target the services that your clients find most valuable first

• Ask your clients what aspects and services they like best about your company

  • They are telling you where they will notice the most added value

• List all the services you are currently providing or have provided in the last few years that you shouldn’t have

• List all the services you repeatedly lose money on - stop providing them or develop a system to improve production