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KEY TO SUCCESS

Company: Charboneau Signs 

Project: Determining how much to add to your fabrication drawings   

Key to success: If your customer is someone who is not a visual person and is not up to speed on blueprints and section views, a traditional fabrication drawing can be more confusing than helpful. Keep it simple for your client.

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Your sales person is prepared and ready to make his presentation for a monument sign to a group of business partners. As he begins, all eyes are on the beautiful placement illustrations; the day view and night view displays and his four page edge-bound proposal; impressive to say the least. During the last meeting, some concerns were raised regarding servicing the sign with the pipe in place. Your sales person asked you to prepare a fully detailed fabrication drawing with call outs, dimensions, tables and cross sections to address this concern. He asked you to create a drawing that could answer just about any questions that might arise during this closing appointment. 

 

As the meeting progresses, it becomes time to address the fabrication of the sign. As your salesperson opens the line-drawn schematic, he notices that one of the owners is showing some hesitancy in jumping into the huddle to dissect the drawing. Your salesman could tell immediately this partner was not comfortable reading a schematic (and was probably hoping the rest of the group didn’t notice).

 

Question: Perhaps a less-involved Color Construction Illustration might have provided the basics necessary to answer the contractor’s concerns (with a lot less time spent to create a full fabrication drawing that the customer didn’t ask for).

 

It is no coincidence that we (graphic designers, salespeople and fabricators) are in the sign business because we have the unique ability to visualize. It’s a pretty nifty skill that comes in handy for us on a daily basis. Our brains are programmed to convert hand-sketch details into pictures automatically and effortlessly. However, if your customer is someone who is not a visual person and is not up to speed on blueprints and section views, a traditional fabrication drawing can be more confusing than helpful.

 

Have you ever tried to explain a sign design concept to someone who is not able to visualize? It’s not an easy task. I’ve been a visual person my entire life, and I frankly can’t imagine not being visual. That being said, I feel it’s important for us to put ourselves into the “non-visual’s” shoes. How much detail is necessary to get the main point across? Do we end up creating drawings that confuse rather than inform the average customer? Could the right Color Construction Illustration actually help close the sale? You betcha!

 

Fabrication Drawings vs. Color Construction Illustrations

Every shop is different in their requirements for shop drawings. Some shops employ fabricators whose talents and experience allow them to fabricate from drawings with minimal detail and a simple set of router patterns. Other shops provide their crew complete construction drawings that cover every step of the fabrication process.

 

I realize that some situations require complete sets of fabrication drawings for engineering approvals by the city or for architectural design review committees. These drawing requirements are pretty cut and dried and whatever the city wants to see, you provide it. I’m referring to the developer/builder/owner relationships where pre-sale drawings need to illustrate construction and fabrication methods but do not require the same level of detail as the city would require for engineering.

 

Although there is no substitute for a good shop drawing, we designers sometimes fall into the rut of automatically creating detailed (pre-sale) fabrication drawings before asking the sales person a few key questions up front: 

 

1) What issues must this drawing address?

2) Do we need a full fabrication drawing to close the sale?

3) Who will be seeing this drawing and what is their role in the sales process?

 

Asking these questions will help you create a drawing that can help sell the job by speaking to non-visuals in a way that helps them easily understand what is being illustrated.

 

Fabrication A shows an example of what I am referring to. I show a typical fabrication drawing with call outs, sections, details and foundation plans. This is a great drawing for fabrication and ordering materials, but is it appropriate to show the client as part of a sales presentation?

 

This type of drawing is a very valuable tool for material ordering and fabrication. However, does the average customer really need to see this much detail before the sale is made?

A Color Construction Illustration (Fabrication B) can address basic or complex issues in a visually palatable way. A drawing like this can help non-visuals understand the components of the sign, how it’s assembled and what’s it made of quickly and easily. Once the proposal and presentation become a job, this drawing can easily be converted to a full-scale fabrication drawing by adding in the remaining dimensions, call outs, cross sections, etc.

 

Color Construction Illustrations make short order of explaining what the sign is made of, how it’s assembled, its basic dimensions and how the cabinet is separate from the base.

So, next time your sales person needs a pre-sale fabrication drawing to show the customer, remember to ask the sales person these three questions so you can create a drawing that answers the customers questions in order to close the sale (and without telling them how to build a watch). 

 

Special thanks to Greg Turner and David Pearson of Turner Sign Systems in Haltom City, Texas, for allowing me to use this sign project I designed for their client as illustration for this article.