Marketers are often planners by nature. Or maybe by "nurture" after juggling a multitude of proposals in a reactive mode. While responding to RFQs and RFPs is a major component of an AEC marketer's role, supporting your business developers to better preposition the firm is equally important. Middle of Six principals Wendy Simmons and Melissa English discuss their experiences and industry best practices for prepositioning planning, including how to leverage data, create accountability, and use resources to solidify your marketing strategy.
CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 1
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we're chatting with Melissa English.
Hi, Melissa.
Hi, Wendy.
Hi, everybody.
I have finally made it.
I am now a podcaster, not just a podcast listener.
So Melissa, you're a principal at Middle of Six.
Tell us a little bit about your background.
I joined Middle of Six in January, 2020, after being an in-house marketer at a multidisciplinary engineering firm for 17 years.
I have a degree in marketing and a minor in communication, and joined that firm as a marketing coordinator, and left as the marketing director to come and use my skills and relationships to be a marketing consultant, which has been a great change, even through everything we've dealt with over the last year and a half.
But really happy to be here and excited to collaborate with you on The Shortlist.
Yeah, I think you are so brave for making this big change after being in house for so long.
And then of course, you know, put all the craziness that has been going on the last 18 months.
But it's been great having you here.
And I particularly love the combination of experience we have.
I'm more from the general contractor side of things.
And I feel like between the two of us, we know the answer to it, right?
Yeah.
We can kind of get to it.
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's been really fabulous.
And you know, you know so many people from having teamed on so many projects.
I mean, the number of projects you've been involved with in your career, like Dwarf's Mine, it's just amazing all of the connections you have and the different groups you've been able to collaborate with.
So I feel like we are going to have endless little details to talk about through the podcast.
I hope you'll be here with us a lot.
Today, we're going to talk about prepositioning the firm.
And so tell me a little bit about why you selected this as the starting point for podcasting.
I think part of it comes from starting in this industry, not being in AEC marketing and practicing under a great marketing mentor, Mel Blackstone.
He was the marketing director when I started at my firm and he was someone who had been working on projects, doing facilities planning, and then came to my firm as the marketing director.
So he had already been developing his own business and was really the person that I learned what I know about how to position your firm.
And, you know, it's about relationships, it's about getting to know what's important to the client, thinking about things from the client's perspective.
And certainly through my time with S&PS, I've heard lots of firms that don't have that perspective.
So I found that so valuable.
And I know our listeners are probably coming from all levels of experience and different types of firms.
So I think it's something that's applicable to all the marketers in our industry.
If you are using a seller-doer model, where your firm's principals and project managers develop business, or if you have separate business development staff.
But that collaboration between the business development and the marketing is really important.
And so I thought it was a topic that I hear a lot of questions about in my interactions with other marketers.
I hear a lot of questions about it at S&PS.
So it felt like a good topic.
Yeah, I agree.
And how nice to have your introduction to the industry with such a great mentor in front of you, reminding you or educating you about those relationships and knowing what's important to the client and providing that service, as opposed to being part of a marketing team and just managing boatload of proposals and wondering where the strategy is and just feeling maybe like you're a cog, you know, getting proposals out, but wondering how can you actually, you know, make a difference here.
So that's pretty, pretty fantastic.
I feel like prepositioning is super near and dear to our heart because we spend so much time in the proposal world.
And so the questions that come to mind for us, it's always like, OK, well, how are we positioned to win this work?
Right.
Let's start there.
Let's back it way up, backing up even further, planning for success instead of getting into the details of proposal tactics and strategy related to a specific RFP.
Let's talk about how you plan and set your team up and your whole firm up for success.
Yeah.
That was one thing that I was curious about from your perspective.
What do you think firms should be doing to be focused in their marketing tactics and pre-positioning?
And how do you plan your efforts to be successful?
I mean, the scope of that question is massive.
So much depends on the size of your organization and what elements are already in place.
I guess if we just wanted to kind of like go to the middle, right?
What we see most often, that would make a lot of sense.
I mean, I think starting off with understanding, what is your company's business strategy?
What are you trying to achieve?
Are you in a growth mode?
Are you trying to be more diversified?
Some firms are at a great spot and they don't actually want to grow.
They want to just kind of have deeper expertise in a certain area and continue to develop those relationships and they're not really stretching in different ways.
So understanding where your firm is starting from as far as where they are currently are and where that strategy is going to lead them is number one in my book.
What would you kind of add to that as far as understanding where your planning efforts should start?
How do you measure if you're being successful?
You need to know where you're starting.
So looking at what information and data might already exist.
So who are your top clients?
What kind of financial information is available to you?
Sometimes accounting departments and leadership groups are really free flowing with that information.
Sometimes you have to ask for it, but I find it's really helpful to have what the firm is doing in terms of profitability.
Who are your top clients?
Things of that nature that might help you understand the point in time the firm's at and where you want to head.
And so looking at that data helps you figure out what tactics you can implement and gives you a place to start.
And so you can measure your progress and success over the year.
How do you think that this planning is different than a marketing plan?
There are some nuances there.
What do you see as the big differences?
I think this would be a section of your marketing plan.
These are the marketing tactics you're going to implement.
So you may have already set some broader marketing goals with your leadership team or with your marketing team.
And then just kind of getting into what are the tactics we're going to implement.
And so those tactics that are going to position our firm well and bring brand awareness, give opportunities for our staff to share their expertise, give our teams areas to comment and discuss the industry.
Right.
Yeah.
So you're integrating the business development and the overall business strategy as a section in a marketing plan.
And depending on the size of your firm, you know, your marketing plan could be a one-pager, or an overview of where you're going to put your resources.
But it absolutely should have this piece about what the business development goals are.
Or it could be a multi-page document that's a kind of living, breathing thing that evolves, you know, every quarter kind of is adjusted.
Lots of ways to get to that.
Yeah, that was one thing I was thinking through is, from what I learned, having a marketing degree of, you know, this huge plan with a SWOT analysis and a huge competitive analysis.
And so much of my, you know, college education was around how to prepare a marketing plan.
And then when I got to this industry, I think the temperature and interest for that level of detail may vary based on your firm leaders and the type of company you're in.
So trying to figure out what do your firm leaders care about?
Does it need to be a PowerPoint slide deck that you present at a principles meeting?
Or are they more interested in lots of data and lots of information?
And they are looking for a report.
So I'd say that's one thing to think about is what does this deliverable look like to share this information?
Is it an Excel spreadsheet?
Is it something that you can integrate in your accounting system through your CRM?
But just taking some time to understand what's going to be valuable, because as marketers in this industry, we've got a lot of demands on our time.
So you want to spend that time where it's valued for your team and for your leadership group.
Right.
If you over commit to a huge plan, marketing or BD plan, and you just aren't able to get it finished or get to the action that would be included in there, you know, how much benefit is that actually providing?
Maybe instead, start with the items that are right in front of you that you can get your hands on and you can get an audience for and have good, meaningful conversations and build on it.
You know, year one of creating this plan can be very simple and you can add slides and a PowerPoint.
And by year five, you really have a robust program and people understand the reporting and they are familiar with how this looks.
I mean, that would be a great way to step into it if you don't already have a plan in place.
Yeah, I think that's an important point.
It's just starting somewhere.
It doesn't have to be perfect, but if you're maybe coming into a new team and there is nothing in place, just get something set.
Yeah, and start asking questions.
If you're new to the group or the firm, you are going to show a lot of value by asking good questions and digging in to, you know, what the differentiators are of this firm, how you as the marketing professional can best represent that.
What's the competitive analysis?
And is your firm even acknowledging that?
Have they looked at that?
Are they really just focused on their work?
I mean, those are things that marketing can own.
And by jumping in and starting to do the research and inform yourself is a really important part of that role.
Yeah, absolutely.
And depending on where you are starting from, you may not have the benefit of having worked with the previous marketing team.
Maybe everyone got laid off and you're starting fresh.
So, you know, you've got to start somewhere.
Yeah.
Which makes me wonder, because you are so great at getting things done and making progress on goals.
How do you keep people accountable and yourself accountable?
Yeah, well, I'm definitely guilty of loving a to-do list and getting processes in place to kind of help a team move forward.
Maybe that's a secret of my success or an annoyance to some people, but that's a talent that I have.
So as far as, you know, getting the BD team or other members who are out there working on projects, engaged with business development and marketing, pre-positioning efforts, I think consistency is really important.
Setting up a meeting cadence, whether it is a weekly meeting for your team, monthly, quarterly, with a set agenda that's very clear, that has the key areas that you want to focus on.
We can definitely dig into what those might be, but I don't want to get sidetracked on that quite yet.
But, you know, a set agenda that everyone can understand, it's very predictable, and they understand what the action items and outcomes of those meetings will be.
What I'm getting at is, let's create some accountability and ownership of these activities.
So putting it down on paper gives people a place to go in reference and understand what they need to do, and that they'll be expected to make some progress between meeting one and meeting two.
So Wendy, what tips or tricks or ideas do you have for keeping firm principles accountable?
Principles in my experience have been more or less accountable because they're so driven by growing the business.
I mean, they're actually financially invested in what marketing is doing, so I haven't really had issues with that.
But simple things like developing a great rapport with those principles so that you're a real person and just not an email address that they're not responding to at the end of a super busy day.
You know, they realize that you're there to support them and to make their lives actually easier and more successful.
So that relationship piece is pretty important, I'd say.
Yeah, I would definitely agree with the relationship piece.
I found that the deeper and stronger those relationships are with your leaders of your firm, the more sway, the more they come to you and they have a marketing issue, or even just the, I found out this piece of information and I knew you would need to know it.
I think that relationship piece, it can't be understated from just, hey, can we ride together to this meeting so we can chat and catch up?
I've certainly used commutes to Seattle from tacoma to connect with folks and firms I've worked with in the past.
And hopefully we'll be coming back to that more often someday.
Yeah, no, that's a good use of a car ride.
Talk strategy and maybe even just to get to know people more personally.
Workloads vary and home life varies and all of that, and really understanding, having empathy for the amount of pressure that is on a principle to be managing their work and also winning new work.
That's something that's important for marketers to keep in mind.
Yeah, it's definitely something I've understood better as my dog is trying to add her two cents to the podcast right now.
Yes, Mila, my four month.
Mila, what do you think about prepositioning?
Right.
Yeah, she has a lot of information in her four month old puppy brain about marketing and business development for AEC.
So one thing I found to be successful in helping to hold firm principles accountable or people that are asking to be held accountable, I've certainly experienced that, is just popping down in their office.
Say you've got, your marketing meeting got canceled and so you know that person's got those 30 minutes to an hour that was supposed to be blocked on their calendar.
Just head their office and say, hey, let's make those calls or let's set up that meeting that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks and just get it done.
So I think sometimes just having that person sitting in front of you saying, we're going to do this, let's do it, has been helpful to keep things moving forward.
Yeah.
And it occurs to me when you're saying that I'm imagining myself sitting at the desk of a principal and chatting with them.
Maybe you can be a mirror to how busy they are.
I mean, I'm sure they're very ambitious.
They want to do everything.
Can you advise them on what is an appropriate amount?
You know, how much can you do?
I'd rather be focused and make progress in the business development area than try to do everything and contact everyone, but not really build meaningful relationships in that way.
So maybe marketing, you just have that extra clarity for your principal so they can realize what to say no to and then say yes to other things.
Yeah, that's a great point.
What to say no to.
I think we're always thinking about what more can I do, but sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is no.
Yes.
It's so hard.
I know.
Yeah, so thinking about the planning effort, how long does it take to put together a plan, and when do you start that planning process?
What's the right time of year to roll out this type of thing?
Well, I think if your firm is on a calendar year, January to December, this time of year, the fall, maybe even into the summer, is a good time to start planning.
You've got a good amount of data from the previous year of how things were performing, you can check your metrics.
I've certainly been in instances where we didn't start until December or even January, just kind of obviously depends on your firm.
But it's a good rule of thumb is to start planning in the fall or the winter so that you're prepared to hit the ground running on January 1.
Yeah, the type A side of me wants to know where we're starting on January 1.
Of course, that could be April 1, depending on your firm, but I think that's nice to have maybe three months of massaging the plan, right?
There's a draft, you're getting buy-in, you may be meeting, you may be presenting.
So you don't want to rush that, you don't want to decide that it can be done in a month or a few weeks.
That really doesn't give people the time to properly review it, think through it, engage, add their thoughts.
It's a collaborative exercise.
Definitely depending on the size of your firm and what deadlines they have.
Maybe if you do a lot of school construction projects, your team is going to be really busy at the end of the summer and the beginning of fall as everything's getting wrapped up for school to start.
So I mean, really think about this from the perspective of the folks you're going to be talking to at your leadership level and your business development teams and what their availability is.
And then of course, the proposal load that you have on your plate, starting sooner, like you said, is really important because you never know what's going to pop up on the DJC that you're going to need to respond to.
So having some float or flex to your schedule so that you have time to put something together is important.
And one other thought of why the fall makes a lot of sense is, I remember being in sponsorship golf tournament mode through the summer.
And I feel like when that wraps up or you get towards the end of it, you can look back.
It's very fresh in your mind and understand, oh, that was really good.
Or we would want to increase our level of involvement next year and trying to capture that as part of the plan is just makes a lot of sense because you're not having to dig back too deep to think, well, was this effective or what will we do differently next time?
That actually brings up a great point that, you know, maybe building some time in throughout the year as different initiatives are completed to take a moment to think about, was that effective and document that right after it happens instead of coming to the end of the year and saying, huh, how did everything go that we did?
I can't remember.
My brain is right.
That's it.
And then also a consideration is how often does your leadership team, which you may or may not be a part of, revisit their strategic plan or communicate the company goals?
I would really want the marketing and business development planning to somehow dovetail with that.
So, you know, you want to match those up.
I think another thing to consider is what's the cadence of company meetings and leadership meetings in your firm.
If you have a quarterly all staff meeting, I think it's a great practice to talk about marketing and business development with the entire company because everybody has a role.
And if you're introducing marketing tactics and what you're doing to bring in work for the firm, that's just going to make your life easier going forward.
I've had some great opportunities to kind of coach new principles in firms.
I've worked in the past and, you know, when you work with someone as a project manager and kind of get them up to speed with how things are done in marketing and best practices, you just kind of grooming them to be a great ally for marketing and business development as they advance in the firm.
So I think always looking for opportunities to communicate marketing and business development goals and initiatives in a company forum is another great consideration as you're thinking about when to plan for your marketing tactics and business development goals for the year.
I know a client that actually takes that even one step further of including their project engineers in these business development sessions.
There is like absolutely a goal of having mentorship happen.
So people who are very new to their career, maybe just learning some of the ropes for the first time, are engaged in those conversations and understand what their role in business development would be.
And so it's not so much of a stretch when they become a project manager and then are expected to do a certain level of business development.
I think that is a really smart strategy.
Yes, agreed.
Engender the team early on.
The way that your firm gets work is if you're doing public work, is you're meeting with clients, you're building relationships and people need to know and like people to work for them.
So I think people that went to school to be an engineer, an architect or construction management may not have realized how projects really come in to AEC firm.
So starting that education early and often is important.
Who would you want involved at the table when they're either helping develop what that outline of the plan would be, or then maybe also who you'd be presenting to?
If nothing else, your marketing team, if you're a department of one, I would look for those marketing allies.
One tactic I've used in the past is being in a multidisciplinary firm where there were different departments with multiple principles is getting each department together.
Sometimes I did it over a lunch, and we just got everyone together.
We sent them some questions in advance and then just kind of talked.
Oftentimes, the questions hadn't really been thought about much, but then you got some people's fresh ideas or what was kind of top of mind.
So that was one way to get some input without it being a big onerous process, but just, hey, can we go to lunch and talk a little bit about what you're thinking about you want to pursue in the coming year?
And so I can figure out what marketing tactics are going to help support you in that.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Understanding what their goals are so that you can make a plan for achieving that as opposed to everything's just coming at you.
We don't want to be always in a reactive mode.
Yeah, I think by nature, most of us marketers want to plan things out and know what we're doing.
But oftentimes we get stuck in a reactionary and just in this proposal grind.
So taking a little bit of time whenever you can fit it in, to do some planning is going to pay off and make you feel like you've accomplished more when you set goals at the beginning of the year.
So maybe just a quarterly one on one with those principles is enough to do a check in.
Everyone can confirm that the goals haven't changed or something new, a new opportunity hasn't come up that you should be anticipating or pre-positioning for.
That seems like a smart way to go.
So what if you face resistance to your efforts or recommended tactics?
Yeah, that can happen sometimes, depending on the culture of your firm and the personalities of the leaders of your firm, that might happen.
So I think looking at how can you show the value?
What can you look at what you've done in the past and show the results from it?
Let's pick on a conference event.
You're not going to directly say, oh, we got this project from going to this conference, but hey, we decided we wanted to target stormwater master plan projects.
We went to the APWA conference, presented on that topic.
Then we met some clients who wanted to learn more, so we met with them, and then we helped them with a grant.
And then a couple of years down the road, that ended up leading to this stormwater design project.
So trying to look for those stories and examples where a tactic used in the past was successful and led to something as a way to say, let's try that again in this market in this way.
So kind of looking for some real world wins that have happened in the past to help the leaders understand that there is value in what you're recommending.
Yeah, and by having a plan written down, even if it's digitally written down, you might be able to tell stories that are success stories and you may be able to understand where things are not working very well and help redirect the energy.
Let's not do that anymore.
This is why it's maybe not producing the results we had planned on or whatever it might be, right?
So that could be a way if you want to funnel energy into a certain area is like, well, we can't do everything.
Let's take away from things that are not as effective.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
As you were speaking, it made me think of another example.
Data, you should be tracking your hit rate, how often you make the shortlist, and then how often you win or lose from the shortlist.
That was one way that I built my case for training for the staff that I used to work with.
We were making the shortlist a ton, but we're not nailing the interview.
So that was a way that I could show, here's all the times that we made it to the interview.
We had done all this positioning.
We should have won the project.
And the feedback in the debrief was that we didn't perform well in the interview.
So that was a way that I used some data and metrics to show that there's a deficiency in our presentation skills.
So let's put some funds to some training for that.
Yeah, yeah.
As marketers and leaders in marketing, we should be understanding what data we can get our hands on in a firm, whether it comes from time card tracking or pursuits like you mentioned.
There's a lot of data out there.
You just need to get it into the marketing realm so you can create some case studies based on that and absolutely something to look for at every opportunity.
One way I think to do that is to become friends with your finance and accounting department.
I think sometimes they just don't understand why you need that information or what it's going to help you do.
So go to lunch, go to happy hour, get to know them better.
And I found that that was a really great way to get the information that I needed to do my job well, is to help them understand why I needed it, what we did with it.
So I'd say make friends with the accounting and finance group at your firm.
Yeah, hot tip.
All right, so part of our format is that we'd really like to invite our listeners to ask questions.
Our vision for this is that it's an opportunity to chat with the Middle of 16 members, and we are here to share our thoughts on any subject that you're interested in.
So each week we'll be, you know, bringing up a listener question, and this week it is related to the business development plan.
Feel like this is a really good one.
My firm does not have a formal business development plan.
How should I go about determining the best marketing tactics?
That's a great question because that's not uncommon in our industry that there may be just an overall revenue goal for a firm, but not much in terms of what that's going to look like.
So I think one of the most basic ways that you could craft a business development plan is to just identify a handful of must-win projects.
Go to your firm, principles, project managers.
You know, even if you have to phrase it like, what kind of project would you like to be doing?
Or which client would you like to work with?
Ask them questions to get information, and then maybe you do a little bit of research and be like, okay, well, they want to do more schools with ex-architect.
This architect does a lot of work with Seattle Public Schools.
So what do they have coming up in the BEX 5 bond levy?
So I think that's one way is to identify a group of must-win projects, and then you build your plan and tactics and strategies around the best way to win those projects.
Yeah, that's good advice.
A simple Excel spreadsheet can go a long way in capturing the starting point of a business development plan.
I'd like to think about what are the revenue goals?
What are the other goals that you're trying to achieve?
And then, like Melissa said, addressing the must-win projects, and you will want to include who are the decision makers.
And that may be an agency or a certain type of owner or developer.
It may be individuals.
And mapping that all out, you'll start to see some patterns, and it will actually become, it'll feel more achievable because it's simply there.
I'd also say, think about it, of course, Japan has a firm that maybe this is a list of 10, or maybe it's 20 at the end of the year or something, but it doesn't have to be 200, and probably shouldn't be 200 at that point.
Start small and work that list instead of just being overwhelmed.
Yeah, and if you're a multidisciplinary firm, that is often a subconsultant, you're probably going to work on hundreds of projects in a year, but the ones that marketing can really make an influence over are those handful of must-wins that are bigger pursuits.
So those are areas where you as a marketer have more ability to influence the positioning of the firm to win that work.
Like we mentioned earlier, start getting some things on paper, looking for trends, understanding what data you need and what you already have.
And I think in one year of doing that, you will be in an excellent position to be really guiding strategy and getting buy-in and support from the principals and other people who are helping your business development efforts.
You don't have to have it all figured out on January 1.
It's like a puzzle and you're going to find bits and pieces and fill out these spreadsheets.
However, you're tracking this information, you're going to be filling this information out throughout the year.
So don't get discouraged if you don't have all the answers on January 1, 2022.
You're filling that out throughout the year and collecting information and finding allies in the firm that can help you gather that information, intelligence to help you be successful.
I feel like that is a great, great introduction to the planning for success.
Melissa, is there anything else you want to cover or shall we call it a podcast?
Let's call it a podcast.
My dog is sleeping, so hopefully she'll stay quiet.
Awesome.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for being here.
Good conversation, and then we'll dig into the other elements including building brand awareness and sharing your expertise coming up here.
Thanks everyone for joining us today.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
Kyle Davis is our producer with Graphic Design and Digital Marketing by Alison Rose.
If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.
If you missed anything or want more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.
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Until next time, keep on hustling.
Bye.
See you later.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.