It can sometimes be very difficult to convince A/E and related technical staff that non-billable marketing (overhead) hours must be thought of as "real" work, just like contracted, billable, project tasks. Because of this problematic belief, which is constantly reinforced by their supervisors and project managers, it can be very difficult to get technical staff to help with marketing tasks like client visits, positioning, writing proposals, developing and rehearsing short-list presentations, debriefing with a client after a selection has been made, and then positioning for the next project.
Even among those who would help with marketing tasks, there are many technical folks who seem to think they don't have to contribute to any marketing activity until there is no billable ("real") work left on their desks. They also seem to believe that new work will somehow appear on their desks by magic, exactly when they need it, with no actions performed by any human being.
When your firm does most of its work on private sector projects, it is easy to understand this problematic attitude; after all, there are few or no requirements for competition in the private sector, so a private company can give its project to any firm it wishes, for any reason. The completion of a successful project is often all you need to have a client give a new project to your firm.
However, when your firm is pursuing work for a public agency—whether a city, county, state, regional, or federal agency—competitive submittals are required. These submittals are technical proposals, generally involving project understanding and approach write-ups, as well as relevant experience and resumes of key project staff. It might take a month to prepare the submittal, as opposed to the few days it might take to prepare a cost proposal (most often an Excel spreadsheet) for a private sector project.
And more than that, some selection process can take a VERY long time.
I have seen projects for Federal agencies where the time from RFP to Notice to Proceed was in excess of ONE YEAR!
Firms don't last very long if they wait until their backlog is totally depleted before identifying and pursuing new project opportunities. So my standard question to technical folks who can't seem to break free from "real" work to give me an occasional five or ten minutes during the proposal stage is the following:
If we don't do this now, what will you bill your time to tomorrow?
Most firms can't keep their technical folks employed for months with no billable project work, waiting for a selection committee to finally make a decision. If your firm is not at least short-listed before the technical folks finish their current projects and run out of work, those folks might risk temporary salary cuts and/or layoffs until new selections are made, scopes of work are negotiated, contracts are signed, and Notices to Proceed are given. And then it will be at least another 60 days—perhaps many more—before your firm sees its first invoice for that new project paid by the client.
I tell technical staff that my job as a marketer is not to win work. That's one of the ways I do my job, but it's not my actual job.
My actual job is to help keep the technical folks' families fed, housed, and healthy—in other words, my job is to keep the technical folks employed.
With this attitude on my part, and the technical person's new understanding of what my job is, I can eliminate the adversarial relationship that so often exists between marketing and technical staff, resulting in a better workplace and more projects to work on.