Why work with us?
You’re stuck
Kitchen designs take too long, so youʼre not quoting new customers. And theyʼre expensive.
So sell them or donʼt design. Or sell them and quote more projects. Thatʼs the hard part and where
we can help. We boost showroomʼs design speed and quality for more quoting and selling.
Weʼre Trusted Kitchen Design Partners. Supporting showrooms with an army of designers.
Getting their sales teams fast, unlimited designs.
You’re stuck
Kitchen designs take too long, so youʼre not
quoting new customers. And theyʼre expensive.
So sell them or donʼt design. Or sell them and
quote more projects. Thatʼs the hard part and
where we can help. We boost showroomʼs design
speed and quality for more quoting and selling.
Weʼre Trusted Kitchen Design Partners.
Supporting showrooms with an army of
designers. Getting their sales teams fast,
unlimited designs.
Why kitchen businesses
design with OKD
Our in-house designers made our kitchen designs, but our sales team complained about the slow process. If they couldn’t quote quickly, they couldn’t sell as much. Something had to give if the company was going to grow.
The first thing I did was move my designers to the sales floor. Most were natural salespeople, and I don’t know why I kept them in the design dungeon. They were product experts, and their knowledge impressed customers. So, just like that, I had four more salespeople engaging with potential customers. But I still needed designers.
We brought in OKD to create all of our kitchen designs for the newly assembled sales team. We trained them on how to use OKD’s expedited design submittal process allowing them to upload project info, at any hour, and receive a completed kitchen design back within three days. OKD’s online design intake form and design clarity meant fewer revision requests.
My company’s focus is on sales, and we leave the designing to OKD.
We’ve been working with OKD for a few years. We’d been successful selling cabinet doors online and figured we’d sell cabinets, too. We had a strong reputation, a decent social media following, and a good marketing team. We knew this could be a big moneymaker, but you don’t need a kitchen design to sell cabinet doors.
You do need one to sell cabinets and doors. We didn’t have the budget for in-house designers, especially when we were entering new territory. We knew about remote designers and figured we could find one to work with, at least initially.
OKD was better than we expected. They had a great B2B reputation, and we figured they could handle B2C, as well. Not only did they handle our kitchen designs, but they also had an easy process for gathering homeowner information.
With OKD’s help, we developed intake design forms, design package templates and branding, and FAQs. They get designs to potential customers within three days, handle revisions, and basically just make us look good. Our sales have increased. Our designs motivate more homeowners to purchase from us.
That’s important because homeowners are sometimes skeptical of online companies. OKD’s professional designs help us prove that we’re a serious online business.
In the beginning, we thought that all homeowners visiting our showroom were potential customers. They’d take their time reviewing our products and get excited about using them in their kitchen remodel. But it turned out a lot of them had no idea what the stuff actually cost.
We’d waste a lot of time designing just for people to hear the quote, get sticker shock, and go somewhere else. We knew we had to do simpler initial designs and quote differently. It’s not the homeowners’ fault, really. We just needed a good way to talk about price first and design second.
OKD helped us gather the essential homeowner design information and create a First-Pass Design, which lets us get potential customers a fast price. From there, we can determine if they’re serious about making a purchase or if they’ll ghost us. OKD provides our design and sales teams with an unlimited quantity of fast First-Pass Designs. We’re quoting more kitchen projects and discussing budget with homeowners at a point in the process that makes sense.
We didn’t realize our kitchen designs and quotes were considered old school until we got a chance to see how our competition presented their design packages. Their presentation was way ahead of ours in scale and detail, and we saw exactly why they were having so much success. We wanted a piece of that pie.
Today’s homeowners expect the same high-quality images they see in online stores and on Instagram. We couldn’t offer that. We didn’t have the in-house ability to create inspiring design packages with high-quality renderings, detailed views of specific design features, internal organizer placement, and 360° full room views.
But OKD could do all of that. We found them online and thought that they could convert our lackluster in-house designs to branded design packages that screamed “buy me.” We didn’t have a ton to invest in this project, and OKD was the perfect fit because they weren’t looking to replace our existing in-house designers. They helped us do better.
OKD showed our designers how to provide designs for conversion by outlining important branding elements and specifying room finishes and product defaults like countertops, flooring, lighting, faucets, and backsplashes. We send 2020 KIT file designs to OKD, and in two days we get a design package made to sell. We’ve been able to charge design retainers from potential customers because the quality is so exceptional. We’re thrilled to be spending less on design costs while increasing sales.
Somewhere along the way we began rationing designs. Our design output couldn’t keep up with demand, but instead of finding a way to get designs to everyone who was interested, I let my salespeople decide which potential customers were first in line for quotes. It’s not fair to our salespeople and it’s not fair to our customers.
They can’t know which customers will buy and which won’t, and I was losing sleep at night because I knew we were missing out on sales by catering to the wrong people. I wanted to find an affordable way to get quotes for everyone. We’re good about qualifying homeowners before designing, and that just makes it worse when we can’t keep up. Our designers can’t generate more designs, and I couldn’t find a way to boost output. Design rationing goes against the very reason our showroom exists: to grow sales.
We had to outsource. I searched for a remote design firm who could provide an unlimited number of designs for all our qualified leads. OKD delivered and reinvigorated our sales team. Each salesperson was able to upload project info and receive completed kitchen designs in just three days. Since deciding to use OKD, sales have increased, and rationing is a thing of the past.
We’ve worked with local freelancers, overseas kitchen design companies, and even ex-employees at times when were overloaded with design requests. It didn’t work out. Because our designers were all over the place, our designs were all over the place. There was never a defined process, and they didn’t always meet deadlines. They all had different ways of doing things, too, so our design formats were inconsistent. The process was scattered, and it made my brain feel scattered. I lost my temper a lot. These were short-term, inconsistent relationships with no real commitment, and I realized that if I didn’t want to have a heart attack by the time I was fifty, something needed to change.
I wanted a long-term relationship with an outsource kitchen design company that would take the time to learn how we operate, understand our customers, and get to know our business philosophy. I wanted a company with experienced, innovative kitchen designers that would adapt to our methods and be a team player when we needed them.
OKD seemed to have it all, but I was skeptical. I thought they were too good to be true. But I brought them on as a Trusted Design Partner, and they proved me wrong. They did a thorough assessment of our design and sales process, developed strong relationships with our team, and ran design trials.
Within a few months, they handled our overflow designs so well I made OKD a permanent member of our team, and they handle approximately 50% of our kitchen designs. Bringing outside designers into my organization as Trusted Design Partners turned my showroom into a design and quoting machine.
My designers reached their output limit; my salespeople were aggravated by lost sales; potential customers felt we didn’t understand what they wanted from their kitchen design. The culprit was excessive design modifications. We were letting people modify designs six times or more, and even more still for the larger kitchen designs. The modifications often took so long to complete that they really should have been redesigns, but we just kind of accepted the way it was. We wanted to keep the customers happy, but a lot of times they weren’t, anyway.
I couldn’t figure out how this became the norm. As manager, it had to be my fault. So, I decided I was going to fix it. Designers claimed that the salespeople were disorganized and didn’t provide clear and complete design info. Salespeople said designers asked for more information than they had time to collect. OKD let me know that the main issue was our design questionnaire. We’ve had a simple design questionnaire for years. It’s a paper document asking the project basics. Most of the time, it was half-way penciled in along with some general comments about potential customer preferences.
Our designers couldn’t read the salespeople’s minds or grasp what the potential customer wanted, so they learned to design with the expectation of customer comments and re-design.
When OKD reviewed our process (or lack thereof), they discovered our paper design questionnaire and understood why we modified designs so much. More importantly, they offered a fix. We now use their Online Intake Form. Most of the requested information has drop-down fields, making it easier to complete, even for new salespeople. There are mandatory fields to make the designers happy; vital information that has to be provided before hitting the submit button. It’s a highly personalized form built around our products, design particulars, and designs formats.
It completely transformed how we quoted and drastically reduced design modifications. No more guessing or begging for information, and we can finally make faster sales.
Convert Your
Kitchen Designs
Into Sales Drivers
Actionable monthly tips that move
Kitchen Designs to Kitchen Sales.
