Throughout history, consultants have striven to influence client response. The goal has been to influence clients sufficiently to make an order or pay for a product and service. Influencing positive client response is all about convincing them to buy whatever your freelance business sells. You can do that effectively with a product brief template. The template can bear a positive influence over your clients thus enabling you to create a highly successful business.
Here’s how it all happens.
1. Taking charge of the conversations with the product brief template
Set the issues that you want the project to resolve. Do this using the product brief template. This way, you would be taking charge of the conversations right from the start. The advantages your consultancy enjoys from such a base would leave you – and your clients – visibly impressed. Take charge of even the most difficult conversations with your clients. Set the pace. Show that you’re in control and clients would love you for it.
2. Appeal to clients with your product brief sample
It’s important for consultants to learn how to appeal to clients. Some clients would do what you want no matter what you do. Others would only respond based on how appealing they consider you and the propositions or solutions you make or offer respectively. Find what the clients consider most important to their businesses. Use that information to convince them to respond positively to what you’re offering.
Implement different strategies based on your clients’ ages. After all, how they respond depends on several factors that include age.
3. Engage with them continuously with the product brief
No freelancer operates in a vacuum. All freelancers operate or work in specific industries. More importantly, they all need clients to continue operating in these different niches. Engage with clients to influence them to respond how you want. Set a base for this through the product brief template. Leverage all engagements you have with your clients. Use it positively to convince them to respond the way you want.
Connecting with clients emotionally guarantees positive results for everyone.
4. Demonstrate authenticity with the product brief template
Freelancers have to be authentic with their clients. The fact that your customers can see when you’re genuine or not should convince you to reconsider your options and attitudes here. Be authentic in all your interactions with them. Authenticity is a highly valuable commodity in determining your connections with the freelance clients. Treat them well, and they will respond accordingly. Treat them poorly, and they will never respond positively to you.
5. Treat your clients as people rather than transactions with the product brief template
It’s true that your consultancy needs all the clients it can get. However, that would never happen if you don’t apply a more human touch with all of them. More importantly, treat each of them as an individual. Solve their problems as people. Know that they also serve people thus need more people-centric solutions. Create a product brief template that captures all this information for the benefit of your clients.
6. Offer relevant solutions through your expertise with the product brief template
Are you solving the right problem? Ask yourself that question every time you handle a freelance client’s project. Clients come to you because they believe you’re the best at what you do. They trust the experience, training, and knowledge you possess to solve whatever problem they present to you. While going through clients’ instructions, you may come across issues they have never addressed for a long time. Offer your expertise to solve such issues.
7. Focusing on customers with the product brief sample
The brief helps you to become more focused on your freelance clients. It takes the focus away from non-important stuff. Clients prefer hiring and working with consultants who give them more attention. It’s easier to give clients what they want when you remain attentive to everything, they tell you. This way, you can pick up everything they expect to get from your product design services. Let the brief help you to develop a customer-centric culture.
8. Create cost-effective designs with the product brief sample
How cost-effective is your freelance product design service? Do clients have to pay an arm and a leg? Some clients set aside huge sums of money as the budget for product designs. Others are not endowed with limitless financial muscle.
For this reason, it’s important to come up with cost-effective solutions. A good product design service should help both freelancer and client to keep their costs down. Use the product design brief to guarantee this to your clients.
9. Importance of experience in the product brief template
The importance of experience in product design needs broadcasting from the rooftops. Clients can only trust and feel safe delegating their product designs to experienced consultants. For the most part, consultants will find prospective clients who have prepared lists of questions to ask before hiring these professionals. Experience tends to be one of the most important qualities these clients look for in freelance product designers.
The product design brief should reassure clients that your experience is beyond reproach.
10. Result-oriented approach
What is your most important strategy? Clients want to assign such sensitive tasks to freelance product designers who are obsessed with results. Your results must be better than your fellow freelancers or consultants. Try to give your clients the sort of results they will struggle getting from your competition. Stand out in terms of the results that you deliver. Use your skills, experience, track record and exposure to not only guarantee but also deliver stunning results.
11. Emphasis on solutions
The best product designers focus on solutions. They create products that are crucial and more effective at solving specific problems. Clients will only consider looking at the product design brief for the second or umpteenth time if they see a roadmap to solving the problem they already identified. Your talks with the client should help clarify the problem that he or she wants the product to solve. Otherwise, your freelance expertise wouldn’t be of much help.
Ask “why” questions to get better answers to help you design an outstanding product.
12. Demonstrate fearlessness in your product brief example
The best product designers around the world are a fearless lot. The level of confidence they have in their skills, experience, training, exposure, and solutions is second to none. They are knowledgeable too. They are up to date with the new trends and phenomenon within their respective industries. They are willing to be disruptors too. Freelance product designers have to embrace disruption.
13. Information about the client company in the product brief template
A product design brief may actually not be so helpful if it doesn't contain information about the client company. Much of what defines the company such as its values, corporate colors, history, goals, and mission are invaluable for the development of a compelling product design brief example. Besides the general information that cuts across almost every business or organization, as a consultant, ensure you ask the following questions if you don't have the details to include in a product design brief example:
- What's the nature and size of the business?
- In which industry does the client operate?
- What are the general demographics of the company's current customer base?
- What other products does the company have? Are they related to the current product or not?
14. What's the product to be designed in the product brief template?
In addition to details about the company, a product design brief example should contain information about the product to be designed, underlining its functions, what it's made of, key benefits, the problems it’s seeking to solve, competitors if any and so on and so forth. If adequate details about the product are provided to the client in a product design brief example, the whole design process would be effortless, as long as the consultant has the right skills.
15. Who is the product meant for in the product brief template?
A key question to answer in a product design brief example is who the product is targeting. There are so many reasons why knowing the audience is important, including using the information to decide on the sizes, weight, pricing, packaging, shape, ingredients and more. For example, if a product is targeting children, it’s expected to have some specific characteristics that resonate well with children. This should include taste, color and more.
16. Relevant benchmarks or examples of inspiring designs in the product brief template
Many clients know what they want, but often lack words to give the freelancer an exact picture of their ideas. As a freelancer, if you've been engaging others on work matters, you definitely remember one time or another when you gave as much information as you thought was necessary but was disappointed with what was delivered to you. This happens when the words used, however descriptive they appear to be, fail to paint the same picture on the client’s mind and on the freelancer’s. In such instances, sharing designs of things that inspire you can go a long way in showing your client what you're thinking to design. Where possible, include such samples in your product design brief example.
17. The product price range in the product brief template
You already know the people you're targeting with the product, but do you know how much they'd be willing to pay for a product such as the one you are going to design? Why is this important? Product design is guided by a number of principles, all of which when put together dictate the final product price. As a consultant you need to be provided with the recommended price range and capture it in your product design brief.
All components used in the product design with make reference to the price. Below are some questions worth answering in a product design brief example:
- The distribution channels to be used for the product.
- Expectations of the company in terms of profits from the product selling price.
- Rights to the product design.
- The price the client is willing to pay for the design work.
- The deadline within which the work is to be completed.
As you may have noted here, the product brief template sets the pace for influencing clients’ response to your promptings. As you do this, you convince clients to trust you more. Consequently, they are then able to continue seeking you to solve any issue or problem you may encounter in future. Use the template to determine the direction you wish to take your relationship with these freelance clients.
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