What? There’s a Fee for Your Staging Consultation!

I happened upon a conversation on one of the social media sites a few days ago that clearly sparked a lot of noticeable angst amongst home stagers.  I personally struggled with this very issue in the early stages of my business. To avoid running around town, wasting time and energy, only to find out that your prospects are “shocked” that you charge for a consultation…WHAT?!!!, it’s imperative that you address the issue about fee based services right from the start.

DON’T tiptoe around it!

DON’T assume they should know that you don’t work for free!

DON’T just assume that the party on the other line is just collecting information to price shop your services.

You see, even after implementing systems and following those systems, I found myself in small claims court because I had a deadbeat client claim that he was not aware there was a fee for my staging consultation.  Even though I know that I say almost the same exact thing every single time, without fail, which includes what the fees are, going to court made me question if I had slipped up somehow…doesn’t matter since it’s water under the bridge, but I’m hoping my experience will help save you some of the wasted emotions we’ve all experienced.

So, how do you address your fees about staging consultations or do you?

It seems there’s a big ‘hoo ha’ about not quoting fees over the phone. If someone was just calling to collect information about fees only to lowball you, you don’t have to get sucked into their game.  I’ve had my fair share of prospects tell me that so and so stager only charges $X and my response was, either “so why didn’t you hire them?” Or “then I recommend you hire them because I don’t price match.” I, of course, gave them enough reason to want to hire me and the conversation I had with them clearly made me the stager of choice, but it’s all about positioning and trust me, being defensive is not a good position.

Around here, all the local stagers used to get mass emails requesting information about staging services.  It was so obvious that it was being sent to every stager on a directory.  You just have to see it for what it is, ignore it and move on.  It’s going to happen, but it doesn’t happen that often. Focus on the real clients and forget about the loser ones. If you don’t want to work with those types of folks, DON’T. That’s your choice as a business owner and realistically, they were not your ideal clients anyway and no amount of convincing was going to change that.

Let’s talk about discussing fees over the phone.  It is very important that you let your prospects know what your process is and if that begins with a staging consultation and you charge for that staging consultation, then that needs to be clearly stated along with what the fee is. There are people who provide F*REE look-sees which I don’t recommend and that’s why there is so much confusion around this.  If you do it based on how much time it takes, i.e. hourly, then quote it by the hourly rate.  I believe that staging consultations can and should be quoted on a flat fee basis over the phone.  I like to and recommend charging based on square footage. It’s easy and it’s equitable.  The larger the home, the more time it will obviously take.

Also, unless you enjoy visiting every homeowner that calls you, I recommend that you have guidelines to prequalify clients and provide a range for staging services based on information you collect from them. This will help you figure out if they are being realistic about what the investment is in staging services.  If someone had a budget of $500 and your fee is $2500, there is an obvious gap and a $2000 gap is a tough one to close.  By gathering some information and asking what their budget is during the prequalification phase, you get a good indication if this is a viable prospect or if you’ll be wasting your time.  If you’ve been staging for any length of time, you should be able to provide a general range based on the size of the home. Obviously, every home is different and you won’t know what that home’s needs are until you see it and you can let them know that, but it’s also easy enough to say…“In our experience, for a property your size, you’re looking at around $X-$X.” Always provide a range. “That’s just an guestimate based on what you’ve told me over the phone.  We’ll be able to provide you with a formal proposal after we’ve previewed your property”.

I will be addressing a lot of these concerns, objections and strategies in my upcoming Free teleclass “How to Makeover Your Home Staging Business to Gain Instant Credibility, Boost Your Confidence and Worth, and Achieve Consistent, Reliable Results…EVERY TIME!” If you haven’t already registered, I invite you to go to http://budurl.com/makeoverbiz to and join us Wednesday, July 21^st.

I would love to hear your feedback on this…please leave your comments below.

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