You’ve seen all the amazing 3D landscape designs out there on Instagram and so have your clients. These days most clients of mid to high end landscaping projects are expecting to see some sort of 3D presentation. You’d love to start introducing it into your design service offering but not sure whether it’s really worth it or how to go about it. In this article we draw on our 10 years of experience providing 3D rendering services to Landscape Designers. Over that time we’ve heard the impact it can have on their clients and their bottom line. We’ve seen a lot of different ways designers have approached 3D and offered it to their clients. So now we’d love to share with you some of our insights on just how powerful it can be as a design tool and how to successfully offer it to your clients.
Emotional Connection
This is probably the most powerful benefit of 3D presentations. If a picture is worth one thousand words, then 3D images are 10 x that. When you add a fly-through movie into the mix, you’re on another level entirely.
To understand its impact, let’s look at the traditional method of concept plan presentations first. We’ve all been there, presenting a concept plan to a client, where we’ve rolled out the plans and the client wants to jump from one section to another instantly making judgment and comments on a particular area before understanding the design in its entirety. You have this plan in your head of how you wanted to walk them through the design but all they see is what they don’t like.
Imagine the difference in your presentation meetings when you can literally “walk” them through the ideas you have for their landscape and help them to see the amazing lifestyle opportunities you’re offering to their family and friends from the get go. Not only do they get a clear idea of your vision instantly, but they can also start to see themselves in the space and connect with it. There is so much excitement when they can finally see their dream garden in front of them. It’s that emotional motivation that encourages them to proceed.
It’s not just the overall vision that wins them over, they also begin to see the value of the additional special features you really wanted them to go for. Previously they may have thought a particular feature could be taken out or changed due to cost, but when they see it in 3D they suddenly understand what you’ve been talking about and want to keep it in the design. The best part is, you don’t even have to say anything, the 3D says it all. That’s exactly why you hear people saying, 3D does the selling for you.
Managing expectations and reducing mistakes
Mistakes are frequently caused by miscommunication or to put it another way, mistakes are avoided when everybody is on the same page. Poorly informed clients, confused about what they’ve agreed to may find fault in all sorts of aspects of the project.
In their mind, these are “mistakes” caused by you – incorrectly built, incorrectly costed, badly detailed or simply the old, “I thought this was going to be X not Y, I didn’t agree to that!” scenario. Mistakes cost far more than money; they also cost time, lose referrals and damage your brand.
Leading designers protect their reputation and avoid mistakes by insisting their clients follow a consistent process that works. That process ensures that everyone involved in any project they touch is on the same page at each step: what we’re doing, how much it will cost, and where things could go wrong. This ensures their clients understand exactly what’s happening next, what they’re getting in return for their investment and most importantly, helps them avoid mistakes or misunderstandings as the project unfolds.
This is all good, however, not everyone can effectively read 2 dimensional plans. Even when they think they can, there are often elements of the design they simply didn’t understand completely. No matter how good you are at designing and explaining, sometimes there is still a disconnect. With a 3D presentation, you are setting a clear expected outcome from the start. Clients know exactly what they’re getting before you start building, and it takes a lot of pressure off the relationship and allows you to get on with the job, confident they are already happy with the results.
From a business perspective, the added bonus of offering 3D is that when used correctly, it drastically reduces the need for tedious working drawings. The combination of 3D images, captured from specific angles, accompanied by a simple plan with dimensions and levels, is an efficient means of communicating the desired outcome to your team and the subcontractors building the project. When a crew can see the completed project in 3D first, it makes their task so much easier, with less room for misinterpretation. As Designers that means less time spent onsite or communicating with construction teams explaining details. For construction teams it means a faster, smoother install, with less mistakes. The end result being savings in both time and money. Winning!
Increased perceived value
As you know, value is so often in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to design services. You may wonder, how are some businesses able to charge higher fees from providing the same service? It’s because their service is perceived and accepted as being higher in value.
There’s no doubt there is a huge range in landscape design service offerings out there. Everything from hand drawn sketches to highly detailed computer generated plans and 3D images and fly-through movies. With 3D imagery at the forefront of current graphic technology, the businesses who offer 3D landscape designs will be perceived as leaders in their field. It doesn’t take much to realise that your service will be seen to be of greater value to your clients and will enable you to command higher prices.
Some of our landscape customers have reported that charging higher design fees actually acts as a filtering process for clients. Finding that if a client isn’t prepared to pay over $3,000 for a design then they’re probably not likely to be in the financial position to afford the construction of their dream garden. This can save a lot of wasted time and effort.
By charging higher design fees you are telling the market that you value your own capability and are not offering a discounted product or service. When clients are spending a lot of money, they want to have confidence in their investment. 3D helps give them that level of confidence because they know exactly what they are getting in advance.
Best of all by outsourcing rather than completing the 3D in house, this value is something you can build into your service without having to grow into a larger company with higher overheads.
How to offer 3D to your clients successfully
So you can see the power of 3D and think it would be a great way to help your pitch and increase your design fees, but what is the best way to offer it to clients so they take it up? There are really only 2 schools of thought here. Offering 3D as an optional extra to your existing concept design packages or including it as part of your design proposal. We’ll explore both methods now.
1. Offering 3D as an optional extra
Choice relinquishes control
For many clients, this will be the first time they’ve ever even been through this type of design process. Deciding what they want is difficult enough. By adding more choices you are setting your clients up for indecision. If you allow your client, the person who has the least experience, to decide what the best approach to take is, you’re also relinquishing control of the project and risking your own reputation.
Leading landscape designers, like experienced contractors, instead confidently guide their clients through a trusted process that they believe in. Of course clients need to be intimately involved and offered choices along the way but it’s important to take the leading role when it comes to how your service is delivered. You are the expert here. It’s important that they have confidence and trust you. At the end of the day the responsibility to deliver rests squarely on the designers shoulders.
When faced with price options, people will always lean to the cheapest option
If you present someone with a “menu” of items and the costs associated with each, more than likely they will go for the cheapest option, or at best the next level up.
It’s a little bit like choosing a bottle of wine from the menu in a restaurant. If the waiter simply asks, “What do you want?” only the true connoisseur will know which wine is best suited to the overall combination of dishes being served; the inexperienced wine drinker looks at the prices and will make a safe bet somewhere just a step or two up from the lowest price.
The reason is simple: they are basing their decision on the only thing they really understand about the transaction, which is money.
When you present your design fees in this way, they can’t see the value in the $3,500 option when there is a $500 or $1200 option that more or less appears to achieve the same thing. But does it? Like wine, there is more involved in producing a great outcome than the physical tasks involved . Consider what you are offering – is it a budget design service or full value?
2. Provide just 1 solution
A tailored package with included value
Leading landscape designers remove the choice to include 3D imagery and instead make it a standard part of project delivery. This is simply an element of our industry’s current “best practice” because it offers clear communication and saves precious time.
When providing just 1 solution, it is delivered as a customised package perfectly suited to this particular project. Taking into account the scope and complexity of the project and the designers level of experience. They help their clients appreciate that the cost of good design is minimal in the context of the value it will bring to the project as a whole. Their fees are also reflective of intangible qualities such as taste, detail, knowledge, personality, experience and tested outcomes. With 3D included in your fee proposal, your clients have the confidence in knowing exactly what they are getting. No surprises……peace of mind!
By taking this approach, it doesn’t take long to accept that a $3,500 fee in exchange for innovative ideas and a clear course of action at the start of a project is completely reasonable. Especially in the context of a $100,000 investment and the mistakes you might otherwise encounter along the way.
Our Pitch Box Managing Director has been using 3D imagery in his own business, Fluid Design as a non-negotiable included item with concept designs for over 15 years. He believes the results speak for themselves, he simply wouldn’t deliver a design without it.
Offering 3D imagery as standard on projects over a particular value (eg. $50k), is a great way of satisfying that need. It also ensures a good outcome on the projects that can promote and project your business to increasingly better clients.
Summary
Almost all high end residential designers and contractors now use 3D as an integral part of their landscape design presentation. It’s the way the world is headed and it helps clients understand and engage emotionally with what they’re investing in. It totally changes the conversation from “how much do you think this is going to cost?” to “I love it so much, when can you start?”
Clients (especially those that are investing heavily) always feel more comfortable knowing how the project will unfold. It also means they can have a meaningful conversation because they actually understand what the outcome will be. Rather than pretending or blindly putting their trust in you which can lead to misunderstandings and difficulties later.
As the owner of your business, you will have the best idea of what works for you. Of course the beauty of being at the helm is that you can change course and adjust what you’re doing as well.
About Pitch Box
Pitch Box helps you improve your design presentations without the need to hire staff
Pitch Box delivers 3D renders , SketchUp models and a range of 2D CAD plans for landscape designers and home designers and architects in the residential market. The company prides itself on exceptional customer service, with a dedicated customer support team based in Brisbane, Australia. Delivering high quality products with a guaranteed project completion turnaround time of only 5 – 10 business days. Unlike many 2D and 3D external service providers, Pitch Box’s pricing is transparent and competitive. Our customers know exactly what they are getting, each and every time they place an order. Discover more about how Pitch Box can support your business and place your order by visiting our website today!
