Tip #2 to Help You Hire the Right Design Agency: Share Your Budget

“Share the budget, are you nuts?” Sure, most of my prospects don’t actually say that, but that’s what they’re thinking. There are two main reasons why my prospects are reluctant to share their project budget with me:
1. They don’t know what their budget is.
2. They think if they tell me, that’s what I’ll propose…even if we could do the work for less.

I understand the desire to hold budget numbers close to the vest, but I promise you, sharing your budget up front can make the whole design process go so much better. Why? Because if the designer knows what the project goals are and the budget allocated to meet those goals, they can help you think strategically about the best way to approach the project. Often there are ways to design a piece that reduces printing and mailing costs. Most often, we can meet budget requirements by slightly changing the format of the piece. But we can’t make those recommendations if we don’t know how much you can spend. Without accurate budget information, the agency will likely propose something at the high-budget end, meaning you may not be able to hire the agency you really want because their costs are too high when, in fact, they could probably have proposed something to meet your requirements.

Many times, people don’t know what the budget is because they have no idea what to expect in terms of pricing. Most designers will be happy to have a frank conversation with you about that, sharing general project costs on similar work. This will help set your expectations for what you’ll need to budget for the piece you want.

We like to compare project budgets to cars—do you want a Mercedes, a Honda, or a Hyundai? If you want a Mercedes, do you have the budget for one? Knowing the answer to that will help the designer give you a proposal that works for your project. And if they can’t do the work you need for the price you want to pay, you can establish that before they spend the time developing a proposal for you—and you spend the time reviewing proposals that don’t really address your needs.