Recently, my boss got this text from a prospective customer of ours...
"apologies but i won't be proceeding with your team, mainly because I need a designer to handle the design. In its current state is just too far from what is possible for the home. thank you for the time"
... it's a bit hard to understand because I guess this client failed his writing comprehension, but what he essentially means or what I got from it, is that he wants a designer who is able to maximize the space's potential, and the design proposal that had be prepared for him by the designer (me), which includes a 2D Space Planning Proposal and 3D views of his space , did not meet those requirements, so he will not be going ahead with us.
He has pretty much taken a dig at me by sending this message to my boss and is essentially telling him that the designer he has attached to this project, a.k.a me, is unable to design and plan the space efficiently according to his needs.
I will admit, I might have deserve a bit of critique from him because I did not like this guy from the start ever since I met him during the initial site survey I did together with my boss, and that kinda affected our interaction, or lack of it, in the follow up group-chat.
Let's call this customer Jean.
Jean is a referral customer who had been introduced to us by one of our past customer, I had worked on that customer's project and that customer and his wife were very pleasant to work with, so I was also honestly expecting Jean to be a pleasant individual.
Jean wasn't an unpleasant individual per se, but I had an unpleasant experience with him which if I were to think back, is not entirely his fault.
Our first meeting involved Jean, my boss and myself at his new place, I have not had any interaction with Jean up to that point, his main point of contact had been my boss, so when we eventually met and my boss introduced us to each other, in his eyes, I was probably just viewed as the "underling" and that was when it got a bit unpleasant for me.
Jean only spoke to my boss for pretty much the entire meet up, every idea he had, instead of directing it to me, the designer who had been attached to this project, he directed it to my boss. Initially, I would stand beside my boss and try to note down what he wanted to do, and his plans for the space, but after a while I realize he wasn't talking to both of us about his ideas, he was only talking to my boss because he did not make eye contact with me for almost the entirety of the meeting and pretty much just overlooked my presence, which I found to be a bit rude, so I returned the favor and exited the conversation whilst they continued talking amongst themselves.
It was not very professional of me and my expression after that just became really sullen, I would find myself grimacing when I am not in direct line of sight from Jean because I just felt like it was a waste of time for me to even be there when the customer had no interest talking to me, my boss could see from my expression that I was in a bad mood, so he did try and pull me back into the conversation every once in a while, so I did try and bounce some ideas off of Jean and hope he would realize that I am the one he should be sharing his ideas with, not my boss, because I will be the brains behind his design proposal, but I could just feel the immediate disinterest from Jean when he spoke to me, which caused me to develop even more of a disdain towards him.
My boss isn't the designer, he came into this meeting as a contractor/project manager and started talking about all the technical stuff that Jean can expect out of the renovation, which I believe wasn't what Jean was interested to talk about, at least not during the first official meeting, he wanted to discuss about the possibilities of the space, but what he got in return was a bunch of technical jargon thrown at him and at the end of the meeting, and was even told by my boss to source for the contacts of a bunch of suppliers that the condo developer had used, like the marble supplier and aircon contractor because this were information that the homeowners could obtain more easily from the Condo Management.
Honestly, he did not need to do that at this stage, this early stages is for the clients to be excited about what they can do with the space, to bounce around ideas and I think the site visit was meant to be a way for Jean to check with us if what he wanted to do was possible, unfortunately, because he was directing his attention to the wrong person, he didn't get to experience any of that, and since I am only the underling in all this, who am I to interject?
Towards the end of the meeting, Jean was essentially crouched down in the living room of his new apartment, busy sourcing for the contacts of the suppliers and sub-cons on his phone, and I could sense from his body language that he wasn't really in a good mood. I knew then that the meeting had definitely not gone well and if he was going to be visiting a few other Interior Design firms as well, then we would definitely be crossed off the list just based on how bad this meeting had gone.
We said our goodbyes, he thanked us for dropping by, I shook his hands and I just felt really uncomfortable shaking it because I was pretty much sulking the entire meeting, and I could see from his expression that he also looked a bit awkward having to shake mine and thank me for taking the time to drop by because he probably felt like my presence was not required. and he was definitely not thankful.
That was the end of that meeting, and I just had a really bad impression of him. I didn't exactly work on his proposal immediately, although to be fair, I also had a bunch of other proposals that I had to finish up before I could start working on his, so I kinda left his project on the burner for about a week. I was also starting to feel really burnt out by then because my boss had been throwing a bunch of new enquiries at me and I had found out not too long ago that he was letting go of a few of my colleagues, so I was also in a very very bad mood.
My boss on the other hand went to work pretty quickly the moment Jean shared with him the contacts that he had requested, he got the price of the marble from the supplier, then had a back and forth with the aircon contractor and even prepared an aircon plan for how the re-routed aircon would run, and he send all of this information to Jean via email and text message.
Jean did eventually message in the group chat about a week later asking my boss what the next steps were because there weren't any design updates from us after that meeting, my boss told him we were still working on the proposal and then tagged me and asked me in the group chat...
"Tim, do you need to schedule a Zoom meeting with Jean to iron out the design requirements?"
... I didn't feel it was necessary and was honestly a bit peeved that my boss would suggest that, so I completely ignored the messages from the chat and just did the proposal at my own pace.
I wasn't 100% sure what my boss had discussed with Jean during the site survey, so I just designed the space based on the mood board Jean had prepared previously and sent over. I will say I did put in quite a bit of effort with the proposal, it wasn't groundbreaking design, I didn't reconfigure the space much because I can really only do so much with a 2 Bedroom Condo, so I send what I had done in the group chat and Jean acknowledged the proposal by replying with...
"Ok, will revert if I have any comments."
... normally I would send a smiley face and thumbs up emoji to acknowledge the customers' reply, but the lack any gratitude to my proposal just really irked me, it felt so entitled, and mix that with the the unpleasant impression that I already had of him, it just made me not want to express any pleasantries, so I just left him on read.
Anyways, my boss reached out to him via the group chat a few days ago to ask him for his feedback on the proposal and he shared that he didn't really have any comments, but followed up with a message related to the marble supplier, asking if the price my boss has shared was the final price, my boss confirmed the price and that was the last message Jean would send in that group chat, the next message that he would send would be a direct message to my boss, which was the above message.
A rejection message with a subtle dig at me.
The fact that he had zero comments about my proposal proves that he already had planned to drop us long before my design had been send out, it was either impress him with the very first proposal from the get go or we are out, and my proposal was clearly not going to impress him because he had been sharing his ideas to the wrong person the entire time during our first site visit.
I will say, I do appreciate his directness and for not wasting our time any further.
What I do not appreciate however, is the subtle dig at me, which is why I left the group chat that Jean was a part of immediately after my boss forwarded Jean reply to the internal chat, because that's really my only professional way of saying "fuck you" to the client without getting in trouble.
Do I feel like I am lacking as an Interior Designer as per what Jean had feedbacked to my boss?
No, I honestly don't think I am a bad interior designer, I am not the best and I am nowhere close to the level of creativity of a lot of the Interior Designers that I follow on Instagram , but I do like to think I am slightly above average from most Sales Designer in the market.
Do I think what Jean has said about me being the wrong Interior Designer for his project is accurate?
Yes, on a personal level.
No, on a professional level.
Jean thinks I don't have what it takes because Jean didn't discuss his ideas with me, he discussed it with my boss during the site meeting. You want a designer who can handle the design, but you didn't bother to actually talk to the designer on site.
So the reason why Jean dropped us was not because of my inability to "handle the design", the reason why Jean dropped us was because of our inability to communicate with each other, there is a huge difference, this is not about my incompetence as an Interior Designer, this is about our shared incompetence at communicating with one another.
I will admit, I wasn't the most professional, but...
...it's not just me. It's us.
I honestly feel that this project could have gone very differently if my boss had decided to just meet Jean on his own during the initial site visit, and then introduced me much later during a design meeting in the office. That way, Jean would have had a better idea of who he should be speaking to about what instead of getting bombarded by 2 people during the initial meeting.
If we had been properly introduced and had a proper design meeting in the office, we would have not gotten off on the wrong foot, but alas, that did not happen.
I wasn't expecting Jean to proceed with us anyways so this rejection really came as no surprise, I was just a bit taken aback by the way Jean had to make sure to let that my boss know the reason why we lost the project was mainly because of the designer.
... what a shady bitch.
Also my boss wasted so much effort liaising with the condo developer's marble supplier and air-con contractor for nothing. Literally did all that work for the next ID to takeover.
