Jan Neiges, CKBD, CLIPP, president of Jan Neiges CKD, LLC, in Highlands Ranch, CO, has spent the last eight years helping her industry colleagues master selling by design and not designing to sell. Neiges teaches them that winning the job is not just about having a great design or the best product, it’s about having a selling process. She has created just such a process that designers can easily adopt and customize and has presented it at the Voices from the Industry conference at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, as well as at National Kitchen & Bath Association chapter meetings and corporations around the country.
Passionate about teaching sales – an area she says is as important as keeping up with trends and products – Neiges understands that most of her colleagues frown upon selling, and design schools don’t teach it. Because of this, she makes herself available to mentor students enrolled in the NKBA certification program, takes them on sales calls and graciously shares the documents she uses in her process.
Neiges also provides one-on-one mentoring with experienced designers who find themselves in a sales rut. She believes if she can make her NKBA colleagues succeed, then their clients will have a positive experience working with NKBA members.
