While every designer worth her salt is taught to tailor her designs to the specific target audience, as a group we are rarely given instruction on how to communicate with the people who pay us to do so, namely business people. Wherever they get together—art school reunions, AIGA shindigs, Apple stores, where ever—graphic designers can be heard to complain about those stupid clients who just don’t “get” design. I do not want to defend those stupid clients. Rather, I want designers to learn how to communicate with those clients so that they will “get” it. Even more importantly, I believe that it is important — even vital — to our profession that designers begin to engage with their clients at a higher level, the level of trusted business partners. What we as designers must understand is that businesspeople will not, cannot, simply accept our Really Cool, Bitchin’ Designs. In order to buy into our Brilliant Design Vision, clients need to be able to see how this design will solve their business problem and make them money. Thus, while our designs are tailored for the target audience — the end user — our design pitches must be tailored to the people buying them: businesspeople. To that end, here is a short list of business terms that all designers should know and use when speaking to their clients.

Return On Investment
Return on investment, or ROI, is, simply speaking, a measurement of the amount of profit that a businessperson can make on an activity. Clients measure ROI by subtracting the cost of any investment from the net profit that comes as a result of that investment. This is known as the return. ROI is then calculated by dividing the return by the investment.

Metric
ROI is merely one of a variety of different metrics that businesspeople use to make sure that they are making sound business decisions. Other metrics include profit margin, the quantification of computer system usage, the average response time on customer service calls, earned benefits, and many others. Each organization will use those metrics that it believes are vital for its success. One of the more recent metrics that design management researchers have latched onto is the idea of shareholder value analysis, which attempts to understand how any given activity affects an organization’s stock price.

For example, the Design Council UK, an advocacy group for design, studied more than 150 companies who were effective users of design, as measured by the number of design awards that they won. Over a 10-year period, the stock of these design-centric companies outperformed the stock market by 200%. If that won’t convince a bean counter to invest in design, I don’t know what will.

Stakeholders
In addition to the hard numbers, you must also be aware of the various stakeholders in each of your different projects. Stakeholders are the specific people or groups who have a stake in the outcome of a project. Normally stakeholders are from within the company, and could include internal clients, management, employees, and administrators. A project may also have external stakeholders, including suppliers, investors, community groups and government organizations. Customers, of course, are also a key group of stakeholders.

Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is the mix of controllable marketing variables that a company uses to achieve the desired level of sales in the target market. The most common classification of these factors is the four-factor categorization called the “Four Ps” — price, product, promotion, and place, which is also known as distribution. Though marketing is often associated with promotion, in reality, marketers are tasked with adjusting each of these factors to produce a profit for their company. Understanding how each plays a role in that end-goal will make you more valuable to your clients.

Utility
In marketing circles, the concept of utility refers to the usefulness received by consumers from buying, owning, or consuming a product. This can be achieved by making it possible for a consumer to own, use, and consume a product—as in the possession utility; by making a product available at the place consumers want—as in the place utility, or by making products available at the time consumers want them—as in the time utility.

A few years ago, one of my clients opened a new regional service center that is just minutes from both the Orlando airport and the Orange County Convention Center, and they asked me to create a graphic that effectively communicated the value of this new resource to their customers. My solution was to illustrate the actual building and detail the utility provided by having each of the services together “all under one roof.” Cheesy? Maybe. But the communication is effective and the client loved it. Click image to view at full size.

Segmentation
Segmentation is just a fancy word for figuring out who your target market is. To be more precise, it is the process of subdividing a market into distinct subsets of customers that behave in the same way or have similar needs. Each subset may conceivably be chosen as a market target to be reached with a distinct marketing strategy. It is critical to define your market segment, and to do so very specifically. Too often, a design brief will define the target market as “Women, ages 18 to 35” or, worse yet, “Everybody!” This won’t cut it. The value of market segmentation comes in being able to figure out exactly what’s in the head of the specific type of person that you’re trying to communicate with.

I Don’t Like Orange
Sometimes, despite all of your hard work, your client will still object to your design based on his or her own aesthetic preferences. Or, worse yet, the objection will come from someone who has had no part of the process up until now, like the client’s husband or wife, or the neighbor’s nephew. In these cases, your best bet is to rely on your knowledge of business principles to explain exactly why you made the decisions that you made.

Now, suppose that at your next presentation, the first words out of the client’s mouth are, “I don’t like orange. Change it to blue.” What do you do? Before reaching for his neck, explain to the client that, to be candid, you don’t like orange either, but that orange is the color of fierce individuality and, according to all of the latest research on color trends, appeals to the young, hip demographic that he specified in the design brief. Maybe it’s true, maybe not. But you picked orange for a reason, and if you have any confidence in your design skills, there’s a good reason why you picked orange over blue. Your challenge is to articulate that reason in a way that your business-focused client can understand.

If all else fails, and the client insists on changing the color, then change the damn color. Remember, the client pays the bills, and this is really not a hill to die on. Luckily, most of the time, that will not be necessary. If you’ve done your research and can analytically explain why you made the decisions that you did, most clients will gladly accept your design with few modifications. After all, if they could do this stuff themselves, they wouldn’t need to hire you in the first place.

Picture dictionary image by jasonawhite and used under the Creative Commons license.