BuiltEnvironment

30-day blog challenge — the upside

I am a few days past the half-way point of the 30-day blog challenge that I accepted toward the end of December. So I think this is a good time to share some thoughts about the challenge.

Today's topic: the upside!

Started in 2005, my blog is a place for my ". . . random thoughts about the marketing of professional services (architecture, engineering, planning, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental, construction management and construction) for the 'built environment'."

The phrase, random thoughts, gives me the ability to write about almost anything I think of, provided I can tie the subject to some aspect of marketing in the A/E/C industry.

For me, a blog is generally about one of two main things: interaction with a chosen community, and visibility for me and my firm. But the subject of each post must be relevant to the A/E/C community.

These days, my average post is more than 500 words, and each post is pretty much a small article on a subject related to the marketing of A/E/C services. So while writing generally comes easy to me, I worried that coming up with a topic every day for 30 days would be much harder than actually writing the posts.

I was correct!

I was also lucky. When I shared my intent to accept the challenge, industry friends suggested more than a dozen topics. Added to my ongoing list of possible topics, those suggestions gave me my first 18 posts, and I still have eight unused topics on my list. I missed two days but got caught up a few days ago. This is post #19 on day #19.

I am pleased to say that I believe my topics have covered a broad range of thought on the subject of A/E/C marketing, including:

• Architectural photography (one of my "soapbox" topics)
• A tip for communicating with technical folks
• Organizing for effective marketing
• Visible experts
• 10 things I think are important for seller-doers to know
• "Close enough for government work" — please don't be offended
• A day in the life of a marketing manager
• Getting information updates from technical staff
• Cooperation, collaboration and competition
• Commitment and being a good consultant
• Marketing plans — how much detail is too much detail?
• Company standards and conventions
• A layman's fears about global warming
• Should A/E/C firms take a stand on public issues
• Go/No Go evaluations (another "soapbox" topic)
• In defense of engineers
• Debriefing — why? what? and how?

In addition to tomorrow's post on the downside of the challenge, potential topics include:

• Client loyalty — is it real? how do we create it?
• Blog or newsletter — which one is more effective?
• Who's in charge of the proposal — PIC, PM or marketer?
• Words to avoid because they may have legal "baggage"
• Helping technical folks apply knowledge of PR/advertising to A/E/C marketing
• An email to a client is not an email campaign
• Finding time to be strategic
• Most effective skills I've learned in my career

These topics will get me almost to the end of the 30-day challenge. And then I can relax and go back to maybe two posts per week.

Commitment—on being a good consultant

What makes a good consultant?

For me, it's about the commitments I make to each of my current and prospective clients. There are eleven such commitments, as follows:

• I do what I say I'm going to do, when I say I will do it.
• I never miss a deadline; in fact, I try to be early.
• I tell you what I really think, not what I think you want to hear.
• I recommend a "No Go" when that's what I believe, even if I really need the fee.
• If I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do, I ask why you want to do it.
• Once you convince me that you have a good reason for something, and I accept the assignment, I am totally committed to the project.
• I look out for YOUR interests, as the best way to look out for MY interests.
• Once I commit to a pursuit with you, I don't agree to help another client pursue the same project, even if the owner plans to award multiple contracts.
• I assume that any information you give me is in confidence, and only share it with your prior permission, even if the proposal is to a public agency.
• Anything I write for you is YOUR property; I may use it in another proposal for you but not for any other client.
• I recommend your firm as often as I honestly can.

Stats for The Siben Consult, LLC

In 10 years as The Siben Consult, LLC, I have had 148 project assignments from 34 clients. Almost half of these clients have given me multiple assignments, with my most frequent four clients giving me 43, 33, 12 and 10 assignments, respectively.

In all of this time, only two clients have ever asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement. The client who gave me 33 assignments asked for such an agreement on our first project together in 2004 and never mentioned the subject again.

The other client requests such an agreement because of the confidential nature of the firm's business. The owner requires such an agreement from my client, and then I provide a similar agreement.

The Philosophy that Informs my Attitude

Whether I am brought in to write a single section of a proposal or to manage the entire effort, I try to work as an extension of my client's staff—as one of their employees. So I give them the same commitment they would expect from any senior-level employee.

I don't speak out of turn; I have nothing bad to say about any clients, whether I am currently providing services to them or not. We are a small community and people talk. If I talk trash about a client, they will most likely find out and I will never hear from them again.

I don't share a client's information unless specifically instructed to do so—i.e. when my client is on a team with another prime. And I have my client review and approve the information before I deliver it to that prime firm.

In the end, it's not just about writing a solid proposal. I think it is a question of professional ethics. Honesty and integrity are important. I believe they are two of the reasons my clients come back to me.

Writing a good proposal certainly helps, but I think my clients return to me when they need help because they have learned to trust my actions and my intentions. They know I am always on THEIR side, even if the decision is not to my own advantage.

Cooperation, collaboration and competition

To paraphrase the Herald Alberich in a Mercedes Lackey book called "Exile's Valor"—

"Organization is needed to win a battle."

The then speaker talks about how groups need to collaborate in order to develop rules and then cooperate to get those rules approved by all parties before actual competition can begin. So it is with many competitions, even the engineering profession's CANstruction competitions (a recent Dallas entry is shown at left).

The lesson that I take from this is that all competitions need some cooperation and collaboration to succeed. It doesn't matter whether you are competing for a new project assignment, a professional award, the local CANstruction contest, or anything else. Some group had to work together to develop rules, guidelines, schedule and delivery instructions, and every team that enters the competition has to abide by those rules, guidelines, schedules and delivery instructions.

The same goes for pursuing new work in the A/E industry.

We all know that visiting prospective/current clients to build/strengthen relationships is a good thing. However, a frequent rule the RFP is that the owner's project manager cannot speak with you from RFP release through proposal due date. When this happens, you will be glad you were visiting the client before the RFP was released. These visits help you prepare for the upcoming competition.

Often, the owner provides a specific method for submitting questions. After the final date for questions, the owner creates a file with all the questions and answers, and makes it available to everyone.

The upside of this is that you get your questions answered. The downside is that everyone else gets to see the answers at the same time, even the answers to questions they hadn't thought of themselves. In this aspect, all competitors are collaborating—sharing information— whether they want to or not.

On the other hand, any information you learn during your individual client visits before RFP release is information nobody else has. This information might actually turn out to be a strong competitive edge.

It is a fact of contemporary marketing life that we compete with a firm one day, team with them later on, and then compete against them again after that. So we collaborate, cooperate and compete with the same firms in a recurring cycle.

The upside of this cycle is that we know a lot more about the competition than if we just gone online, looked at their Web sites, Googled their name, and asked our own contacts what they know about the firm. The downside is that ourcompetitors similarly know a lot more about us.

Given the organizational dynamics and modi operandi of many A/E/C firms, I have to hope that my readers' firms have learned to compete only against other firms, and not to set their internal departments and/or divisions one against the other.

When an owner receives two proposals from different parts of the same firm, his first thought is probably, "Don't you people talk to one another." His second thought is probably, "These firms are definitely not team players," which is NEVER the impression you want to give to a prospective or current client.

Information updates — why? when? and how?

(With this post, the 16th post on the 16th day of the challenge, I am back on track for the 30-day blog challenge.)

It used to be that, in the month after distributing staff resumés for the annual major update effort, any time I walked down the hall I saw people ducking into nearby doorways like cockroaches scattering when you turn the light on.

Nobody wanted to attract the attention of the dreaded "resumé police." Nobody wanted to get caught not having a good reason for ignoring the request for updated information. Nobody wanted to explain their utter conviction that the time spent updating a resumé, like time spent on any other "administrative" task, was time totally wasted because it was not billable to a client. So it wasn't "real" work.

Following are my answers to the three most frequent questions I hear about updating resumés. Maybe these thoughts will help other marketers when they are asked the same question(s) by technical staff in their own firms.

Why do I need to update my resume?

In the process an A/E/C firm undertakes to win new work, the client has only one critically important question, which is:

What have you done lately?

Your resumé is one of two answers to that question. And you are the person best able to update your resumé because you know better than anyone else what you have worked on since the last update that made you squirm.

When do people need to update resumés?

Ideally, a person needs to update her/his resumé when they start or complete a project, or when they do something of consequence such as:

• completing a degree;
• add a new credential, such as the completion of a short-course;
• achieving a professional license or certification;
• win an award for technical or project management excellence;
• join (or leave) a professional organization;
• make a live or online presentation to a professional group; or
• have an article or a book published.

When these kinds of things happen, you are the only one who knows until you tell other people about it. If you tell the marketing staff about these things as they happen, we can update your resumé and prepare an announcement or press release. But if you don't tell the marketing staff, we can't help get you the recognition you have earned.

If you keep people in the dark about your projects and accomplishments, we have to rely on the once-a-year resumé update, which will take more of your time—you'll have to remember a year's worth of information. And that means more time taken away from billable work.

And you won't escape the responsibility because, when we send you a second email for the information, we will most likely "cc" it to your supervisor.

How do I get people to provide information?

I explain that a marketer's job is to help them feed, shelter and cloth their families, that we do this job by winning work to keep them employed. This tells them that marketing staff are not the enemy and that we have a good reason for requesting a resumé update.

I also request information during the year in smaller bits. For example, I send proposed team members an RFP and ask if they have any projects relevant to the pursuit that are not yet on their resumés. Any information sent back is used for the proposal and to update their master resumés.

By the way, the second answer to "what have you done lately" is a project description. So it is equally important that these items be kept up to date. And the above explanations and processes can also make getting project description updates easier.

Marketing manager - a day in the life

(I should have made this post on January 15, but time got away from me. However, since I want to keep the 30-day blog challenge, there will be two posts today, and then I will be caught up.)

Coming up with topics for 30 consecutive days is not easy, so I thank my friend Barbara Shuck for suggesting this one.

Premise: it's the first day on the job for a new marketing coordinator. As his manager, what should my agenda be?

Assumptions: For the purposes of this post, I'm going to assume that my new coordinator already has one year of experience as a coordinator at some other A/E/C firm, that he has an idea of what the job entails, that he has (limited) knowledge of the activities he will have to undertake, and that the company has multiple offices whose marketing efforts he may be called upon to support.

The day starts with the two of us in my office for a general conversation about:

• the company, what it does, how the industry works and the challenges to which we respond;
• the names and roles of other marketing and business development staff;
• the activities which will be standard parts of his job and his place on the learning curve for those activities;
• the activities which will be occasional parts of his job and his place on those learning curves;
• the opportunities for training to broaden and deepen his job- and industry-related knowledge, including professional organization membership;
• the opportunities to travel in support of other offices and to attend conferences and trade shows;
• the opportunities for promotion; and
• any questions he may have about the company and/or the job.

Next, we move to a training room and share a computer, where I show him how to find the forms he will need and how to fill them in, including:

• a digital timesheet;
• a vacation time request;
• a training request;
• a conference attendance request; and
• an expense report.

I also show him how to access email, what his new email address will be, and help him adapt our standard signature block. We talk about changes are allowed or prohibited to maintain signature block consistency firm-wide.

Next, I give him a tour of the computer network to give him a feel for where different things are stored. He may not need to access much of this very often, but it will be good for him to know where to look.

Then we take a more detailed look at the marketing drive. I show him how we keep separate spaces for administrative information, firm histories and introductions, resumes, project descriptions, project photography, other frequently-used images, standard and customized SOQs, boilerplate information (awards, QA/QC procedures, sustainability, etc.), logos of the firm and its teaming partners, recent proposals and archived information

I make sure that he understands our file naming conventions so he can more easily find existing files and more accurately name new files that he creates. I also show him where to find our style guide for rules on fonts, logo usage, colors, formats, etc.

With any luck, this has taken less than a half-day. So I take him to his work space, introduce him to the other marketing and business development staff, finalize the plans for a group lunch, and suggest that he spend the rest of the day and tomorrow looking at a variety of recent proposals, SOQs, resumes, project descriptions and other information to learn what we do and how to do it.

Then he's on his own until he has questions.

Close enough?

(This is the post I should have made two days ago, but time got away from me. However, since I really do want to keep the 30-day blog challenge, there will be two extra posts today. This is the post for January 13th.)

A construction firm was hired to build a new bridge, and was asked to complete the project on a fast-track basis. So the firm put two teams on the project, each team starting from opposite sides of the river.

It looked like everything was going very well, construction progress was amazingly fast, and the two pieces were coming together almost at the exact center of the river, as the plans and specifications required. However, as the two pieces of the bridge got close enough to each other, the horrified construction manager noticed that the two pieces didn't meet quite properly.

Close enough? Not by a long shot!

Some years ago, I worked for a multi-discipline engineering and environmental firm. One day, in a conversation about a current project with a civil engineer who had 40+ years of experience, he mentioned that it just didn't seem to be exactly what it should have been. By chance, I used the phrase that it was "close enough for government work," implying that, while not meeting the specifications exactly, the construction was close enough to get by. The phrase also implied that government work meant was similarly close enough to get by while not being spot on.

I got an earful from that engineer. It turned out that he had been an engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers earlier in his career, at a time when engineering for USACE projects was required to meet the highest standards of design and construction, the finest of tolerances, and the tightest specifications, with no "wiggle room" allowed. Designs that didn't meet the Corps' specifications had to be redone, and construction that didn't meet the contract documents had to be fixed, and sometimes torn out and rebuilt.

Apparently, in the middle of the 20th century, "close enough for government work" actually meant that a project met the absolute highest standards of accuracy and tolerance in design and construction, and not just some minimum "passing grade."

Perhaps that's why some of our oldest government structures—buildings, monuments and bridges—seem to last forever, with only infrequent repairs, while many newer public and private structures seem to need repair and/or maintenance almost from the day they are opened.

Perhaps we are too focused on getting it close, but not sufficiently focused on getting it right. That's too bad, because as David Weber observes in "Mission of Honor,"

"Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and tactical nuclear warheads."

10 things I think are important for a seller-doer to know

(This is the post I should have made yesterday, but time got away from me. However, since I really do want to keep the 30-day blog challenge, there will be two posts today. This is the post for January 14.)

I have a problem with the proliferation of online lists of the most important/ best/most effective things any (insert a specific occupation) should know, do or avoid.

I often find similar lists by different authors, and there are always differences from one list to the next. So I want these list titles to include the phrase "I think" or "I believe" because, after all, each list is merely the author's opinion, and not "self-evident truths" by any stretch of the imagination.

With this in mind, I have compiled a list of 10 things I think are important for a seller-doer to know.

1. The complete and accurate name of your client—it really sets me off when someone markets me and calls my firm "Siben Consultants" instead of "The Siben Consult," or spells my last name "Seiben" instead of "Siben." It's not so hard to find that information.
2. The Internet is your friend; so is the client's Web site. Use them—Make sure you know the services performed and/or the products provided by the client before you contact them. If you don't know what they do, you won't learn as much as you otherwise could from any visit or phone call.
3. The services your firm provides—(and the ones it doesn't) that the client might find valuable, including how you would/might deliver those services and why they might be valuable to the client.
4. Your history with that client—what services did you provided them in the past, were the projects considered successful, were there any problems? If there was a problem, what was the solution; if it wasn't fixed, what could you offer now to "atone" for not fixing the problem earlier?
5. The client's industry—what rules, laws, ordinances and standard practices guide the behavior of firms in that industry? What are the regulatory and/or resource challenges the client faces? What issues make him/her wake up at 3:00am in a cold sweat?
6. What the client values—no matter what you think is (or should be) important, no service or activity is valuable unless the client values it.
7. "Information overload" is not the answer—tell the client everything he/she needs to know, but not everything you want them to know. Lots of what you want the client to know is probably not as valued as you think.
8. It is the client's project—the client defines what the project is, not you; your job is to figure out how to help the client realize the project; for example, how the design challenges can be met, how permits can be expedited, how the environmental impacts during construction can be mitigated, etc.
9. You start out thinking of the client as a team member—after all, the client's name IS on the organization chart in the proposal. So keep them an active member of the team until the project is completed.
10. Many lawsuits in the A/E/C industry come from unfulfilled expectations—make your proposal discussions and documents very clear and complete. List the things you will not be doing as services that could be provided at additional cost.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor do I suggest that every seller-doer MUST know these things. They are just things I believe are important for a seller-doer to know.

Visible experts - on the fast track, but to where?

In previous blog posts, I have stated my belief that companies do not plan, design or construct anything; people do. Companies just create the legal frameworks in which such activities, and others (invoicing, payroll, etc.), take place.

As photographer Peter Adams noted:

"Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gismos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn't make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel."

For companies operating in the A/E/C industry, it's all about expertise.

All the client wants to know is, "What have you done lately?" So, in our SOQs and proposals, we set out to demonstrate that, keeping our evidence relevant to the pursuit. The two most important kinds of evidence are resumes of key staff and descriptions of similar projects.

When we present these resumes, we hope that the client will see our proposed staff as experts in their technical disciplines. It's even better if the client actually recognizes the names, if the client already recognizes our proposed staff as experts in their technical disciplines.

When this recognition happens, we accord these folks the title, "Visible Expert."

In many cases, it is up to marketers to help these technical staff members achieve a degree of visibility. We do this in a number of ways:

• we help them get articles written and published;
• we help them obtain engagements as conference and community organization speakers;
• we help them pursue individual awards for professional achievement; and
• we prevail upon our regular and business media contacts to call these people when they need a quote about a technical issue.

When all of this works the way we want, when business starts coming in the door because of a Visible Expert, we generally think this is a wonderful situation. We might even see this as a good reason to look for someone else in the firm for whom we can create the same visibility and recognition.

But there is a downside to creating Visible Experts, and here are my thoughts:

• You have to keep these folks happy. If they leave your firm, the business that came in because of them might just follow them to your competition.
• You want to spread their expertise over more projects, so you can't give them a major role on any project; that would require too much of their time.
• You need to keep them in technical positions, but your firm doesn't have a senior technical track on which they can keep rising.
• You need them providing technical guidance to many projects, so you can't promote them out of technical work and into management, which has been the traditional response of A/E/C firms for many years.

So be careful when you help create Visible Experts. Consider your firm's structure, and create positions into which these folks can grow happily. If necessary, restructure how your salary levels are linked to the firm's hierarchy and position titles. Make sure you can provide appropriate rewards as these people succeed and bring your firm the benefits of their visibility and recognition.

 

Organizing for effective marketing

Earlier in my career, I worked for a large A/E firm that had a half-dozen or so marketing coordinators. One coordinator specialized in federal pursuits, one in municipal pursuits, one in retail/commercial pursuits, etc.—one for each market sector the company served.

The company felt that, with each of its market sectors being covered by a specialist coordinator, every proposal would be written and/or managed by someone who had expertise in that market sector. The company felt that was a legitimate assumption. And the they were very happy with their marketing silos and what they perceived to be the benefits of such an organization.

However, any time a new RFP was obtained and the appropriate coordinator was on vacation or already had 100% of his/her time committed to other submittals, the pursuit had to be led by someone else, someone who might have had absolutely no experience with that market sector, no knowledge of the industry, and no knowledge of which other firms might be the competition for that pursuit.

I have long believed that the costs of this particular kind of specialization always exceed its benefits. When a coordinator needs help, he/she winds up having to ask someone who has no expertise with that industry, with that client or the way that client does business. I much prefer a marketing department made up of generalist coordinators, each of whom can manage a variety of pursuits for a variety of projects in a variety of market sectors.

Every A/E firm I've ever heard of seems to have more people authorized to say "Yes," to commit to a pursuit, than it has people who know how to manage and produce the SOQs and proposals that must be submitted. And most of those so authorized will commit to pursuits without ever asking if marketing staff are available. So it is a common occurrence that a person with the wrong experience leads the charge.

In the July-August 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there was a great article by Aditya Joshi and Eduardo Giménez entitled, "Decision-Driven Marketing." The authors said:

"The cutting-edge companies create a different kind of marketing organization— one that is less silo-ed, more interactive, and more collaborative, and that increases marketing’s value and effectiveness." (my bolding and coloring)

Whew! Vindication is always a good thing! Especially when you find it in the Harvard Business Review.

A tip to communicate effectively with engineers

Any number of sources will be happy to tell you that different types of people communicate in different ways. Some of these sources base everything directly on personality types. For example, we all have heard of the Myers-Briggs test and resultant "types." I have actually had people tell me their four-letter type as part of their introduction at a professional function.

Other systems base their explanations on an individual's career choice. For example, technical folks have a style of speaking that is different from lawyers, or teachers, etc.

My experience working with engineers and environmental scientists over the past 35 years is that they don't like to read things written in flowery language full of poetic or romantic images. And they certainly don't write that way, when you can actually get them to write.

They are prefer their language to be straightforward and pretty dry. Long sentences with lots of punctuation (clauses) tend to be more distracting than informative for them. They want the point to be apparent and easy to find. If you want them to do something, tell them what you want and don't beat around the bush hoping they'll guess it themselves.

And if you require a long story to make your point, you will probably lose their attention before you get to the point.

Here's my best example.

I worked for a firm with multiple offices in multiple states. The firm had a broad service offering, with many services available in more than one of its ofices.

One afternoon, during a staff meeting comprised of senior engineers and environmental scientists, the COO was talking about the some current small projects, and noted that "too many of our projects with fees less than $25,000 lose money." There was some discussion about why so many of these smaller projects lost money. It was apparent (to me, anyway) that the COO wanted to caution the group that they should stop chasing so many small projects.

But the COO didn't actually say that. Instead, there was an assumption that the group would reach the right conclusion based on the directoin of the discussion, and not chase so many small projects.

I asked the COO, "Why didn't you just tell them to stop chasing projects with fees less than $25,000 because they generally lose money?" But the COO thought it would be a more effective lesson if the group reached the conclusion on their own.

Unfortunately, the group didn't reach that conclusion at all. The "assumption" that they would get the point turned out to be more of a "hope," and as we all know, "Hope is not a strategy!"

So the firm continued to book projects with fees less than $25,000 at the same rate as before and continued to lose money on many of them.

The solution: When you're trying to make a point with technical and scientific types, and lead them to a specific conclusion, speak plainly and directly. Make the point. Tell them, in so many words, the conclusion you reached and for which you want their support. Then you can effectively talk about how to implement the decision.