The retail shopping experience continues to evolve, be it "brick and mortar", online, or maybe a personal shopper like David Burstein, PE, talks about in this article.  Learn how retail shopping relates to design fees and construction costs.  David is a PSMJ Consultant and Seminar Leader.  This article first appeared on May 18, 2015 in "Pulse" for the Professional Services Management Journal. 


Last week, a client was visiting my office.  When we went for lunch, we passed a jewelry store and he saw a necklace that he wanted to buy for his wife.  Unfortunately, the store was closed, so I offered to buy the necklace the next day and bring it to him at a visit we'd scheduled for the following week.  When I went back to the jewelry store, I found that the necklace cost $4,400.  I almost bought it but then wondered if he knew the cost.  I called him and asked what he expected to pay.  "Around $500 or less," he responded.  When I informed him of the price, he thanked me for letting him know before I bought it, and told me to forget about it. 

This experience got me thinking about how we deal with our clients on issues relating to costs.  Clients often ask us for enhancements to their projects without really understanding the cost implications of those requests - on the construction cost and on the design fee.  And we want to be responsive to their requests, so we just comply.  It's only later, after we have done the redesign, that they realize the cost implications and we get into arguments about who should pay for them.  It's as if I would have bought the necklace (as my client requested), then delivered it to him with a bill for $4,400.  In that case, I probably could have returned the necklace for a refund.  Unfortunately, when redesigns are done, there is no "jewelry store" available to return the design to its previous condition before the cost-increasing enhancements were made.  So the client views us as the "jewelry store" and expects satisfaction. 

The moral of this story is this:  don't buy necklaces (i.e. make design enhancements) for your clients without first explaining the cost implications (on both construction cost and design fee) and getting an agreement that the enhancements are worth the costs.  


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