How to Stop Customer Cancellations: The Embroidery Client Approval Process

Why Digitized Renderings Kill Sales

Hi everyone, I'm Hope Yoder, and you're listening to the Embroidery Profit Podcast. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about a question that Marian from my Facebook Embroidery Lounge group posted. She said she had a client that canceled her entire order after seeing a digitized rendering.

Why and how do you prevent it? That's what we're gonna talk about today. So let's get right into it. I want to talk about the exact system that I use to protect myself, to build client confidence, and most importantly, to create repeat business.

All right. So if you didn't know what I was referring to when I said a digitized rendering, you will in a moment. So let's get started. When you send a design, your client comes to you, all right, they send you a logo, a picture of a logo, and you send it to the digitizer.

The Truth About Embroidery Files and Digitizing

To digitize it like duh, right? You send it to a digitizer to digitize it. So the digitizer does his magic, and a few days later, you're gonna get several files back from him. You're gonna get the DST file.

Most likely, you're gonna get the EMB file or whatever embroidery file they use to digitize. You're gonna get a PDF file, which is your color sequence chart, and you're gonna get a PNG file that is the digitize rendering.

Inside of every software program, there's a very poor rendering for your graphics card inside of there. I'm not really technical, as you can tell with that, but it's just an image that looks like it's 2D. It's usually looks terrible.

And it's just to show you what the design is. It's never meant for you to use that as gospel. It's never meant for you to send it to a client to show them that. That image to me is like a thumbnail.

Okay. I'm gonna look at it and say, yep, that's the right client's design. No more than that. And then I'm going to stitch it out on scrap fabric. And when I get it looking good, where I'm happy with it, using their colors, then and only then does my client see it.

I'm not going to show them that thumbnail image. That's for my eyes only. And it goes in their digital chart so that at a quick glance, without opening the file in a digitizing software program, I can view it and recognize the logo.

All right. So that's how your client is going to see the design. The one that you've actually stitched out with real thread, not the rendering. And the reason that client canceled is that rendering is flat.

It's 2D. The colors are off. There's no texture, no dimension, no fabric. It doesn't even look like embroidery. It's kind of like if you watch one of those fixer-upper shows on TV, I love watching those.

But sometimes you see the ugly house and you just can't get in your head what it's gonna look like finished. Well, guess what? Your client can't see past that ugly flat rendering to see what their embroidery is gonna look like.

So don't show it to them. Pretty simple. She needs to see a real stitch out. Now, again, the rule is that rendering is for your eyes only. It's a working file. It's not gonna go to the client.

And here's a fun fact you may not know about sending a design off to a digitizer. If you come from the laser industry, like a lot of my friends that listen to this podcast, you may be used to something called a vector file, which a vector file might be an SVG file, you can scale it, it isn't pixelated.

Guess what? You don't need that for embroidery. You don't need a vector file. In fact, if your digitizer asks you for a vector file and they'll only take that, that probably means they're not a great digitizer and they're gonna do auto-digitizing, which is junk.

Developing a Profitable Payment Policy

Let's move on to payment policy. Do you have one? Would you like some guidance on that? I'm gonna go through good, better, best. And so you're gonna need to decide what works for you for your payment policy.

If you don't have one, you need to pick something, anything, and stick to it consistently. But don't worry if what you pick today doesn't work for you a year from now, you can change it. So here's the good from the good, better, best.

Good would be payment on delivering. It's a low risk for your client, but you're taking all of the risk. Now, I don't recommend asking for payment upon delivering because, like my friend in the Facebook group, she had her order canceled.

She didn't have any money collected. There was no skin in the game from her client. And what if you did embroider on the blank garments and then they never picked it up? What are you gonna do with someone else's logo on a shirt?

That's what I mean by high risk. So that's good-ish. Better would be maybe you ask for a down payment or a deposit. Maybe you ask for 50 to 70 percent up front before you deliver the garment.

Now that's up to you to decide. At least if you choose that option and you get stuck with their garments that they never pick up or finish paying for, you've at least covered your overhead, probably not your time, but the cost of the blanks.

The Apple Store Method: Thinking Like a Real Business

Now the best scenario, and the one that I use and I've used for 30 years, is 100% payment in full before you even blink. I like to joke and tell my students at the Embroidery Profit Academy, I don't even blink until I get money.

And so I'm gonna make sure that I get full payment up front before I send the design off to a digitizer, before production begins. Now, if you're wondering, like that doesn't feel good to you, let me put it in a real-world scenario.

I happen to be an Apple fan, I use Mac computers have for 20 years. Love my Apple Watch, all my little devices. And when I go into the Apple store to buy a new device, you know, they've got all kinds of things in the back room, you know, where no one sees.

And you go in there and you take a number or you talk to the sales rep and you tell them what you want. All right. What they're gonna do is they're gonna take all of your money. Did you hear me? All of your money up front.

And then you stand there and you wait until someone walks from behind the closed magical doors and they bring you the product that you've paid for. They don't hand you that computer until it's paid in full. They don't bring it up front until it's paid in full.

If you're a legit business or that's what your goal is, think like a business. Nothing happens until everything's paid in full. Now that's just my policy. You need to decide what works for you.

Now, in the promotional product industry, which I also am a promotional supplier, I sometimes use vendors, but most of the time I use my UV printer and my engraving machines, and I do the work in-house. This is industry standard.

Promotional products don't get made until payment is collected in full. So let me ask you something. Five years from now, where do you want to be in your business? Are you okay with chasing invoices, running down clients, trying to get payment, or would you rather run a real business and do things the easy way?

Set yourself up for success today, the day that you start your business, or right now as you're listening to this podcast. It's not too late to set your policies. Don't let your own discomfort water your business down.

Stick to your guns. Select something that makes you the most money. At the end of the day, if it doesn't move you towards your goal, then you probably need to change that policy.

The Real Way to Show Designs: Stitch-Outs and Edits

Now, after you receive payment, then you're going to get the design digitized. It's going to come back to you. And like you've heard me say on previous episodes, I test that design back on scrap fabric.

I evaluate it. Does it look like I thought it would look? I look at the front, I look at the back, and if I'm not happy with it, my client doesn't see it. I'm going to send it back to the digitizers for free edit.

Most professional digitizers offer revisions at no extra charge. What I want you to know is don't judge it yourself by that rendering that you get. You have to stitch it out yourself.

A couple times I've had some of my students who said, I keep sending this design back a bunch of times and it doesn't look good. And so finally I asked one of them, I said, could I see it please?

And she sent me the rendering of the graph of the design. Not a photograph. And I said, I'd like I met could I see the stitch out? Can you take a photo with your cell phone and send me what it looks like? I didn't do that.

Well, that is no way to run your business. And maybe you didn't know because no one told you you can't judge a design by that rendering.

Capturing the Perfect Proof: Photography Tips

Now here's a few tips for taking that photo of the stitch out and sending them to your client so you look a little more professional. You don't need a fancy camera. Most of our cell phones take awesome photos, but you do want to be in good lighting.

So maybe you're in a space that has natural lighting with a window. That's always going to be your best option. If you're like me, I'm indoors with fluorescent lighting and it's terrible with shadows.

So sometimes I'll take it outside to take a photo. Or sometimes I'll actually turn the light off and use my flash. Whatever you do, you want it to look good and you want the color thread you use to look natural and realistic.

So if you're applying a filter, be careful with that because they're not going to see the real sample unless they walk into your space. So you want to make sure that the photograph looks like the real deal.

And while I'm saying that, if you use mighty hoops like I do, you might want to leave the design in the hoop when you take the photo so that it looks nice and taut with no wrinkles.

If you want more tips on that, just do a simple Google search on photography with a cell phone and you'll get some great tips for that.

Now, my next step is once I have the stitch out and I'm ready to send that photo to my client, I'm gonna send them a form so they can sign off on it. And I use approval forms that are fillable PDF files, and we've got those on our website.

So the photo should look exactly like the stitch out, and maybe you send them a form like I do. So they say, yep, this looks good and no changes. It's all about protecting you and your business.

Way if something unfortunate happens, you can say, well, you saw the photo, you did approve it and signed off on it. So we did exactly what we showed you. Now hopefully it never comes to that, but it's always nice to cover yourself.

If you have a shop, you could print forms and have them sign it in person and then staple the stitch out to that form. Forms are everything you want to cover yourself before you move into production.

So I can't stress that enough. Make that your policy right now. And you can grab my forms below if you don't have yours.

Building a Repeatable Business System

Now, all of what I've been talking about is with intent and for a reason. And that reason is repeatability. If you're a business, what you're after is longevity and you want reorders.

You want that client to come back and to reorder from you again and again. So if your business isn't repeatable, you have a hobby. Say it with conviction. This should be your philosophy.

So if your business isn't repeatable, you have a hobby. So let's just fix that. You need some framework or a system that's gonna make it repeatable. So let's think about this.

You do a job, maybe it was like me. All right. I'm gonna tell you my, I didn't do this as good as I could have, but now I've learned from it and I do. All right, so I have this client, he owns a woodworking shop, and he had a great order.

His first order with me was $4,100. Ha holler, $4,100. I did a great job with that. I worked so long to get his logo perfect. I actually went through three or four digitizers. I got it, I did it, they paid for it, I delivered it.

A year later, the same client comes back and says, We want to order the same thing we did with the same colors. I'm gonna send you a spreadsheet with the sizes and the quantity. And I'm like, Yes, it's gonna pay my rent for a couple months, right? So excited.

The Danger of Poor Documentation

So I get all of that from him. I create an invoice. He's paid for the invoice. I go to order the blanks. I look in his chart. And I didn't write anything down, you guys. I had a stack of stitch out samples.

And I didn't even mark which one was the final one. And some of them looked very similar. Thank goodness I had written the thread brand and the color on the invoice, but I didn't do anything else.

I didn't write placement. I didn't write anything down. And so I actually had to spend a whole lot of time to make sure that that looked just as good as their last order. And fortunately they sent me photos and the initial email and I had to go back and forth.

That's not a real business. I did not do a good job. So I made sure I filled out their client form. I had a recipe, if you will, a two-sided recipe form that I used so I could hand it to my employee next time they order and say, repeat this.

They wouldn't even have to ask me a question because everything would be written down. So every job that you take, ask yourself a year from now. When I can't remember anything, am I writing down all the information so I can repeat it so it looks exactly the same?

Documentation is everything. Document every single thing. Make a client folder. Make sure you have the brand of thread, the stabilizers, the needle type, all of that safe so that you won't be a hobbyist.

You'll be a real business. And that's what real businesses do. Now, all of this that I've talked about, the approval system, the client form, the payment policies, the framework, all of that I teach in the Embroidery Profit Academy.

And every Academy student comes home with a complete framework system. So we recently changed our academy, and I give them all of my charts, all of my forms. They get so much information that they don't have to start from scratch. So I'll link that below if you'd like to find out more.

So let's wrap up this section. Here's a recap. Never show your client a digitized rendering. That's for your eyes only. Collect payment before production or whatever policy you set.

Stitch on scrap fabric first, request all of your digitizing edits, and then and only then take a photograph of the real stitch out in natural light and then get assigned approval form. Document everything. Make it repeatable.

Marian, thank you so much for making that comment so I could share with you and our listeners how my process is. You're going to come up with your own process. But if this episode has helped you, send it to a friend.

It might just be the difference between them being an expert or a hobbyist. I'm Hope Yoder. This is the Embroidery Profit Podcast. I'll see you next time.