 In this video, you're going to learn how to handle service design clients that demand guarantees. I'm here with Chris, though. And if you have no clue what we're doing, make sure to check out the first video in this playlist that should explain it all. We're helping you to sell service design with more confidence. And the way we're doing this is by talking about the challenges, the sales challenges you guys and girls gave us. And this is a really classic one. And we're going to repeat the process that we did in the previous videos. We're just going to role play the shit out of this. Chris, you're going to be the creative, the service designer. Once again, I'm going to be the client, the construction business client. I'm ready to jump in. Yes, I'm ready. Now, I've got your proposal laying here on the table. We sort of agreed on the whole process. And we're sort of discussing the final details. Now, I should this remark at you. Chris, this is awesome. We've been talking about this for a month. I think it's really the moment to get going. Just one question. When do you think we'll start seeing results? And when will we see like a positive ROI? Or maybe even I'm still trying to explain to the rest of the team what we'll have at the end. But even for me, it's really hard to grasp. Can you help me out a little bit? Well, the process is evolving, Mark. And we will kind of figure it out as we go along with you. And I'm sure you're going to be very happy with the results. Yeah, I trust you. You're the man, Chris. You know, I believe in you. But I sort of need to also sell it to the other people. And what will I say when the chief financial officer comes to me and says, you know, you've invested like 50k in this, when will we start seeing results? I need to have an answer. Can you help me out a bit? Well, the result is it's going to be a lot better than it used to be. Yeah, you're going to have really happy customers. Those are the results that you want, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's going to feel really good and premium. And we're going to build great customer satisfaction. Yeah, that's what we want. Here's the thing. He just sent the CFO, just sent me an Excel sheet last week. Then he wanted me to fill in. And I was just, I couldn't make the numbers work, you know, what kind of numbers would work then? Yeah, like, how many customers will we get out of this? When will we see results? Those kind of, you know, those kind of CFOs. Yeah, there's a lot of things out of her control, right? Like how how can I guarantee those things? I don't know if I can. So attempt number two. This was a good attempt, Chris. I know you did your best, but I know you can do better. So let's let's thank you. Let's thank you from the start. And let's see where we end up here. So again, Chris, like I told you, man, I'm super excited to start this and really want to get on with this project. There's just only one thing. And that is the CFO just emailed me last week asking about when we'll see a positive return on investment on this project. And I was like with numbers and stuff like that. And also my team members were asking, like, you know, Mark, can you tell us what will I have at the end? What will be the outcome of the project? And that's also a little bit vague for me still, I believe you. I know something good will come out, but you know, can you help me give some answers? Yes. First, I do want to acknowledge that it is a big investment on your part. So let's make sure that we don't spend money foolishly. We've agreed to do discovery, which is the research part, and it's going to inform a lot of the decisions we're making. But what are the metrics for success that your CFO is concerned about? When you want to measure ROI, what's going to make her happy? You know, everybody's talking about better customer satisfaction, customer experience. That's the words they're using. It's pretty vague from their side as well. Yeah. So let's make it less vague. Is there a benchmark that we can set or a baseline in terms of what the customer satisfaction is today? Do you have a measure of that already? That's a challenging thing. We actually don't have a measure. So I know what you're going to say. You're probably going to say, well, how can we improve them? Yeah. Well, maybe there's other ways that we can measure. So it's important that we have an objective, qualitative and quantitative baseline so we can see percentage of improvement. But just pretend for a minute, if we could measure what was important to the company today, what percentage of improvement would you consider to be successful? I don't know. 10% in this specific situation? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 10% is the challenge, but it is something I think we should set as a benchmark and work hard towards achieving that. Hmm. So that's helpful. Okay. And anything else? Yeah. The other question about like, they're just nagging me. The team is nagging me about like, Mark, what will the end results be of this project? And I keep telling them, we have to discover, but can you help me to grasp this a little bit? What will the outcome be? Can you? Yes. I can answer that. But before we move on, I just want to make sure that you and I, and all parties interested that are going to be impacted by the decisions we're making today, have a clear understanding of what the goal and intention is. I would not feel good to start this project with you, unclear what those objectives are. And especially during the discovery phase, we'll have to define that together. Is that okay for you? Yeah. Yeah. I totally get that. Yeah. Okay. So now the question of what is it that you're going to get? Yeah. Right? Okay. What is it that you want to get from this? You know, we want innovation. We just want ideas and solutions that will take our services to the next level that we want more, happier customers. Yeah. That's what we want. And good ideas. Good ideas to make our customers happy. Okay. How will you measure an idea that's good versus an idea that's not good? Well, I guess an idea that customers get excited about, that we get excited about. And that's new. That hasn't been done before. I see. Okay. So you're giving me a lot of abstract things to work with, Mark. So perhaps we can evaluate ideas that are good from not good on X, Y dimension. Maybe ideas that have a big impact on revenue, on customer satisfaction, are weighted higher that are less costly to implement. So for example, if you could buy every customer or upgrade all their fixtures for free, they'd be very happy with the home. Right? But we can't afford to do that because that's not repeatable. And it is remarkable, but it's not repeatable. So perhaps during the design of the ideas, we can be free form and what kind of ideas we generate, but then we have to then measure them against impact and expense. Does that sound like it would be helpful to you? Yeah. Yeah, that would definitely be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a lot of design thinking or strategic thinking and the result of that would be a summary document that we're going to give to you that highlight different ideas and that we're going to score and prioritize the ones that are most likely the things that we want to implement immediately. And we'll form a plan on how to achieve that. And then from that point, you can hire where we need. Yeah. You're going to need a plan. Yeah. It's your blueprint. Yeah. You understand that. Yeah. Yeah. Roadmap plan. That's what we get. We have roadmaps for other stuff. So yeah, then we'll get that. Yes. Let's unpack what just happened. Okay. Perfect. This is so, Chris, this is so common in the service design field because we deal, we don't deliver. We have a lot of tangible stuff in our work, but that's not the end result. That's just a means to an end, right? We clients don't buy a website. They don't buy an app. They don't buy a visual identity. They buy change. They buy innovation. And you always run into this challenge where a client is like, yeah, it's too abstract. So how did you, what's your approach? And what was the difference between the first one and the second one? The first one was really difficult for me because I'm being asked to produce something that I yet don't fully understand. And I'm squirming around. I'm being very insecure. And I'm also somewhat defensive about what's going on. And I'm not really tuning into the emotional or what needs are being expressed to me from you. Now, when we hear this issue of EFO and the ROI on the second take, I needed to get definition from you rather than dodge it and make up weird answers. I asked you what metrics are important. And you said customer satisfaction. I thought other things, you were going to bring up other things, but you only gave me one thing to work with. And so then each time you give me a new piece of information, I need to keep asking more questions to get clarity. The clarity is in part for me, but it's more important that you feel that you're getting clear because thinking is difficult. Making decisions is difficult. My job is to help you think through the problem and to express the intent of what it is that you want. So what is the thing that you see most creatives get stuck at in this, in these kind of situations? I think they get stuck with trying to make up an explanation. They get stuck with trying to appear to be the expert or to be professional, rather than just focusing all their attention on the other person and understanding what their needs and wants are. And they're communicated to us in loose and abstract language. So whenever you say something loose, you'll notice I'm trying to make it more concrete. So when you say customer satisfaction, you could have said, well, our Yelp reviews or our customer satisfaction surveys after construction is 3.5 and we want to get it to 4. I'm trying to pin you down. We didn't go into depth on that kind of things, but if a client would say something like that, like we want to take it from a 3.5 to a 4, and they would say, can you guarantee me that your investment in this project will do that? What would you say? I can say I can guarantee you I will make the recommendations, but then it's up to you and your team to execute. Right. I can give you the plant and you know construction. I can give you a great blueprint, but when you build the house, if you cut corners, if you use sloppy contractors, you're not going to hold the architect accountable. Exactly. Makes sense. All right. Again, the question to the viewers of the Serbs Design Show, have you ever been in a similar situation? Now don't lie to us. I know you've been in there. Leave a comment down below letting us know that we're not alone here. Next up is the grand finale in the series with Chris. He's going to share his most important sales tip and we wanted you to see it as well. So click this final video in the playlist in the series and Chris and I will see you over there.