Let’s be honest. Selling is where most designers fall flat.
Not because they lack talent. Not because their work isn’t good enough. But because most designers were never taught how to talk about what they do in a way that makes sense to anyone outside the industry.
It’s not your fault — the design world celebrates craft, taste, tools, and trends. But none of that matters if the person you’re speaking to has no idea what they’re buying.
And here’s the truth: if you can’t sell it, you won’t sustain it.
Why is it so hard to explain what you do?
You speak fluent design. But your clients don’t.
Most designers live in a world of brand strategy, heuristics, UX patterns, atomic systems, and typographic hierarchy. It’s a foreign language to almost everyone else.
Your clients are thinking:
- “Will this help us sell more?”
- “Will our team understand how to use it?”
- “How will this affect our perception?”
If you’re leading with aesthetics or technical language, you’re missing the bridge between their world and yours.
You confuse process with value.
Another common trap is selling your process instead of the result.
Nobody buys your research, your audit, your mood boards. They buy what those things lead to — clarity, conversions, consistency, traction.
Until you understand the difference, you’ll keep wondering why no one seems excited by your carefully crafted proposals.
Your identity is too tied up in your work.
This one’s subtle but deadly. If someone says “I don’t get it,” it feels personal. Like they’re rejecting you.
So instead of adapting, many designers double down — over-explaining, justifying, getting defensive, or worse, going silent.
Selling becomes terrifying when your self-worth is on the line.
The real job is translation, not persuasion.
You don’t need to become a slick closer. But you do need to get better at translation.
Here’s what that looks like:
1. Speak in outcomes, not outputs.
Instead of saying:
“I’ll design a responsive website with a scalable component library.”
Try:
“You’ll have a website that loads fast, looks consistent, and makes it easy for your team to update content.”
Same work. Different language.
2. Learn to mirror their words.
Listen closely to how your clients talk about their problems. Then use their words when explaining your solution.
It makes them feel heard. And it makes your offer feel like a natural fit.
3. Anchor your value in business terms.
You don’t need to pretend you’re a strategist or a growth hacker. But you do need to connect the dots:
- “This rebrand should help reduce bounce rate.”
- “These UX changes aim to improve sign-up conversions.”
- “Your team will waste less time recreating assets.”
Even loose metrics are better than none.
Your work doesn’t speak for itself. You do.
The “good work speaks for itself” mantra has killed more design businesses than bad design ever has.
Great work gets ignored all the time — not because it’s bad, but because it’s invisible to the people who need it most.
Your job is to frame it, contextualise it, and position it where it makes sense to the buyer. That’s not selling out. That’s just being clear.
If you’re not getting traction, it’s not because you’re bad at what you do.
It’s probably because your offer is muddy. Your message is too inside baseball. Your value isn’t obvious.
This is fixable.
You don’t need to shout louder. You just need to clarify what you’re really offering — and why it matters to the person paying for it.
Final thought
Clarity beats cleverness. Empathy beats ego. Translation beats persuasion.
And if you’ve been struggling to sell what you do — you’re not alone. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Check out The Shift, a free, no-pressure video series that helps you get clearer on what you actually do, who it’s for, and how to start moving from dependent to independent.
