vinylvillain
New Member
Long story short, I currently work as an employee for a reputable sign franchise and have been with them for over 4.5 years. I went from a "hybrid" inside sales/counter boy and assistant graphic designer, to outside sales rep just this past March when we went under new ownership; this was something I longed for because of the coveted commission structure and title.
Here I am, 8 months into my "new roll," but I'm still struggling with work flow management. I meet with the customer, I write up the estimate no problem, but taking information from my notes & my head and turning into a format to give to the designer is harder than I thought it would have been. It also doesn't help that we have a rookie designer I can't trust to design sub-contract channel letters, because if they're wrong, everyone loses. I more often than not, find myself doing the layouts still. This isn't helping me or the shop earn more money because I am not finding time to do marketing like I want too once a week and selling more.
The franchise gives us TONS of "tools" on the support site, and I even went to training at corporate but there was NOTHING about work flow management. Does anyone have a document or any tips on how I can manage this process better? What I've been doing is writing a word document out with the details, but for how long it takes me to write out the word document, IS HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE FOR ME TO DESIGN THE STUFF! We also have work order forms that work great, but the work order comes AFTER designing/approvals etc, so that doesn't help me any either.
Any help/tips/documents is sincerely appreciated, thank you.
Here I am, 8 months into my "new roll," but I'm still struggling with work flow management. I meet with the customer, I write up the estimate no problem, but taking information from my notes & my head and turning into a format to give to the designer is harder than I thought it would have been. It also doesn't help that we have a rookie designer I can't trust to design sub-contract channel letters, because if they're wrong, everyone loses. I more often than not, find myself doing the layouts still. This isn't helping me or the shop earn more money because I am not finding time to do marketing like I want too once a week and selling more.
The franchise gives us TONS of "tools" on the support site, and I even went to training at corporate but there was NOTHING about work flow management. Does anyone have a document or any tips on how I can manage this process better? What I've been doing is writing a word document out with the details, but for how long it takes me to write out the word document, IS HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE FOR ME TO DESIGN THE STUFF! We also have work order forms that work great, but the work order comes AFTER designing/approvals etc, so that doesn't help me any either.
Any help/tips/documents is sincerely appreciated, thank you.