If you want to drive a better car then you need a fast clear persuasive answer to this question …
‘Why you?’
Behind the scenes, your clients are asking: ‘Why should I hire you over all other architects including doing the design myself?’
Even if you have an answer, you better give them a solid justification because they’ll then question: ‘Why true?’
You see once the 7th designer who gets interviewed says, ‘I’m the best’ … your claims can lose impact if you cannot back it up with proof.
Find out how to answer quickly and effectively
Here are three ways marketers typically respond to ‘why you’: better cheaper faster.
- Better result. Nail down how and why the design is going to be the best.
- Cheaper. Now I don’t recommend lowering your fees, but maybe prove that you bring projects in on time and on budget. Track your numbers. Show that you save them money in the long run.
- Faster. It’s a challenge to create quality design quickly without great risk, but maybe you can do the research and analysis faster than your competition.
Generally speaking, claiming a better result is easier for architects.
Why true? How do we prove our better results claims?
Why should I hire you, Jeff or Mark?
Jeff Krieger is an architecture professor. We assume a professor is an expert, so Jeff lets people know about this in his articles and blogs and in person and the assumption is, ‘he must be good if he teaches others.’
Now Jeff is taking his expert status another step by putting together his Client Academy. His design firm is the only one in the region that offers educational resources to clients considering a project.
Jeff's claim is ‘we are the best for the project’ — the proof is, they ask me to teach others. Admittedly this wouldn’t hold water in a court of law, but we are not in court; we are building a case inside the mind of our prospect.
Another great example of being able to deliver a better result is Mark Benner. Mark promotes his virtual reality tech in home design. His claim is basically ‘we are the best because we get all key parties singing from the same song sheet.’
With VR, unlike typical projects where the clients sign off design they cannot see or understand, nothing gets lost in translation — the architect, client, and builder — are all able to speak the same visual language. As Mark says, ‘seeing is believing.’
Why should I hire you above all other options?
Even if clients do not ask ‘why should I hire you over all other architects?’, they will be asking it inside their heads. You better have a great answer and you better back it up with great proof.
Do that well and you’ll win more than your fair share of projects because I can promise you very few architects have a compelling answer to the most important question in selling.