BuiltEnvironment

Still learning after all these years

I have been working in the A/E/C industry since 1978, and in a marketing role for most of those years. When I first joined the industry, there was no degree program in professional services marketing anywhere in the United States.

To the best of my knowledge, there still isn't!

However, there ARE a few universities with one or two professional services marketing courses in their marketing department.

There are organizations like SMPS, ZweigWhite, PSMJ and others that offer training and/or continuing education courses in various aspects of professional services marketing.

There are individuals like Sally Handley and Christine Hollinden, and LinkedIn Groups like Design and Construction Network that offer webinars on a wide range of marketing-related topics.

Finally, there are business books, lots of business books, thousands of business books. I am currently I'm about 75 pages into "Twitter for Dummies." I still have difficulty wrapping my mind around how messages limited to 140 characters adding up to conversation, but I'm determined to learn how this new technology (OK, it's 5+ years old) works and how I can put it to work for my business.

I have always thought that the only real benefit of Twitter would be to drive traffic to my website or some other landing place. But the book promises that it can be so much more than that. Unfortunately, the book doesn't address business usage until many chapters have gone by.

So I am working my way slowly through the book, trying to understand everything the authors present, to get an idea of Twitter's potential for my business before I join and try to come up with a name. I don't want to be there just because "everyone else is!" But I'd like to learn what Twitter can do for my firm if I make the most of it, and how to do that.

I try to join a webinar almost every month. Sometimes I give webinars. Teaching is a great way to keep learning. Last year I gave a series of webinars for a business group in India. This was a particularly rewarding activity and a great learning tool for me because the ensuing conversations were cross-cultural. Since different cultures have different ways of doing business, this was a great learning experience for me. I hope to do this again in 2013, with an expanded array of topics.

I read and write blogs. And I'm active in a professional listserve. I love it when blog or listserve posts lead to questions, which then become conversations. In fact, I often respond to a listserve question by calling the person who asked the question. I learn so much from people when I try to provide information to them. It's always turns out to be worth the investment in time because the return in new knowledge, or new perspectives on and applications of old knowledge, is always valuable.

I believe that every strong relationship has a component of learning/teaching, and that learning is a big benefit that comes from every relationship. You don't have to know more than I do; you just have to know one thing I don't. That makes you, and the relationship, valuable to me.

In 2013, if business continues to pick up the way it has the first quarter of the year, I'd like to attend the SMPS University Leadership Advancement Program. This looks like a great opportunity for learning, business networking and making long-lasting friends.

I was 62 on my last birthday. Every time I come out of a class with new knowledge, or finish a book knowing something I didn't know before I started, I congratulate myself on having proven that YOU CAN teach an old dog a new trick! x

 

"Bats on the Mooove"

(Austin downtown cow art collection)

Advice for engineering job seekers

The following article first appeared on March 15, 2013, in the blog of Thomas Edison State College (http://www.tesc.edu/blog/7110).

My brother (Todd Siben, Assistant Director, Prior Learning/Portfolio Assessment, Thomas Edison State College) sent me an email with a resume attached.

“XXXX is the son of my colleague. He has not yet found an engineering position but has a job, so he’s not in a rush. Would you look at the resume and comment? Also, because you deal with engineers all over the country, do you have any thoughts about who is hiring, or where engineers are being sought?  He’s open to a move anywhere in the country.”

Because my brother is a very good brother, I took more than just “a look” at the resume. I sent him the following response:

I have looked at XXXX’s resume. While it is not bad, I believe it reflects what schools think is important and not what the business world thinks is important. So here are my thoughts.

1. I already know what my firm can offer an applicant. The applicant has to show me what he can do for my company. He has to tell me things about himself that will be important to ME.
2. Profile – Nothing in this section is relevant to an entry-level civil engineering position. In fact, this is more of a “goals” section, and industry doesn’t care about a person’s goals except as they help that company. If XXXX wants to discuss goals, this section has to address civil engineering and be specific to the recipient company. Otherwise, this section should be deleted.
3. Since XXXX has not yet found an engineering position, his “experience” is all non-engineering experience. This is great if he wants a job in property leasing (Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate consultants, might need engineers). He must have worked on an actual engineering project as a student, perhaps a class project, even if it was hypothetical. Perhaps his professor had students help on a real project as a learning experience. If XXXX participated in activities like “CAN-do” (where a team builds things out of cans), the concrete canoe race (an annual event at many engineering schools), or an “Engineer’s Week program, these are more relevant than what he did as a leasing agent, and should come first. The extraneous job descriptions should be much shorter.
4. Move the “honors & awards” line to the “education” section; it is education-related.
5. Move the “Credentials” section right under “education;” these are engineering-related skills.

I don’t really have a feel for who is hiring engineers, but here is my suggestion for job leads:

1. XXXX should make a list, in order of preference, of the 10 cities where he would most like to live.
2. Go to www.bizjournals.com and see if any of these cities have business journals.
3. Every week, these business journals publish a listing of the “top 25” of something in that city, and every year includes a listing of the top 25 engineering firms.
4. These listings will identify these firms by name, and he can then go to their websites, read about them, check their career pages and see if they are hiring entry-level engineers who do the kind of engineering he wants to do.
5. Use the information in each website – “About Us,” “Services,” “Projects” – to determine if any firm is a place where he would be comfortable. If so, he can send a cover letter and resume specific to that firm and information on what he brings to the table that THEY would value. If the firm prefers to have applicants apply online, there should be a place to upload a cover letter as well as a resume.

What I forgot to include in the job leads list was that XXXX should join (if he hadn’t already) the local chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The chapter will have monthly meetings (at least), at a nominal cost. At these meetings, there will be educational programs, which he can add to his resume, as well as networking opportunities that might turn up lob leads that have not yet been published.

I also forgot to say the following:

Your resume is your academic and professional biography. Since neither your academic experience nor your professional experience is the same as anyone else’s, your story shouldn’t be the same as anyone else’s. Use your resume to DISCUSS your experience rather than just LISTING names, dates and places. In your high school history class, you learned that a recitation of details was boring. It is no less boring for the HR or technical person reviewing your resume.

Write your cover letter as if you were writing your biography. After an introductory paragraph in which you identify yourself as a recent graduate and your interest in the position for which you are applying, talk about what made you embark on an engineering education. Talk about the specific engineering classes you really liked and why. Talk about the project you worked on during a summer internship, even if you hated it and it made you rethink your engineering specialty. Tell the reader things that will make him or her want to speak with you on the phone or, better still, in person.

Unfortunately, many engineering schools don’t think an engineer needs to know how to write well. But engineers write often: they write engineering reports to describe the components and challenges of a project, they write letters to clients and jurisdictional agencies, they write text for permit applications, and they write hand-out materials for public meetings, hearings and other uses.

However, while a resume is in large part about the details of your academic and professional history, and details are where engineers generally excel, telling the story in an engaging and compelling manner is equally as important as the details you are relating.

Putting "Client Liaison" position on the Organization Chart

I recently joined a discussion of this issue through a listserve to which I belong. Someone had posted looking for suggestions as to where on a proposal's organization chart would be the best place to add this person. I wrote two suggestions for placement and clicked "send." I thought that would be the end of it.

But no!

My mind kept returning to the question, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that a client liaison has no place on a proposal's organization chart. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter who the client is or what the project might be.

I believe very strongly that it is one of the proper functions of the project manager to take care of the client during the project. And I believe that the person selected as principal in charge is generally the manager of that particular client relationship.

Therefore, if one takes the view that client liaison is a marketing- or business development-type position, there is no need to put that person on the organization chart because his/her function has no bearing on how the project will actually be executed.

Further, if you DO put that position on the organization chart, regardless of placement, the client might infer that he or she must go through the client liaison to get to the project manager or principal in charge. However, every client I have ever met wants to have DIRECT ACCESS to the project manager, and if/when they have a problem with the project manager, they want DIRECT ACCESS to the Principal in Charge to resolve the problem.

If I were a client looking at the anticipated project staffing and organization in a proposal, the inclusion of a client liaison on the organization chart might make me wonder if my project was going to be used to support a senior administrative or management person who would not be making any real technical or other contribution to my project.

In that case, I would probably set that proposal aside and give it no further consideration. IF I DID READ THE PROPOSAL, and actually found something superior about it, something that caused me to short-list that firm, one of my major goals for the interview would be to obtain a detailed definition of the services the client liaison would provide.

IF THE SHORT-LIST PRESENTATION AND Q&A SESSION WERE SO SUPERIOR that I selected that firm to undertake my project, removal of the client liaison from the organization chart would be part of my negotiation strategy. I would not want to leave a position on the organization chart that might come between me and my project manager or project principal.

If a firm wants to have a client liaison person to help project managers and principals take good care of their clients, or to provide training for new project managers on how to provide good client care, that is admirable. Anything that helps appropriate staff learn to better care for their clients is a good thing for business. Especially when it is invisible to the client.

But I believe that having a client liaison person who might take over these responsibilities, separate a project manager or principal from the need to manage client relationships, and have a direct relationship with clients as such a liaison, is not a good thing for any A/E/C firm.

 

"Cowjunto Music"

(Austin downtown cow-art collection)

Resumes - are two pages "one page too much"?

A friend from my college days recently contacted me to change his email address from work to home - unfortunately, he is about to be unemployed.

Of course, I asked if there was anything I could do to help him. I asked him to send me a resume and any ideas about what he would be looking for, so I could alert him if I heard about any opportunity that might be of interest to him.

He sent me a one-page resume. Below his personal information (name, address, home and cell phone numbers, email address) was a listing of nine jobs he has held from 1977 to the present. Each listing showed the employer's name, the position title, and the start and end dates of the engagement. Then there was one very short (three lines) paragraph about about his skills, including all the software programs with which he is familiar. Finally, there was information on his degree.

I suggested to him that his resume was kind of "bare bones" -- that he should consider adding a one- to two-sentence description of each position he had held, with each position showing a higher level of responsibility than the previous one. That way, when the reader got to the end of the resume, he would have a real idea of my friend's capabilities and accomplishments. I also suggested that this could be done and still keep the resume only two pages long.

He responded with the following: "I agree about the bare-bones resume, but am hearing that two-page resumes are one page too long." Then he asked what I thought about that.

So I have been thinking about this over the past few days. No matter what direction my thoughts take, I keep reaching the conclusion that, within the bounds of common sense, a resume has to be whatever length it takes to tell the story, to convince the screening or selection person(s) to give you an interview.

My friend has 20+ years of experience in four positions that carried the same title, but for different kinds of organizations. I would bet that the actual job responsibilities differed with each position, especially those for a law firm and those for a municipal housing authority. Without some clarifying description of responsibilities and activities, how would the reader know what my friend had actually done?

Here's a great example:

An "administrative assistant" in a law firm might be someone who types briefs, memos and correspondence for a variety of attorneys and others in the firm, but that person might also be an office manager, or more.

Many years ago, I had a friend who worked at a major Austin, TX, law firm. Her official title was "administrative assistant," but she did very little typing, filing or coffee-making. She actually ran the office and supervised the other administrative support staff. She also conducted the first screening interviews for new lawyers and paralegals, negotiated leases for the firm's office space, and was responsible for scheduling the use and maintenance of the company's transportation fleet (automobiles and airplanes!). Big difference, huh?

Obviously, you have to make an informed decision regarding what is important to tell a prospective new employer. You have to be able to distinguish the difference between what the employer might want to hear and what your ego wants to tell. But you have to be confident enough to tell the story, and to tell it in a compelling manner. Sure, you can flesh out all those engagements in your interview, but a bare-bones recitation of your previous employers, position titles and dates may not be enough to secure that interview.

 

"Moolah"

(Austin downtown art-cow collection)

ONLINE JOB APPLICATIONS: A COMPLAINT

In the last 12 months, I have responded to a lot of senior-level job postings. Given the uncertainties of the last few years, and the damage the economy has caused in my personal resources, I would gladly shut down my business for a regular paycheck and health insurance paid for by someone else.

So I end up applying for at least 2 or3 jobs every week. Some firms want an online job application and refer me to a corporate website; some refer me to a corporate website but also provide a contact name, phone number and/or email address; some say to send a cover letter and resume to hr@ or marketing@; and some actually give the name of a person (with email address) to whom the resume and other information should be sent.

I really hate the ones that are strictly online with no contact name. I have two very specific problems with this methodology:

1. I always want to check in and make sure the firm doesn't need any additional information (like my publications list or references), and to restate my strong interest in the position and in having an opportunity to speak with someone about it. Because there is no name, with phone number and/or email address, of anyone at the company, one doesn't know who to contact to restate one's interest or to check on the status of their selection process.
2. Many of the corporate sites that require submittal through their website also use a computer program to evaluate resumes. These programs assume that one's experience begins after graduation. I actually had 22 years of relevant experience before finishing my Bachelor's degree, but these programs curently assume that I have only 12 years of experience rather than 34 years. They tell me I'm not qualified for managerial positions and notify me frequently about positions at entry level or one level above.

I understand that today's market has left so many good people looking for better jobs, or just looking for jobs, that hiring decision makers could spend 2 days out of every week just fielding these "status check-up" phone calls. I understand that it would cost their firms too much in lost productivity.

But I still want the name of a person to call or email to ask, "have you made a decision? when do you anticipate a decision? am I still being considered? would you like additional information?" etc. If I can't check in with a person, how will the firm know that I have a stronger case of "the wants" than other applicants? How else can I communicate all that I bring to the table without writing an 8-page cover letter?

I know that making hiring decisions is not easy. References have to be checked, Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles examined, blogs scanned, degrees and honors confirmed, articles read, etc. But there has to be a way to add some degree of interaction between hiring firm and applicant. Traits the firm wants might go unmentioned in the job notice. An early conversation could establish that the applicant has those traits but failed to mention them because s/he was simply responding to the job notice.

What a shame if the best candidate goes unrecognized just because there was no contact between firm and candidates until the firm had chosen a few candidates to interview.

 

"A Moo-sical Moo-saic"

(Austin downtown art cow collection)

Nine years in business!

On February 1, my firm -- The Siben Consult, LLC -- began its ninth year of operations! I can hardly believe such longevity for my one-person firm, especially considering the economy of the last three years.

Being my own firm has been interesting, rewarding, frustrating, satisfying, frightening, and a host of other "ing"s.

• My clients have ranged from a local 5-person niche firm to international firms with staff in excess of 4,000.
• My assignments have included strategic consultation and the production of a variety of print and digital marketing documents.
• My SOQ and/or proposal subjects have encompassed streets and highways; water and wastewater utilities; park and recreation facilities; railroads, mass transit, airports and related passenger and freight terminals; water quality; hydrologic and hydraulic studies; asbestos abatement; land planning and development; corporate campus planning and development; and environmental support for wetlands and other permit types.
• I have written proposals for traditional design-bid-build projects, design-build projects, construction manager at risk projects, and pure study projects that did not lead to construction, as well as Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) vehicles and GSA Schedules.
• I have written extensively for A/E industry publications (The Zweig Letter, The Zweig Marketing Letter, PSMJ's A/E Rainmaker, IOMA's Principal's Report and, most recently, CE News), as well as SMPS's Marketer magazine and a number of chapter newsletters.
• In 2009, PSMJ|Resources published my book -- "A Horse of a Different Color: Marketing in the Public Sector."
• I have conducted workshops on more than 10 subjects related to A/E marketing in locations spanning the United States -- from Maryland to Southern California, and from Miami to Anchorage.
• I recently conducted a series of webinars for business group in India, and am looking forward to another, longer series this year.
• My technical audiences include the American Water Works Association, Texas Section, the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping Alaska Conference, and multiple AIA chapters.
• My marketing audiences include 12 SMPS chapters (Austin, Arizona, Chicago, Cincinnati, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, San Antonio and Washington, DC) and two regional conferences (Pacific and Heartland).

Since the beginning, the bulk of my work has been handling the overflow when a client's marketing staff is overwhelmed by too many RFQs/RFPs. So when there are no RFQs or RFPs, there is no overflow -- hence, no work for me. That's the short description of 2010, 2011 and 2012.

But it has truly been an amazing ride! And now, after a few years of struggling, business is picking up, I'm getting calls from firms I haven't even contacted in the past, old clients are handing me new work, and large and small firms who have been resisting the costs of outsourcing are now looking at my firm as a very viable alternative to saying "no" to an RFP.

I've always thought I would work until I was 70. I'm now 62, and if the first six weeks of 2013 are an omen of what the next eight years can be, I'm all for it.

Perhaps YOUR FIRM needs outsource help on a periodic basis - a person/firm that can take one assignment and then disappear until you need help again. If so, you can email me at bernie@sibenconsult.com, call me at 559-901-9596 (California area code but located in Austin!), or look me up at www.sibenconsult.com.

I will be glad for the opportunity to speak with you and, hopefully, to work with you.

 

"Flower Power Cow!

(Austin downtown

art cow collection)

"Multi-tasking" revisited

In August 2011, I posted my thoughts on multi-tasking. I wondered if multi-tasking was:

really just shifting back and forth between two or more tasks, making a little progress on one and then shifting to the other, making a little progress on the second and shifting to the next, and so on.

I have a good friend who swears by her ability to multi-task. In fact, she commits to so many activities (she thinks saying "no" is the equivalent of being rude), that she almost never gives her complete attention to any one subject, and often doesn't complete what she promised by the deadline. In addition, she is a complete slave to her technology (every email and text message MUST be read immediately), so she rarely goes more than 15-20 minutes without some kind of interruption. She thinks herself an expert multi-tasker.

Right now, I'm reading and reviewing "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling. On page 26, I found the following statement:

"...when people try to perform similar tasks at the same time, such as writing an email and talking on the phone, they compete to use the same part of the brain... the brain simply slows down."

To me, this means that you may fool yourself into thinking you are being more efficient, but everything you're doing actually takes longer to complete. Consider the progress record (in the figure to the right) for accomplishing three tasks, each of which should take one hour.

With the change in focus from the first activity to the second and then to the third, with the time the accompanying change in mindset takes, plus a few of the inevitable interruptions (phone calls, people coming to your office, etc.), it would take approximately 230 minutes to complete these three tasks, or 27% more time than the three tasks would take if performed consecutively. If you factor the three interruptions into the consecutive tasks calculation, multi-tasking still takes 18% longer than the consecutive tasks.

As McChesney, Covey and Huling say (on page 26), "multi-taskers sacrifice [significant] performance on the primary task" [the Wildly Important Goal] in favor of slower forward progress on multiple issues. They become "suckers for irrelevancy."

I know of an A/E firm that tried to pursue two very large, very important WIGs at the same time -- one WIG was to totally change the firm's organization from a top-down "command and control" type to a matrix-type organization; the other was to change the attitude of 240 people in five offices in two states to recognize that and start acting like they were all one company, when some of those offices had previously been encouraged to compete with each other.

Each WIG required people to make so many changes that unrest spread through the staff like a summertime forest fire in California. The president ultimately told some people that they didn't have to make some of the changes, which totally angered those people who had already managed to work their way through those changes. Ultimately, neither WIG achieved the success it might otherwise have had, although both WIGs could have totally succeeded if they had not been tried at the same time.

For me, the bottom line is that too much multi-tasking can be equally dangerous to an individual as to an organization; and strong focus on one challenge at a time will not only get you to success faster, but might eliminate other challenges.

Conference rates ≠ best rates!

In the last few weeks, I have developed a few new presentations, and prepared and submitted proposals to speak at more than a half-dozen A/E/C industry conferences in 2013, ranging from the AIA and SDA national conferences to a number of SMPS regional conferences. A few of these conferences actually pay their speakers a fee, rather than just giving them a free conference registration, so I had to project my expenses -- airfare, ground transportation, airport parking, hotels, etc. -- for inclusion in the speaker proposal.

As I sent off the last proposal, I was reminded of the many conferences I've attended where the airfare quoted by the "approved conference airline" or the "approved conference travel agent" could be improved upon significantly at Expedia, Travelocity or Orbitz. Or where you could go online to Hotels.com or the hotel's own website and find a cheaper room rate at the conference hotel than the "official conference rate."

This brought me up short. I thought to myself, "aren't these organizations trying to give us the best possible prices in order to encourage our attendance at conferences?"

Apparently not!

The conference sponsor, of course, needs its staff members in attendance to run the registration tables, introduce the session speakers, remind people to fill out speaker evaluation forms, hand out certificates for continuing education units, answer questions, give directions, etc. So here's what I think is happening: I think that, in calculating conference airfares and hotel room rates, the airlines and hotels are taking into consideration the number of free plane tickets and/or rooms they will have to provide to the conference sponsor.

And the sponsor organizations don't want to have to pay for all those plane tickets and hotel rooms. So WE subsidize them through "official conference airfares" and "official conference room rates" that are higher than what we could find on our own.

I have more than once gone to Hotels.com and found a room in the conference hotel for the night(s) I wanted at $20-40 per night less than the conference rate. I have found airfares that were 10-15% lower than those quoted by the official conference airline or the official travel agent, with greater schedule flexibility than the official sources were offering.

Don't get me wrong -- using the official resources for travel arrangements definitely has an upside -- measured in convenience. But the downside is that you pay more for that convenience. Just like you pay more for most of the products you buy in convenience stores than you do at the supermarket. We all recognize that as the cost of convenience.

However, if you like to take the time, look for yourself, make your own arrangements and save some money, the convenient way is not always the best.

 

"Gilded Lily"

(Austin downtown art-cow collection)

Asked, answered and "still thinking"

I am reading "Great by Choice" by Jim Collins ("Good to Great") and Morten T. Hansen ("Collaboration"), and came across a sentence on page 111 that made me stop and think:

"The primary difficulty lies not in answering the question but in having the presence of mind to ask the question."

I think this is often the case. I know that, in my own participation in the CPSM Listserve hosted by SMPS, I often respond to a post by phone rather than by email, thinking that I only want to share my knowledge on that particular issue with the person who was smart enough to ask the question.

Indeed, some of my best professional relationships were started that way -- with me making a phone call instead of sending an email, having a conversation that often lasted 20-30 minutes and included other related subjects of concern to either or both of us.

When the shoe is on the other foot, when I'm the one seeking information, I have also taken to heart something my mother used to tell me all the time. She would say:

"You'll never know until you open your big mouth and ask someone, so find the right person, open your big mouth and ask!"

And she was right. But sometimes you have to ask a few wrong people before you find the right person.

Over the years, I have learned to have great respect for any person who is confident enough to ask a question to obtain information. I have similarly great respect for any person who can admit to not knowing the answer to my question, rather than giving me the run-around with a quick but incorrect answer. Some of these "runners" had egos that just wouldn't allow them to say "I don't know;" others were afraid they might lose their job, authority or credibility if they admitted to a gap in their knowledge.

When I would think back at some of the amazing wrong answers I have received over the years, many from folks who were very earnest about their answers, who absolutely believed that their clearly inaccurate information must be correct, I used to shake my head and wonder, "what were they thinking?"

I have since learned that this is the wrong question. Instead of "what were they thinking?" I should drop the first word and simply ask "were they thinking?"

The answer to that question is frequently "NO!"

So I have tried to cultivate the habit of figuring out who is ASKING the questions, and then sitting by them, developing business or personal relationships with them, and learning what I could by listening to the answers they got and their reactions to those answers. Further conversations with these folks then helped me to learn even more, to catalog the new information in my brain for integration with other knowledge and retrieval when I needed it, and to help further build and strengthen these relationships.

I also learned to have the courage to ask the questions myself, and to distinguish when I was being given real and useful information as opposed to just a stream of noise with no value at all.

 

"Capitol Cow"

(Austin downtown art-cow collection)

You have to have a good story

So far this year, my reading list has been quite out of the ordinary - a bizarre combination of business books and fantasy.

In addition to reviewing two books for the "Industry Speaks" website, I read Weld Coxe's "Marketing Architectural and Engineering Services," reread "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis and somehow latched onto Rick Riordan's five-book "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series.

So far, I have read "The Lightning Thief," "The Sea of Monsters" and "The Titan's Curse." I'm about 120 pages into "The Battle of the Labyrinth" and "The Last Olympian" is sitting on my kitchen counter, (not-so-patiently) waiting its turn.

I know this series usually lands in the "Young Adult" section of the bookstore or library. I'm such an avid fantasy reader, because it takes me away from the technical writing that fills my workdays, that I'll start almost any book of the fantasy genre that looks like it was written for "ages 15 and up", to see if the story grabs and then holds me.

These stories grabbed and held me -- and held me tight! What could be better escapist fare than a story of young teen-agers in today's world, who are the "half-breed" (Riordan's word) children of a mortal and a Greek God (demigods), battling other jealous gods, the Titans and some classical monsters, and saving the world, as every teenager thinks he or she can do standing on one leg with one arm tied behind his or her back?

The point of this admission is not to let all of you in on the secret of what I like to read when nobody else is around. The point is:

You have to have a good story to grab and hold a reader's attention, and to move the reader to some action, even if just to turn the page and keep reading, or to buy the next book in the series.

When you develop a Statement of Qualifications for a prospective client, you want to move that client to ask you for a technical proposal, or to send you his next RFP, or hire you on the spot.

When you develop a technical proposal, you want to move the client to select you for the project assignment, or at least to invite you to make a short-list presentation.

In either case, you have to develop a compelling story to convince the client to take the action you want him or her to take. What will the client consider compelling? Many of the clues are in the RFQ or RFP.

• The RFQ/RFP tells you what to include -- include it -- in the order the client uses.
• The RFQ/RFP explains the evaluation criteria -- make sure you demonstrate that your story proves that you meet those criteria.
• You are presenting your relevant projects -- humanize them -- tell the story of the client's need and your solutions, or the project's challenges and how you overcame them.
• Use pictures with your project stories -- make sure the pictures have people and/or cars in them, to indicate the size and scope of the project.
• Talk about how you resolved community issues, how you made the client the "good guy" and his project something the community wanted.

Remember, a good story touches the heart. Every purchasing decision -- whether the purchase of a new car or the procuring of an A/E team -- has an emotional component. If your story has all the emotional punch of a CSI specification, it will be a very hard road to selection.

 

"Udderly Austin"

(Austin downtown cow art collection)