BuiltEnvironment

Wanting and doing

In a March 23, 2014 LinkedIn post, Jenna Lenhart quoted Joseph Hernandez, as follows:

“If you want something you’ve never had, then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.”

I immediately thought of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity — “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” — which is the opposite of this quote. The Hernandez quote seems to be a definition of sanity: you must do something you’ve never done to have a result you never achieved before.

That’s why great marketers get so frustrated with company leaders who say “we’ve never done that before,” or “well, we’ve always done it this way.”

We know that, just as you can’t develop new strategies if you limit yourself to old ways of thinking, you can’t develop new ways of thinking without including new people in your process, and you definitely can’t achieve something new by limiting yourself to the same people using the same thought processes and methods as always.

For one thing, it’s a matter of scale. The same thought processes and ways of doing things that got your firm from 50 people to 100 WILL NOT get your firm from 100 people to 250 or more.

If you seriously want to grow your firm, you must first know what your firm's brand is, and no matter what you want or tell yourself, that brand is actually determined by others who know your firm. So if you want to be known for integrity, but your clients and the business community think your firm would cut corners to increase profits or meet project deadlines, no amount of shouting about integrity will change what others think of you.

If you’ve never undertaken a client satisfaction survey, now would be a good time. Pick a few of your best clients, a few of your most difficult clients, and a few of your highest-priority targets, and arrange some in-person meetings. Plan your questions in advance, and make sure all of them are open-ended — in other words, questions that invite extended discussion.

Send someone high enough in the firm's hierarchy to underscore the client's importance to your firm. Make it very clear that you will not be offended by a negative answer. Make sure the person conducting the interview has no vested interest in the answers, and will not become defensive or argumentative over a negative answer.

If necessary, consider hiring an outside firm/consultant to undertake these interviews for you.

Find out what each client values (or dislikes) about your firm. Find out what each one values (or dislikes) about the other consultant firms with whom they work. Maybe other firms are doing something that you have the means to do, but never thought of. Maybe they are doing something the client doesn't like, and you will be able to avoid making that mistake.

You may think technical quality is your firm’s most valuable attribute, but your clients may value your creativity and customer service much higher. Instead of focusing on the things YOU think are valuable, learn and then focus on the things THE CLIENT thinks are valuable. What you value is nice, but what the client values is more important.

If you WANT new clients and projects so you can grow your firm and perhaps achieve the next higher size classification, you must begin to DO the things that are typically done by firms of that size.

 

 

 

"Discow"

(Austin downtown art cow collection)

Pursuing clients, not projects

I have long “preached” that A/E firms need a Go/No Go process followed by every employee, top to bottom. This process enables a firm to set egos aside and make rational and informed decisions about what projects to pursue and what “opportunities” to pass up.

This is one of my favorite “soapboxes.”

Since we also have been taught to believe that firms should pursue clients rather than individual projects, we also need a “Go/No Go” process to identify target firms.

In determining if a firm would be a good fit, you're really determining whether they have the potential to become a strategic client. This, of course, requires that you have an idea of what makes a strategic client for your firm (more about this below).

There are two times at which you have to consider whether or not to pursue a long-term relationship with a specific client.

The first time should be before you decide to submit your first proposal to that firm. It begins when you ask yourself, “Do I want to work with that firm?” And that should have happened long before the RFP was issued.

Maybe you’ve seen that firm’s name on projects you admired, or you’ve seen a newspaper article about them. Perhaps they won an award that merited press coverage. Whatever the reason, the firm has piqued your curiosity.

Perhaps you have been in contact with them in the past. Maybe you brought in lunch and presented your firm’s credentials to a group of their project managers. Now they have a project that aligns with your credentials, and you’d like to try again.

The second time is when you finish your first project for a firm you weren't chasing until you responded to their RFP. Your interaction over the project will give you much of the information you need to make this decision. You will also know if you DON'T want to work with that firm again.

Regardless of the point at which you consider this, create a series of questions that identify the attributes of a strategic client. The answers will help you determine if you and the target firm are a good fit. If so, invest the time and money to create a relationship without waiting for an RFP to be released.

Remember that, just as some projects are not an opportunity for your firm, some firms will not be a good fit, a good client, for your firm.

Much information can be found in the firm’s website, although websites generally present only the good things about the firm, so the information may be incomplete or misleading.

Check for complaints with the Better Business Bureau and agencies that license such firms and professionals. They may be able to tell you if any questionable behavior by that firm or its principals was reported to them. Check with local newspapers and business press. And remember that search engines are your friends.

Check with your business network--Outlook, LinkedIn or other platform. Ask trusted contacts for their experience with the target firm. Tell them you only want their own experience. Ask if they have worked on a project for/with the firm; in addition to the target firm's technical capabilities, you want to know what the work experience was like.

Check with the target firm's procurement or purchasing department. Find out if there are specific forms you need to submit, how their process works, who you have to speak with, and who actually makes the decisions. This will give you an idea of the time and cost of becoming a known quantity in advance of an RFP.

The decision to pursue a new client can have significant costs, particularly if you need to travel for meetings. However, you must also consider the opportunity cost: every hour or dollar you spend on an inappropriate target client is an hour or dollar you won't be spending on a client who might become strategic.

"Morning Glory & Death"

(Austin downtown cow art collection)

Technical folks must be business developers!

A/E/C marketers and business development (BD) folks everywhere will tell you that most technical folks hate having to participate in marketing and BD activities, that they will do almost anything to get out of working a booth at a trade show or taking part in a short-list presentation.

A lot of project managers even hate having to meet with their clients in person, especially if a visit is not related to a specific project. They just want to be the most senior designer on the project team.

Many technical folks believe that marketers/BD folks take a special delight in making them participate in such activities against their will. They view it as a form of "techie torture" and believe that this is what all A/E/C marketers/BD folks live for.

Why, then, do we agonize about this the way we do? Why do we try so hard to get technical folks interested in marketing/BD? Why do we spend hours to train them and hone their skills so they can stand up and speak, and make a good impression?

We do this because we want to win work, to help our firms grow and succeed, and to keep our technical folks employed and their families fed, clothed and sheltered.

The fact is that there are a lot of very desirable projects that we just cannot win unless our technical people sit down and talk with the client. Whether the situation is a lunch, a pre-proposal meeting, a short-list presentation or a trade show/conference, clients ultimately want to know and speak with the people who will actually be doing the work.

I have a presentation called "Who's Afraid of Marketing?" that was created specifically for a technical audience. I have given this presentation more than 15 times in the past few years, and this is what I have learned:

• Many technical folks fear marketing and BD as "unknowns."
• Many of them don't know that they do marketing/BD every day.
• Many of them don't realize that introducing themselves to someone and presenting a business card is marketing/BD.
• Many of them don't realize that asking a client "what's next?" is the start of a marketing/BD discussion.
• Many of them don't realize that returning client phone calls in a timely manner is a way to help strengthen a client relationship and position your firm for future work from that client.
• Many don't realize that, with private sector clients, just doing great work can be a form of marketing/BD, because private sector clients can simply give you a new project if they like your work--no public solicitation process is required.

So marketing/BD folks will continue to work with technical folks on marketing/BD skills. We will continue to be reviled, sometimes disliked and often spoken badly of for taking the technical folks away from their "real" (i.e. billable) work to spend time on worthless (i.e. unbillable) marketing/BD activities.

We will keep hoping, even if technical folks don't learn to love marketing/BD activities, that experience will get them past the fear of talking to others, to a point where they are at least competent and comfortable doing a range of marketing/BD activities.

Because in the end, it takes technical folks talking technical to bring home a contract!

"Capitol Cow"

(Austin downtown cow art collection)

 

Failure to debrief -- does it really matter?

We all know the importance of debriefing after a proposal is submitted and a selection announced: whether your team is selected or not, a debriefing is important for future pursuits for that and other clients.

Debriefing after a selection tells us the things we did right, the things the client liked, the things we need to do more of. Debriefing after an unsuccessful submittal tells us what we did wrong, what we need to tweak, overhaul or just stop doing.

But what is the danger of NOT requesting a debriefing at all?

Passing up the opportunity to sit down with the client and debrief when your team has not been selected can be dangerous for four reasons:

• You will have no way of knowing what the successful firm did that the client liked enough to select them;
• You will have no way of knowing whether your proposal came in a close second or dead last;
• You will have no way of finding out what you did or didn't do well, what the client liked or didn't like; and/or
• The client might simply infer that you don't really want to work for them, which will definitely color the way they read your future proposals.

That last bullet might seem a bit far-fetched to you, but I can actually cite an example:

A major Texas city had one department to whom my firm proposed frequently, on a variety of projects. The department's standard RFQ language included a statement to the effect that if an engineering firm decided not to submit on a project for which it was known to be qualified, the firm had to submit a letter stating that it was not submitting and the reason, or the city department would simply assume that such firm was no longer interested in working with them.

Of course, smart firms developed a standard letter explaining that their staff were fully committed to current projects, and would not be able to give the city's project the time and commitment required to deliver a successful outcome that would meet the city's high standards.

Once you secure the appointment for a debriefing, try to take the person who insisted on doing things his/her way and thought your final proposal was brilliant (perhaps because they did not think any non-billable activity was particularly important). This could be a good way to finally make them understand that technical information is not obvious to the non-technical reader, and that the client's opinion of your submittal is the only one that counts.

"Texas Sports Holstein of Fame"

(Austin downtown cow art collection)