Here's another post inspired by "Marketing Architectural and Engineering Services," second edition, by Weld Coxe. On page 169, Coxe says,
"There is no better sales tool than good work."
Thirty years ago, when Coxe first wrote this sentence, it was one of the truisms of marketing to private sector clients.
If you did good work for a client, he or she was very likely to call you with another assignment, for which you would not have to compete. There would be no marketing or business development costs, so project profit would be maximized.
If your good work was sufficiently visible, you might get calls from other clients offering you a new project. In fact, you might hear from people you hadn't yet even identified as prospects, offering you a new project.
There was no reference as good as a successful project that was both visible and admired.
Then you have the Brooks Act, the federal law passed in 1972 which requires that the US Government select engineering and architecture firms for design assignments based upon their competency, qualifications and experience, rather than by price.
For many years, this was a (supposedly) cut-and-dried process that led to the most fair and equitable selection of professional design firms. But the process took no account of the inherent value of previous experience working for that client, or a team's previous experience working together.
Then came the evaluation concept of "best value," which was created as a way to give the subjective criteria of past relationships and experience with the client and with other team members an objective value that could be considered in determining the most competent, best qualified, most experienced design firm from among a number of submittals.
All of a sudden, federal selection committees could recognize the added value of an architecture or engineering firm that had worked for the agency before. who knew the agency's processes and working preferences, how they liked their plan sheets to look, what modes of communication they preferred, what kinds of documentation they wanted with their invoices, etc.
The same selection committees could also recognized the added value of a team that had worked together on other (possibly similar) projects, which meant that they already knew how to collaborate and cooperate with each other, had communication processes already in place, and knew what to expect from each other.
So good work -- which ultimately also results in a good reputation with a client and a solid reference from that client -- could now be counted by public sector clients in the selection process for architectural and engineering services. Never underestimate the value or importance of such criteria.
A word of caution: DO NOT confuse "best value" the evaluation process with "best value" the selection process. The former is a way of recognizing the objective value of subjective criteria in evaluating the submitting team's experience and relationship with the agency.
The latter is simply a way of reintroducing PRICE into the initial selection of a short list. The theory is that the selection committee will determine the short list based on BOTH qualifications and price. But we all know that once price information is introduced, very little attention is paid to any of the other information in the submittal.
"Texas Moosicians"
(Austin downtown art-cow collection)