Student Success - John Snowberg
NYIAD students are out there in droves decorating clients' homes, serving as consultants in department stores, and re-designing everything from metropolitan penthouses to lakeshore cottages. If you've started your own business, if you've been hired by a decorating firm, or if you've achieved success in some other way in the field of interior design, we want to hear from you! Click here to let us know about the waves you're making! If you missed earlier installments of this series, here's your chance to read more about the accomplishments of NYIAD students. Just visit our NYIAD Student Success page.
We're always pleased and proud when a NYIAD student or graduate writes in to tell us of achieving success in the design field. But when that success seems to be catching like wildfire and spreading across the country, then we get really excited!
John Snowberg is one of those rare people with an unbridled enthusiasm for life that makes everyone around him simply feel good. And in his position at Home Depot, his enthusiasm for the NYIAD Course is drawing other sales associates to experience their own success in interior design.
Snowberg was working in one of the Home Depot's design departments when he began the NYIAD Course and right away he began to see changes in his work.
"I distinctly remember applying the training I was receiving at NYIAD to my work, and my sales performance for Home Depot immediately went up and up," he says. "So impressed was I with the design training as it applied to a retail sales presentation, that I started to call it "Selling from an Interior Design Perspective."
John quickly saw that he had a real hit on his hands. "The customers loved it. Home Depot loved it. I had several employee-of-the-month awards."
Perhaps the single most important factor in achieving success, however, is remembering that your work is all about the client, and that's one thing John has always kept in mind: if the client is happy, you will be successful.
"What I was most impressed with was how much better 'customer service' I was bringing the customers," he says. "The customers really appreciated what I was doing because I was beginning to look at their project from a function, mood, and harmony perspective."
When John graduated from the NYIAD Course, he was offered his store's interior designer position.
"I got the position partly because of the great training I had received at NYIAD. At NYIAD I was given 'application knowledge' not just book knowledge and theory."
The practical information John received through the Course prepared him to work on Home Depot's "In-Home Interior Design Appointments," a new service offered by the store.
"After almost every appointment the customers were saying, 'Thank you — we didn't know Home Depot did this!" John says. "Again, the customers were loving the 'sales from an interior design perspective' and, of course, Home Depot was loving it because a good design would mean an average increase of 80% to the original budget."
With 1,500 Home Interior Design Appointments behind him, John says that more Home Depot sales associates are enrolling in the NYIAD Course, with the same great results. And NYIAD is proud to be associated with Home Depot; we look forward to working with more Home Depot employees in the future!
Come learn at our interior decorating school and become a success just like John!
