Six Smart Questions to Ask in 2023 to Elevate Your Business

Perhaps your New Year’s resolution was to work smarter and more effectively this year. How is that going? Do not fear. We have got you covered. Here are six smart questions to ask yourself now as you look to elevate your business in 2023, and discover how other home professionals have answered them, too.

Are Your Clients the Right Fit?

Last year was interior designer Holly Pokera’s most successful one, but she is preparing for a possible slowdown in 2023 by focusing on her client niche. Doubling down on her efforts to attract more clients in the luxury space, she removed her lower end offerings from her website for Holley Pokera Interior Design. Instead she is emphasizing high end services with an aim toward taking on fewer projects, but higher quality ones.

“What I've been really focusing on is elevating my client, my type of client, and what they're willing to spend,” she says. “You learn over time, it's much more productive and a much better reflection of your business when you have a higher end professional client who respects hiring a professional,” she says. 

Jay Sifford has a criteria to gauge whether his style and approach to landscape design fits the project a client is seeking help with. He puts high value on how collaborative the creative endeavor will be. “I'm looking for people who are really engaged in the process, very excited and open to innovative ideas,” says the owner of Jay Sifford Garden Design. “I want people who are fascinated with what we do and who want immersive gardens.” 

Collaboration can be tricky, but it can be made smoother using the Houzz Pro Client Dashboard that lets pros communicate with clients from anywhere through online messaging, photo and file sharing, and design tools. The entire history is saved for easy reference, and best yet, you control how much or little you share with others.

Is Your Marketing Effective?

For Chicago-based Landscape Architect Bob Hurthouse, the client relationship is an ongoing one. “We're trying to build that long-term client relationship,” says the owner of Hursthouse Landscape Architects and Contractors. “I offer an annual walkthrough of the garden because it's organic. It's going to change. The sunny yard becomes a shady yard after the trees mature.” he explains. During the COVID pandemic, he sent weekly emails to clients about his own family garden, including the birds visiting and grilling recipes. “I got tons of responses from clients, thanking us for the breath of fresh air.”

With a long list of clients and other contacts she has collected through the years, Pokera is also seeking ways to incorporate them into her marketing plan year-round instead of just annually with a holiday thank you. “I'm starting a newsletter (finally) to reach out to all of those successful past projects and my builder list,’’ she says. I am very good at selling the completion of a job to a client - the arc of our relationship is very important to me - because successful completion means great photography and hopefully referrals and general goodwill,” she says.

 “I figured if I’m going to dominate this market, I need to be able to market as much as possible,” adds Entire Home CEO Blake Eastwood. He saw Houzz Pro marketing tools as a one-stop shop just like his own company which isn’t your typical remodeling company. It handles not just the renovations but materials and financing as well.

But how do they know which of these marketing efforts are working? With a virtual success manager as part of Houzz Pro management software, professionals gain the Insights and Analytics to gauge their online impact score. They can determine how their Houzz Pro profile views and lead response times compare to industry benchmarks. By seeing which photos viewers are clicking on their profile they know too which ones resonate and which ones to de-emphasize.

Are You at Your Desk Too Much? 

No one wants to spend their time working on estimates all day, but accurate, professional looking proposals are the juggernaut for design and contractor businesses to be successful

Drew Romero of Drew’s Drywall made high quality estimates his differentiator. “I had to find something to set myself apart, to make myself look more legitimate,” he says.“I needed that ease of use and efficiency because I knew I was getting bigger.” He decided to try Houzz Pro Estimate Builder, using the template, markup and labor tools within the program. 

“Within like 15 minutes I was able to do this estimate,” he says. “I was able to land that job  because of this legitimate looking estimate that had everything laid out for them on what they were paying for,” he says. “No one wants to give you money and not know where it’s going. I was able to land four jobs in a short period of time.”

Pros create estimates 10 times faster using Houzz Pro and provide their clients the convenience of approving them, as well as purchases and change orders with e-signatures from their mobile devices. The time savings gained by harnessing technology gives them more time to bid on more jobs, find more balance in life and run their operations more efficiently. 

Before investing in such high tech tools to run her business more efficiently, holistic designer Rachel Larraine says “I was literally doing stuff on spreadsheets, creating invoices, and trying to track everything. It was just a huge time suck.” 

She streamlines her business with Houzz Pro to assure she is not needlessly wasting time, helping her to be fully present with her family when she is away from work. She also delegates client communications in one place using the Client Dashboard instead of having clients email or text her. “I love being able to message directly on the platform so that the client isn't texting me or messaging me on my personal email,” she says.

Are you Charging Enough?

Even wealthy clients can balk at paying a reasonable fee for contracting work, says luxury remodeler Jason Bliss. The owner of San Francisco Bay Area-based Benchmark Home seeks opportunities to educate them about pricing by making it relatable to their lives: “Tell me how much you’re willing to pay for your Mercedes to be worked on. You’re probably paying $400 to $500 an hour for that, and yet the most expensive asset in your life, you want to underpay for?” To underscore the point: “You’ve got a $3 million home and you want to pay somebody $25 an hour to come in and work on it? No, of course not.”

Bliss also emphasizes to clients that they’re paying for a skill set. “I educate clients now, and especially now that the labor shortage for the trades is so short, that we’re becoming that specialty skill set,” he says. 

Technology also has made pricing information more easily accessible to designers, says interior Designer Noz Nozawa of Noz Design who embraces how pricing transparency empowers consumers. With the ability to easily search online, clients can learn more about the products they’re buying. “I’m a huge believer in [the idea that] more information means more empowered consumers, which means greater spending,” she says. Transparency also fosters trust among clients, which will ultimately benefit a designer’s business, she says. 

How do you Juggle?

To keep projects on track, Susan Heinz who co-founded the Heinz Group with Roger Heinz, spreads them along various stages of completion whenever possible. “We try to have clients in different phases at all times. One client may be in permitting, while another project is in the demo phase, and another project is in trim out,” she says.

They manage the varied schedules for their renovation projects and custom home builds through the Houzz Pro Project Timeline. Clients can see exactly how their project is progressing. "Oh, this is what you're doing this week on my project," or for us to be able to see which trade we have scheduled.”

The Florida firm streamlines their work by empowering their growing team to collaborate from anywhere. Using Houzz Pro to share project files and updates, they keep their internal team in the loop no matter where they are working from. “We're working on the go. If we didn't have this central repository, we wouldn't be able to do that,” she says.

“For Roger, who's the licensed contractor, as he's walking around on job sites, he's got his iPad and he's pulling up files and he's able to show people what they need to see at that very moment,” she says. “He can easily pull up a file such as plumbing specs and we're reviewing the file with a client or vendor right there on the spot,” she says. “Instead of going through his email and searching through 500 emails hoping that it loads,” Heinz says.

How Do You Stay Positive?

One piece of advice that resonates with Washington D.C. designer Asisat Edu is to celebrate even the smallest win. “That’s what keeps me going,” she says. Even if she’s had a horrible day, she will “find one glimpse of positivity and use that to be a driving force in me, to continue to push further,” she says.

Edu brings a similar hopeful feeling to clients with her designs for their homes. “We’re letting them know, ‘Your day might have been rough, but when you come into your home, what you see in your home is going to affirm your greatness. Affirmation is key,” she says. “It should affirm all of the great things about that person.”

Negativity has no place in Edu’s approach, whether in her design philosophies or her career approach. “I think it’s really important to filter the negativity,” she says. “Filter it and go at it.”

Learn more about how to work smarter in 2023 and make it one of your most successful years yet.