Avoid New Client Workflow Chaos in Your 3D Rendering Business
As a 3D visualization studio, time is one of your most valuable assets. The more time your studio can save, the more revenue you can earn.
However, reducing your time on a client’s project and allowing quality to suffer is not the answer. As a result, a 3D visualization studio lead may ask, “How do I save time?”
The answer: workflow.
Defining 3D Project Workflow
Your typical sales funnel leading into a 3D project may resemble these 6 main steps:
- First contact with the lead
- Needs Assessment / Qualification
- Discovery
- Proposal Writing
- Client’s Go/No-Go Decision
- Start Paid Work
Most 3D Visualization Leads would recognize these steps as an “investment of time”, but how can we optimize these processes and save even more time without stirring up workflow chaos?
Let’s take a glimpse at some common and overlooked mistakes that can happen in your 3D project workflow and how to boost your studio’s opportunities for success.
#1 Bad Online First Impression | Website Usability
As a 3D Project Lead, you are tasked with the responsibility to effectively oversee or even implement your own 3D designs and renders. Don’t forget about the design of your website as well.
A potential client’s first-time visit to your 3D studio website or social media page funnel should not include the following experiences:
- Long loading times for web pages
- Images that lack optimization
- Impaired page navigation due to elaborate, complex templates
- Poor legibility and grammar
- Links to social media that do not exist
Solution: Optimize and maintain your website regularly.
You don’t have to be a UX expert to maximize your client’s online experience with your studio. According to a recent small business report, 50% of a business’s potential clients use mobile devices to access company websites. Test your website from your cell phone for usability. Schedule a time each month (or more frequently) to analyze your website pages, images, forms, and the functionality of any client portals.
#2 Asking for a Price
For some studios, it is the inevitable. A potential lead directly asks for a price concerning their project.Potential leads may first inquire about 3D visualization and rendering pricing because your workflow may lack the “needs assessment/ qualification” step. Additionally, your website contact pages or call-to-action (CTA) are simply ineffective or nonexistent.
Solution: Analyze your sales funnel strategy to make sure the initial step includes a CTA that invites the potential lead to request a consultation first, not a quote. Optimize your website and social media pages to help you leverage control of that first contact step.
By doing so, your lead will anticipate explaining their project needs to you first instead of expecting an immediate price quote.
#3 Giving a Price to a Potential Lead
A 3D Project Lead may decide to provide a price quote during the initial contact stage in hopes of turning their lead into a client. Often times, this “price quote” becomes the foundation of workflow chaos. Why? The 3D Project Lead failed to perform an effective needs assessment, qualify the lead, and discover the details of the 3D project for an accurate proposal. As a result, a lead may decide to procure 3D services elsewhere due to price changes and apprehensions.
Solution: As an initial step in making contact with your lead, propose a 3D roadmapping session.
Schedule Strategic, Outcome-Focused Meetings. Scheduling a 3D Roadmap Session with your lead places you in control of your workflow process.
It allows you to review the outcomes your lead is striving to achieve and examine
whether a client/project relationship will even work. In return, you are saving time and educating the potential lead of your expertise and insight.
#4 The Onboarding Process Confusion
As a part of the on-boarding process, first things first: you must ensure that the client is on the same page as your studio. You’re speaking the language of “3D sculpting” and “ambient lighting”; the client inserts words such as “programmatic adjacencies” and “human scale”.
Solution: In short, if you fail to become versed in each other’s language, the project workflow will most likely become a mess. In order to empower your client towards effective communications and promote their enthusiasm in the 3D roadmap session, it is advantageous to evaluate your systematic process for online communication.
Streamline Your Communications
Maximize your new client workflow as a 3D visualization studio by implementing centralized points of contacts and allow clients to access flow visualization.
Examples include client portals, such as FileStage and Client Portal, which can serve as a secure central point of contact for your client’s information. Task management apps and web-linked list-making applications, such as Trello, allow clients to visibly observe what your artists are presently working on and tasks that will be completed in the future.
Slack remains a highly effective communication hub in which your team and clients can communicate and discuss updates without the plethora of email exchanges that occurs with 3D visualization projects.
“Bevel the Edges” on Ineffective Apps
In hindsight, avoid “shiny syndrome”. Always evaluate whether your studio’s onboarding process and overall workflow strategy need to scale back on the use of apps. As a growing studio, learn when it is time to “draw the line” in wasting your profits on subscriptions to ineffective apps.
#5 3D Project Development Disorders | A Weak Work Culture
Assuming the role of 3D Project Lead is a multi-tasked position, and can lead to a lack in developing the overall work culture of a studio. Ultimately, this will lead to a powerless work environment where you lose your authority and your team or freelancers lose their motivation to work with you.3D Studios can achieve their targeted goals and phenomenal results, yet forget to develop themselves further than the present. Don’t assume that you will always the knowledge and skills to maintain a steady flow of highly valued clients forever.
Solution: Empower your own development as a Lead/Artist, encourage discussions within your team as needed, and show appreciation to your freelance team.
Invest in Your Studio through Continued Training
Investing in the continued training of your own expertise as a Project Lead and/or 3D Artist, including your team members, is a sure-fire way of becoming a productive and contributing member to your 3D visualization services.
A few work culture improvement ideas that you can consider include:
- Participation in internal mentorship programs
- Organizing workshops
- Attending 3D conferences and events
- Compensating advanced education (even if you only have a few employees)
Consequently, showing appreciation makes them happy and improves their ability to deliver at their best level.
Allow fresh eyes from seasoned artists to work with your most creative and skilled team members on new client projects. By doing so, you save critical time and build a positive work culture between team members.
Appreciate Your Freelancers
When working with your top-performing freelancers, show respect and gratitude for their services. If you do not provide them with consistent work or fail to communicate effectively/ timely, then plan to experience a decrease in their work productivity or commitment to projects as a part of your workflow chaos.
Remember, it is the work culture which decides how your 3D artists interact with each other and how your studio functions.
#6 Failing to Analyze Your Outcomes
After a 3D project has been completed, some 3D Project Leads forget about their client and will fail to realize how their 3D renders helped or hindered their project. Solution: Document and analyze your studio’s results effectively.
Remember Your Client and Follow-Up
Once a few months have passed, communicate with your client to understand the outcome of your 3D project and what worked best for them. In return, you will have a greater power to control and prevent future workflow chaos while enhancing the reputation of your studio.
In conclusion
Remain scalable and customize. A great workflow model does not have to be perfectly rigid and unyielding. The best ones can accommodate variations in conditions that arise, such as the unexpected absence of artists or software issue.
In customizing your workflow, consider the following factors in order to save time and provide quality for your client:
- Think about the specific skill sets required for the project and the client
- The size and scope of the 3D visualization project will determine how many resources to allocate. (Of course, each studio may differ)
- Be prepared to re-calibrate your new client’s expectations to match their investment
Would you like to learn how to progressively implement our 3D Roadmapping Session strategy into your own studio’s workflow? We invite you to visit our online Knowledge Base or contact us to learn more about our 3D workflow advantages, strategies, partnerships, and how they can positively impact the success of your next project.