BuiltEnvironment

Good words, bad words — really?

Today is the 31st day of the month and this is my 29th blog of the month, so I've missed my 30-day blog challenge by one day and one post. Bottom line for me: I'm pleased to discover that I had the discipline to come this close when I usually max out at only one post each week to 10 days.

When I committed to the 30-day blog challenge, I asked my friends for topic suggestions, and Barbara Shuck asked:

"Are there words that put us in a 'legal' predicament... for example, I've heard that we should not use the word 'expert'... True? Untrue? Advice?

This is an interesting question. I think there are a number of words we shouldn't use, especially in our qualifications packages and proposals. But whether or not the use of such words put us in a "legal predicament" is not really for me to judge. I have only ever been given a "don't use" instruction for one specific word.

Many years ago, I worked at an A/E industry firm for which construction inspection was an important part of their business. At one point, I was asked to stop talking about "construction inspection" unless the RFQ/RFP specifically used that phrase. Instead, I was to use the phrase "construction observation." The explanation I received was that the former implied a much more detailed look and evaluation of how the project was being built, as well as a detailed comparison of the work and the construction drawings, so we should not use the word "inspection" unless we were actually providing that level of service detail.

For myself, I always question the use of the word "insure." I don't think an A/E firm should ever talk about insuring anything, unless Lloyd's of London or some other insurance underwriter is on their proposal team to write an insurance policy.

Architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects, surveyors, general contractors, construction managers and environmental scientists can "assure" (promise, give peace of mind) or "ensure" (make sure) a client that something will be or is being done. But these firms do not issue insurance policies.

I think the three most important things to remember are the following:

1. Don't promise something you can't do (like providing an insurance policy);
2. Try to understand what your words mean, what they imply and what the listener or reader might infer from them; and
3. Be as clear as you possible can about your scope: what it includes and what it doesn't include (I have written about this idea before.

Always remember that a huge portion of the lawsuits in the A/E/C industry—possibly more than half of them—stem from a client who has inaccurate or incomplete expectations of what your scope includes and what it doesn't include. If you are proposing to perform "A" and "B" but not "C," make sure the client understands that "C" is not part of the scope.

If you are capable of performing "C," you might propose to do it as an additional service for an additional negotiated fee. But make sure the client does not think "C" is automatically included just because you are doing "A" and "B" or you might wind up in court when that simple misunderstanding turns into an ugly confrontation.

Referrals and my business

I had the great good fortune at noon on Wednesday to sit in on a webinar given by Hinge Marketing. I find Hinge's webinars and publications to be a great investment of my time. Even when the speakers are less than dynamic, I find the information to be on target and very valuable.

Today's webinar was no exception. It was about referrals, which are great tools for growing your business with minimal marketing cost.

One of the points made was that more than two-thirds of the 523 professional services firms they surveyed said they would make referrals, and that the reason they didn't is that they are not asked to do so.

I was brought up by a very strong, very smart mother who always told me, "You never know until you open your big mouth and ask someone!"

So I always ask, I especially ask clients for a referral. If a client won't refer me, I'm no worse off than I was before asking, but if the client agrees, that referral can go a long way toward convincing other prospects who haven't even met me to consider using my services.

I have one client who, when asked for a referral letter that I could post in my firm's Web site, explained that her firm had a policy of not giving such letters, but that she would be happy to give me a good reference anytime I listed her in a marketing effort and a prospect called her. I have since used her as a reference with positive results.

In December, I completed a proposal for a new client, a Northeastern law firm. I had been referred by a colleague and friend in the A/E/C industry who has referred me a few times for proposal writing. I emailed the prospect my Statement of Qualifications, he asked for my rates, we agreed on a "not-to-exceed" figure, and off I went, with a new project for a new client.

Another major point of the webinar had to do with the positive impacts that could come to you if you write a blog, especially if you are consistent in your writing and publish with some frequency.

This coming Friday morning, I will participate in a conference call with a prospective client who is looking for help with a blog. The first contact about this opportunity came a few months ago, from a LinkedIn contact on behalf of his client.

Now I tell myself that the reason the prospect is finally ready to speak with me is that I have been participating in a 30-day blog challenge—one post every day for 30 days, and this is post #28 for January.

And I think it helped that I have been announcing each new post as it is published on my company's Facebook page and on LinkedIn. So there has been some great visibility for my blog.

Referrals are great, no matter the size of the project, and no matter what kind of referral fee you offer. Even the smallest project can be profitable if there is no marketing cost, and it's definitely cheaper to pay a small referral fee than to have to write a proposal and compete for the work.

Giving it away for free

I was so exhausted yesterday after Monday night's celebration of my 40th year as a cabaret performer that I just couldn't get this written. So here it is just a few hours late, and I'll have to write a second post this afternoon to stay with the program.

One of my greatest professional joys is to share the knowledge I have acquired over my almost 40-year career in the A/E/C industry. I do this in a number of ways.

• I have served as a mentor in formalized mentor-protégé programs through the Austin and Dallas chapters of SMPS.
• I have been a mentor in informal mentor-protégé relationships with young marketers in the industry.
• I have written articles for this blog, as well as for industry newsletters and magazines, mostly on an unpaid basis.

Most recently, I have published eBooks that are collections of my writing on various topics. Through SMPS communities, LinkedIn and my company Facebook page, I have made my five eBooks and other writings available pretty much for free. The only cost to the person asking is that they email me directly so I can add their contact information to my address book.

At the start of the 2014 Holiday Season, I made up the above mailer and offered all my writings as a gift. And when my next eBook came out in December (about my experience with A/E industry proposals), I sent out a message adding that publication to the gift list.

I have also offered my publications for free to people who take a workshop with me or sit in on a webinar.

I look at this sharing as something I would do for any good client, and if I share with a stranger hoping to make them a good client in the near future, I just consider that to be good sense. It's nice to see that my name is recognized, but I feel I have to establish a credential with people before they give me an assignment for which they will pay.

I don't like to give away free consultations or complete writing assignments. On the other hand, I have been known to give away an occasional hour by not charging for every hour I worked on an assignment for an 8(a) or very small/new MBE or WBE firm. For years, one of my 8(a) clients had one hour out of every eight worked as a gift, and the moment his company reached a point where they moved into a building they had purchased, that discount stopped.

After the LinkedIn offer for one of my eBooks, someone emailed to ask me how much I charge for these publications. I was stumped. I had never charged for sharing my writing or answering a question. To that point, I had never even considered charging for them.

While I wouldn't think of charging for a sample Go/No Go procedure or information on Debriefing, I'm still up in the air about charging for an eBook. So I ask this question of anyone who has received any (or all) of my eBooks: Would you have been OK if I had charged $3.95 or $4.95 for that publication? I'd really like to know. I would appreciate it if you would respond directly to this blog or email me at [email protected].

Thanks.

Be clear — don't assume the recipient understands

One of my favorite English teachers when I attended Samuel J. Tilden High School (class of 1967) in Brooklyn, NY, said something I will always remember (and often quote):

"The way a person writes and the way a person speaks are direct reflections of the way that person thinks."

Given this, unless one was required to publish their first draft or speak spontaneously, why would anyone want to be less than clear in their business communication? Unclear, vague or disjointed writing or speaking might cause the reader or listener to believe that someone suffered from faulty thought processes.

I have actually known playwrights and authors who seemed to agonize over every word, to ensure that each word "earned its place in the story," that it carried the story forward and created no confusion for the reader (except for one mystery writer for whom confusion and misdirection were part of his writing toolkit).

While working in my first marketing position in my first A/E/C industry firm, the Vice President in charge of contracts held a session for the firm's 11-person marketing/public relations support group. One of the things he told us was that more than half of the lawsuits in our business were the result of unfulfilled expectations.

He cautioned us to make sure that our submittals clearly defined the scope of work we were proposing to do, and to be just as clear in defining what was not part of that scope. He did, however, warn us never to say we would not be doing certain things, but to offer those services as out-of-scope items for which an additional fee could be negotiated.

He also reminded us that you can excercise a certain amount of control over how a client will feel about your work by giving them the right expectations from the start. Consider the phrase, "underpromise and overdeliver." Underpromising and overdelivering will always be better than the opposite!

In this morning's CPSM Digest email (a service for SMPS members who utilize the MySMPS community), there was a question about using the Item G of the SF330 forms to indicate a person's participation in a project(s) not shown among the five allowed on his or her Item E resume. Nancy Usrey, FSMPS, CPSM, a recognized expert on making the best use of the SF330 forms, offered a caution on doing so. She advised:

"Remember, once a reviewer questions one fact, s/he will begin to question every fact. You aren't there to defend the interpretation, so make sure your story is clear."

Again, it's about the clarity of your communication.

If the reader or listener is not clear about what you are communicating, or about how that communication answers their question or resolves their challenge, then you might as well not have written or said anything at all.

The fact is that a writer or speaker has 100% control over what he/she implies and 0% control over what the reader or listener infers. So it behooves any writer or speaker to be as clear as possible, to ensure that the message being received is as close as possible to the message that was sent.

Whatever the event, good preparation is the key

In my 30+ years as a marketer in the A/E/C industry, I have been responsible for a lot of corporate celebrations and other events, from initial planning to post-event analysis. These events have included small "lunch and learn" or "brown bag" meetings, staff Christmas parties, catered client holiday open houses with 500+ invited guests, client golf tournaments, and trade shows with five or six staff members in attendance, a booth and a hospitality suite.

I have a checklist that I developed many years ago, and that I still use when I am hired to plan an event for a client. As I have learned the hard way, checklists ensure that you don't forget a critical element until it's too late to do anything about the lack.

Now, a lot of the people reading this blog, mostly business contacts, don't know about my side career as a cabaret performer.

For the last two months, I have been planning my own personal event. In fact, it's actually a dual event: celebrating my 40th anniversary as a professional cabaret performer, with performances at both Brass House in Austin and Kitchen Cafe in north Dallas.

I have found ways to advertise the event on Facebook, LinkedIn and some other "personals" sites to which I belong. I have also made multiple emails to my friends, family and business contacts in and around both cities.

I have repeated those announcements many times to make sure anyone on any of those sites would see it. On Facebook, I learned that when you post, only a percentage of your friends actually see it, so I also created each performance as an event, a posting that gets to all your friends.

For the Austin gig, I posted a reminder on Facebook today and have another prepared for tomorrow. I will do the same next Friday and Saturday for the Dallas gig.

In one early set of Austin and Dallas announcements, I asked my friends to make requests to help with my programming. I received a half-dozen requests, all songs I know well and enjoy singing.

For the last four days, I've been programming the two evenings. With three sets, each lasting approximately 45-50 minutes, I needed 45-48 songs. So I went to my overall song list and made a really drastic first cut, and got down to 140 songs.

I let that percolate in my head overnight, went back and cut the list to 82 songs. Then I sat down at the piano to figure out which ones I really remembered, which would need a little work, and which would need a lot of work. Those in the latter category got cut right away, and the list was down to just over 50.

Yesterday, I sat down and figured out how to structure the show. Each of the three sets needs an appropriate opening and closing song, and a mix of material (fast, slow, story-telling, romantic, angry, comic, etc.) that won't bore the audience or exhaust them emotionally. With that done, I'm just working on polishing lyrics.

Having done all this preparation, I am ready to go onstage for both of these events. And after all the hours I've spent on various stages over the last 40 years, I am very much at home there. All I have to do is stay calm and be myself. As my good friend Stephen Mosher said in 2003 in "The Sweater Book,"

"If one is at home in one's own skin, one can be at home anywhere."

Such an important lesson!

I really hope to see all my Austin area and DFW Metroplex friends at either of these events.

Of promises and their value

An A/E/C firm assembled almost all its staff (engineers, architects, planners, surveyors, environmental scientists, construction managers and admin folks) in its headquarters city to listen to representatives of five strategic clients, one from each of the firm's market sectors, talk about what they wanted from a consultant.

Each person in attendance came in with an idea of what he or she thought the clients would say. And all of the preconceived notions had to do with technical quality, speed or cost of the work.

It was a very interesting session.

None of the client representatives mentioned anything about technical quality, speed or cost. Each expressed a different need as their primary concern, and the primary concern of one of them also showed up on the other four representatives' lists. And that was:

"Do what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it."

In other words, keep your promises. Kids learn about the importance of promises as they grow up. After all, they don't want to disappoint their friends or their parents, or lose a coveted privilege. So they learn to deliver on their promises. Sometimes they even "pinky swear."

Unfortunately, as adults, we sometimes forget the importance of our promises. Or we decide it's OK to promise and then deliver something else or something less, or promise and not deliver anything at all.

And we don't stop to think of consequences. We don't stop to think what will happen to the intended recipient if we are late or don't deliver, because he or she may have committed to some action assuming that we will deliver on time, as promised.

And because many of us don't think of our promise as our brand, we cause serious, often irreparable, harm to our personal and company brands. Just by breaking a promise.

"Here's the deal," the client representative said. "If you tell me you'll have information for me on Wednesday, and you do, that's great. If you have it on Tuesday, that's even better. But if you don't have the information on Wednesday, call or email me anyway. Tell me the difficulty and give me a new expectation of when you will have the promised information. But don't neglect to make the call. That will just make me think that you don't value me or my business. And next time, I'll go to some other firm for the help I need."

The technical folks were stunned. After all, how could technical quality not be the primary concern?

One of them raised his hand and asked the client representative why quality wasn't his primary concern. He was told, "Technical quality is a given. We selected you in the first place because you showed you had the technical capability to do the work. Technical quality is assumed. But I need to know that you will live up to your commitments so I can make and live up to commitments of my own."

All five representatives agreed that the only promise that utimately has any value is the promise you keep!

And just for your information, the second most important concern turned out to be:

"Tell me what I really need to hear, and not what you think I want to hear."

The PR "hype"—it really depends on who creates it

I used to joke with my friends that it was much easier to control what other people were saying about me if I started the rumors myself! That way, I could get people to think what I wanted them to think about me.

Maybe I could even create a first impression before someone actually met me in person. If I could create for them an expectation of what I would be like in person, and if that expectation turned out to accurate when we actually met, they would feel more comfortable in that first meeting than if I were a complete unknown.

Or at least that's what I thought. Fortunately, I learned better.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it requires you to take a really hard, serious look at who and what you are, much like doing a personal S-W-O-T analysis, and make sure that's how you want to be perceived.

And you have to have a friend or two who will tell you the absolute truth about what you're actually projecting.

It's the same dilemma a writer or speaker faces when confronted with the difference between what he or she implies (or thinks he/she implies) and what the reader or listener infers.

For example, what would happen if I thought my behavior implied self-confidence but to everyone I met it came off as arrogance? Would I even be aware that the problem was with me and my projection, and not with their receiver?

In the entertainment business, side career in which I'm celebrating my 40th anniversary in a few days, we often call this "buying your own PR," or believing your hype instead of your truth. In the first few years of my entertainment career, I bought my own PR—and suffered for it. It took a really good friend who was also a performer to make me understand what was happening and why, and what I needed to do about it.

This friend taught me that it doesn't matter how well you sing or dance, or how great your reviews are, or how long you've been in the business. The audience makes you a star (or doesn't) each time you go on stage. You are not a star unless the audience says so, and then continues to say so.

A/E/C firms often suffer the same problem. We think we know how others see us, that our brand is what we are putting out to the world—or worse, what we think we are putting out to the world. We forget that "perception is reality." So we are, to any client, what that client thinks we are.

Our brand is what the marketplace says it is; if we don't like what the market thinks, changing their perception is not easy, quick or cheap. The example often used is about turning a huge passenger liner around in mid-ocean.

But first, our firm's need a good friend—someone who will tell us the truth about our image, our brand, our reputation. And this is generally someone outside—someone with no preconceived notion about our brand—someone who can hear what a client, a competitor or a regulatory agency says without comparing it to an image in which they are emotionally vested.

This emotional vesting is what makes us get defensive or argumentative when we hear something different from what we expect.

What these outside firms do for us is bring reality to our expectations of ourselves so we can strengthen or alter them. They do us a great service, because "what does the rest of the world think my brand is?" is one of the most important things a firm needs to know.

Cheap is never good, and good is never cheap

We all know that quality takes time and costs money. But at the same time, we're all looking for a bargain.

We've all read horror stories about bridges collapsing when a flood carries a pier away; roofs caving in under a very heavy, wet snowfall; or sky bridges collapsing to the ground floor in a building atrium. All too often, the reason ultimately turns out to involve a lowball design or construction bid, or both.

But hey, money is tight. Right?

We're still working our way out of a deep recession and the economy hasn't yet fully recovered. And clients, whether public agencies or private companies, would all rather hire the architect or engineer whose price to design the project is $83,000 rather than the median bid of $99,000, or the contractor who says he can build the facility for $775,000 when the next higher bid is $950,000.

And call me crazy, but shouldn't these very significant differences in design and construction costs raise some red flags for an owner? Shouldn't these differences in bid prices make an owner ask the high bidder why he thinks he is worth that much more than other bidders? Shouldn't the owner be asking the contractor why he can build the project for almost 20% less than the next bidder?

Quality ALWAYS costs more!

The reason quality always costs more money is that it always takes more time—time an engineer or architect will need to pay attention to the details and complete his or her work, or time a construction manager or superintendent will be onsite while a building or other facility is constructed.

Or time a marketer will spend researching the proposed project in the owner's Web site, speaking to the people who regularly visit that client and attended the pre-proposal meeting, finding out what the client's main concerns ("hot buttons") are in general and for that specific project.

NEWS FLASH: High-quality proposals take time as well.

When an A/E/C firm's marketing staff are "overcommitted"—when a senior technical person "writes a check" that the marketing staff will have to "cash" without checking to see if there are "funds" (hours) available—the upshot is generally that quality suffers. There is no way around this.

If an A/E/C marketer is working 60 or more hours a week on two proposals and you want to add a third proposal to their workload, they must take hours away from one or both of their existing commitments. Despite your intentions, you actually turn two potential winners into three guaranteed losers.

A West Coast environmental consulting firm had a rule—if the RFP and the completed Go/No Go evaluation form were not in the Marketing Department two full weeks before the due date, that RFP was an automatic No Go!

They recognized that quality takes time in proposals as well as in design and construction projects, and were willing to act on that knowledge. I wish more firms were like that, but too many A/E/C firms are still operating in the "ready, fire, aim" mode and wanting to submit inferior and non-responsive proposals just to "put their name in front of a client," regardless of the negative perception an inferior and non-responsive proposal will create.

If I knew then what I know now . . .

Anna Martinovich of Architectural Engineering Design Group in Denver graciously consented to be the second subject of this interview series, which is designed to present the perspectives of relative "newbies" to the A/E/C marketing world.

Here are Anna's answers to the five questions I posed.

How long have you been in a marketing position in the A/E/C industry?

I started working as a marketing coordinator a little over a year ago for Architectural Engineering Design Group, Inc. a lighting and electrical engineering company in Denver, Colorado.

What do you think are the two or three most important things you've learned in the past year on the job?

"I don't know," is not a good answer; "here's how I'll find out," is more than acceptable. I transitioned into marketing after a great experience as a graphic design co-op in a large A/E/C firm, but currently work as part of a very small team. So I'm responsible for running analytics, writing proposals, social media, newsletters, internal engagement and whatever else may pop up. Successfully completing these tasks has almost always involved asking other professionals, bouncing ideas off other team members and a lot of Google searches.

People skills matter, especially when it comes to the people you work with. It doesn't matter how great an idea is if you're not able to pitch it at the right time and in the right way. Recognizing that your bosses and supervisors are looking to you to be the expert can be daunting in an entry-level position, and being able to pitch a new marketing endeavor to the people who approve your timesheets is a valuable and undervalued skill.

What things do you wish you had already known on your first day in this position?

I wish I had known more about social media, online marketing and analytics. The A/E/C industry as a whole is behind the ball when it comes to all three, but a lot of the traditional channels are already ineffective. Running print ads in a magazine is a classic tactic and there are a lot of resources to help guide a marketer in how to figure out if a certain publication is worth investing in, but ask a room of A/E/C marketers about how to use Twitter effectively and you’re more likely to hear crickets. However, social media isn’t going anywhere; it’s only becoming more influential, but the resources and truly knowledgeable people (in many A/E/C firms) are lacking.

What has surprised you the most about the A/E/C industry?

Just how long the construction process really is and how much of it is dependent on relationships. The number of people who have to work together successfully to make one home or office building happen is astounding.

What has surprised you the most about the position of marketing coordinator?

How much of the job can be summed up with, “Yes, I can help you do that,” and how fulfilling it is to have a new challenge almost every day.

Many thanks to Anna for her interesting responses. If any of you want to find out more about Anna, you can take a look at her LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/annamartinovich

 

Every presentation is a performance

I have had the great good fortune to enjoy two long-running, concurrent careers. I am about to celebrate 40 years as a professional cabaret performer and actor with performances in Austin and Dallas, and I recently completed 36 years in the A/E/C industry, most of them as a marketer.

In my 40 years as a professional performer, I have probably spent more than 15,000 hours in front of audiences—ranging from small (6 or 7 people) to very large (more than 3,000 people).

As an A/E/C marketer, my in-person audiences have been considerably smaller—from 3 or 4 in a meeting up to as many as 75-80 people in a conference session.

I have found a lot of similarities between the two professions, in both the preparation and presentation phases.

In the preparation phase of both, you learn the material. As a cabaret performer, this means memorizing the words; I don't believe any song is ready to go in front of an audience until it is memorized. And since I often accompany myself, this means learning the the piano part as well.

As a professional A/E/C presenter, the preparation phase does not entail memorization, but it does require that you know the material well enough that an interruption does not leave you drawing a blank, unable to go on. And to have a back-up plan if your projector's bulb burns out.

Final preparation happens right before you go "onstage." This is the warm-up. As a singer, I warm up my voice. If I am standing up (someone else accompanying), I also warm up my body. I make sure every joint is loose, that muscles are warmed up and flexible, that my joints are not going to crack when I move, and that my ankles are ready for any step (or mis-step) I might take.

I do an abbreviated physical warm-up for professional presentations, usually in the hall outside the conference room. It helps me control how my body moves and makes me very confident on my feet. I don't lose my balance even if I'm wearing new shoes and standing on a slick floor.

With solid preparation, you enter the performance phase confident enough to get over any hurdle. For example, many years ago, working a club in Austin, TX, we lost lights and the sound system for about 30 minutes. Not wanting people to get up and leave (I do like a full tip jar!), I had the waitresses bring a half-dozen lit candles to the piano so I could see the keys, and continued to sing until power was restored. Nobody left the club!

This equates to having your PowerPoint fail during your short-list presentation. You must kknow the material well enough to keep the presentation going even with no visuals, unless the client asks you to stop.

If you have good material and you have prepared well, you will not need to read your music or your slides. Instead, you will be making eye contact with your audience, connecting with them and actually communicating the message of your song or presentation, not just putting out information.

You will know from their facial expressions and body language if they "got it" or got lost somewhere. And you will be prepared to deal with either eventuality.