Top Blog Posts of 2014

I was complaining to my wife about the latest "year in review" magazine edition I had received in the mail when I remembered that I always finish the year by reviewing my top blog posts over the previous 12 months. Oh well, there would seem to be a sizable audience out there who appreciate the look-backs even if I don't. So for you, I offer my 10 most popular posts of 2014. 

And let me take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt thanks to the growing number of you who read my blog regularly. Blogging on a weekly basis can be a real hassle at times, but you (and especially the feedback I receive from some of you) make it all worthwhile. May you have a prosperous new year. If I can help in any way, don't hesitate to ask.

1. Is Your Sales Approach Aligned with the Buyer? This post was a surprise first-place finisher, recalling how I felt bereft of good ideas when I wrote it. But the story I told to illustrate the point seemed to resonate, indicating that I'm not the only one who has experienced different buyers in a single client organization being in different places in the buying process.

2. Does Free Advice Devalue Your Services? I've debated this point with clients and colleagues for years, and the popularity of this post suggests that the debate still rages. It's an important question for those of us who are convinced that the best way to sell is to serve the buyer. My experience and research debunks the myth that helping prospective clients (for free) ultimately hurts your firm.

3. Hiring the Right Rainmaker. Many A/E firms turn to hiring a dedicated seller (or more) to make up for the shortcomings of their seller-doers. It makes sense, but is not a decision without risks. In my experience, more rainmaker hires disappoint than meet expectations. This post offers advice on how to make this option work for your firm.

4. 3 Dimensions of the Client Relationship. There are still many in our profession who seem to think that building client relationships through the sales process is all about making friends. But the other two dimensions of the relationship are more important—and often overlooked.

5. Creating Skimmable Proposal Content. This is the most important proposal differentiator that no one talks about—making your proposals easy to read and navigate. This post outlines a process for helping technical professionals, who tend to be overly verbose, create proposal content that can be readily skimmed by client reviewers (which is what they're going to do with or without your help).

6. Investing Nonbillable Time. Many firms mistakenly characterize nonbillable time as a hindrance to maximizing profitability. Nothing could be further from the truth. Putting nonbillable time to its best use is critical to sustained profitability and business success. Unfortunately most firms fail to take the steps necessary to do this.

7. Selling: It's Not About You. We all dislike the apparent self-interest observed in how most salespeople approach us. But do we repeat the same mistakes when we step into the seller's role? In my experience, yes. This post describes how to avoid the widely disdained sales stereotype, starting with shifting the focus from yourself to the buyer.

8. Why You Should Be Hoarding Content. Why aren't more A/E firms embracing content marketing? Because most of them are content poor. But there are many benefits of developing the practice of constantly accumulating good content that go beyond simply supporting your marketing efforts.

9. Collaboration as Competitive Advantage. Our industry recognizes the need for a more collaborative, cross-disciplinary planning and design process. But success in this realm is still rare. You can take advantage of this shortcoming by following the steps in this post in making collaboration a differentiator for your firm.

10. Is Advertising Worth It? Companies in other industries spend billions on advertising, so it must have value in our profession—right? Surveys of professional service marketers don't give much credence to advertising. Your marketing dollars are probably better spent elsewhere, as this post explains why.

Organizing the Sales Effort

Optimism is on the rise in the A/E business as 2015 holds promise of continued improvement in economic conditions. Some seem to think that a return to normalcy is just around the corner. But count me among the skeptics. The growth in new business opportunities is certainly welcome, but the competition for work isn't easing up.

One thing the Great Recession should have taught us is that most firms could stand an overhaul in how they do business development. When times were good, they got by with a loosely coordinated, ad hoc approach. The economic downturn exposed their shortcomings, although many continue to blame external circumstances rather than acknowledge their weaknesses.

For those of you who still see the need to rethink how you pursue new work, let me suggest a new year's resolution—get your sales effort better organized. Where to start? The specific strategy will vary by firm, but I've found that most will benefit substantially by taking the following steps:

Anoint your "sales force." In many firms, people's sales responsibilities are more implied than explicit. If this is true at your firm, the first step is to formally identify your sales force and define their respective duties (see below). Assigning responsibilities is not the only reason for doing this. Sales is often perceived as a lonely activity, which is particularly a problem with technical professionals who are already uncomfortable with the role. You want to make them feel part of an active team where there is sharing, support, and mutual accountability.

Fit people to the appropriate roles. There's a tendency to view sales as a monolithic activity requiring a specific skill set (which many technical professionals conveniently claim to lack). But in fact there is a role for almost everyone. Activities include:

• Conducting market or client research
• Building and maintaining a network of contacts
• Participating in professional and trade associations
• Making "warm calls" to prospective clients
• Calling on existing clients for information and leads
• Participating in conferences and trade shows
• Helping develop your firm's intellectual capital
• Developing tools and resources for clients
• Public speaking
• Writing (or supporting writing) for publication
• Providing webinars and seminars
• Developing and making sales presentations
• Writing proposals
• Negotiating fees and contract terms
• Serving as a "client advocate" after the sale  

The key is assigning these and other responsibilities to the right people. In fact, given the diversity of sales-related tasks, your sales force will likely include junior professionals and administrative staff. You might want to refer to the Sales Funnel as a way to think about organizing your sales force. In particular, make sure you have enough "above-the-funnel" activity to generate the appropriate number of sales leads.

Budget a specific allocation of time for their assigned responsibilities. Most firms do business development with leftover time, which is a formula for mediocrity. Sales time must be treated like project time, where there are certain tasks that need to be done regardless of interruptions or changes in schedules. Budgeting time also mutes the common complaint that selling detracts from utilization. The goal is to specifically devote a portion of people's nonbillable time to business development, not steal billable hours (although individual utilization goals may well change to accommodate their new sales assignments). Once you've made allocations, track "sales utilization" to make sure that adequate time is being expended.

Provide training and coaching. Although most professionals are turned off by the stereotypical sales persona, they typically default to many of the same behaviors—talking too much, listening too little, focusing on themselves—because that's all they know. Training is typically necessary to help seller-doers employ a client-centered approach that is both more palatable (to the professional and buyer alike) and more effective. But since improved sales performance ultimately depends on behavior change, classroom training alone won't suffice. You need ongoing coaching to reinforce application of the new strategies over time.

Manage your best sales opportunities. Research indicates that as many as 80% of sales leads are neglected or mishandled. You certainly can't afford that kind of inefficiency with your most critical sales opportunities. The leading A/E firms typically have some form of capture planning process to guide their efforts in closing on their best leads. This earlier post outlines a proven approach to maximizing your success on your top sales opportunities.

Hold regular sales team meetings. These meetings are designed to build the team, define assignments, review progress, and encourage accountability. Keep them short and to the point (usually no more than 30 minutes). Focus on sales activities, not proposals (you want to avoid mistaking proposal volume for productive sales efforts). I recommend weekly meetings at the start. Once increased activity and accountability appears sustainable, then it may be appropriate to go to biweekly meetings. Make sure that someone is in charge of the meetings so they don't drift off course.

5 Contrarian Steps to Winning the Shortlist Interview

How to differentiate your firm has long been a hot topic of discussion, with many concluding that it is increasingly difficult to do so in the A/E industry. But is the problem a matter of discovering what to do, or having the courage to do it? Conformity seems to be a powerful force in our business. How else do you explain the remarkable similarities in how we market, sell, write proposals, and conduct shortlist interviews?

For the sake of this post, let me focus on the latter, which puts us closest to the purchase decision where differentiation matters most. Can you take a different approach to shortlist interviews than your competitors—and win more than your share? Indeed you can, as I've learned in winning about 80% of the interviews I've helped firms prepare for over the last two decades. Below, I share five contrarian steps I routinely advise my clients to take:

1. Seek authenticity over polish. Clients typically ask you to spend the bulk of the time making a presentation. Odd, isn't it, that they give so much weight to something that most technical professionals are not that good at. Is the secret to winning the shortlist interview really about proving yourselves to be the more competent presenters? I think not.

Feedback from clients indicates that soft factors such as trust, personal chemistry, commitment to the client, and genuine interest in the project drive the final decision. Your competence was assessed during the proposal stage; now the focus shifts to making the client feel comfortable about the prospect of working with your firm on this project.

Public speaking, ironically, makes most technical professionals look uncomfortable. Focusing on helping them flawlessly deliver the presentation should hardly be the primary objective. More often than not, the net effect of that approach is a competent but detached presentation, often with the essence of phoniness. When the goal is to engage your audience and persuade them, I'll take a speaker who comes across as authentic over one who is merely polished.

So I push the shortlist interview team to find their comfort zone, where they are best able to present themselves as people you'd like to do business with. How? I few suggestions:

• Make your presentation personal and interactive. I'll say more about this below.

• Limit formal speaking parts. Don't make the mistake of concluding that every member of your interview team has to stand up and speak to PowerPoint slides. Even if they are all accomplished speakers (highly unlikely), that makes for a disjointed presentation.

• Interview team members instead. Many technical professionals are much more impressive in an informal exchange than a formal speaking part. Ask them questions and have them share their insights instead of making them presenters.

• Don't just talk; do something. Write something on the flipchart or white board, spread out a site plan on the table and speak to it, hand out a checklist that outlines critical steps of your approach. Actions are more engaging than words alone.

• Practice until it looks natural. That's my goal rather than trying to turn technical professionals into compelling presenters. What client doesn't want to work with real people instead of the coached-up (or unprepared) ones they often see at this stage?

2. Engage the selection team in a dialogue. Your proposal was a one-way presentation, so why resort to a verbal monologue when you have the client in the room? The obvious answer is because they asked you to. But don't assume that's your only option. Simply ask if you can have a dialogue. In my experience, the selection team will agree 99% of the time.

Here's how: Ask, "To confirm that we're speaking directly to the issues that matter most to you, would it be okay to ask you a few questions during our presentation?" Or something to that effect. Of course, you will have already prepared your presentation in anticipation that it would include some two-way discussion—adding a few questions at critical junctures.

When your team and the selection team are conversing over the course of the shortlist interview, you have staked out a powerful advantage over the firms that simply follow the instructions. Dialogue has many benefits, including promoting comfort, helping you target your message, previewing the working relationship, confirming understanding, and uncovering and resolving concerns.

When you engage in a dialogue from the start of your presentation, the usual Q&A period at the end disappears because their questions have already been answered. Think about it: Would you prefer to have 45 minutes of conversation with the client or 15 minutes (of Q&A)? The answer is so obvious, I'm baffled why more firms don't ask the question: "Can we talk?"

3. Expand on your proposal. Another mistake that A/E firms commonly make is to spend the shortlist interview mostly rehashing their earlier proposal. If you want to increase your chances of winning, you need to tell the client more. Take this opportunity to advance your proposal to the next level.

This starts with a commitment to put in the effort. I don't understand why most firms spend far more time writing a proposal when the odds of winning are longer than preparing for a shortlist interview with much better odds. When I work with shortlist interview teams, they often comment that they've never spent so much time preparing for an interview. "That's why you don't win more of them," I respond.

So what's involved in building on your proposal? You might offer some preliminary design concepts, additional site information, more detailed cost estimates, further definition of your client service process, introduction of new solution options, or a response to perceived weaknesses in your proposal.

4. Talk about the working relationship. When the selection team is trying to assess what it would be like to work with your firm, why would you not talk about it? Yet A/E firms rarely do in either their proposal or the shortlist interview. That's another key opening to distinguish your firm from the competition. 

Describe how you will deliver an exceptional client experience. For it to be believable, you need to outline specific steps and commitments you will make. I've been able to garner major wins over the years largely because our firm was the only one to address this, proposing a unique client service delivery process. Of course, this message won't resonate with every client. But the potential competitive advantage is too significant to ignore it.

5. Neutralize your liabilities. Client selection teams often face a difficult choice, to pick one firm among two or more that offer similar advantages. In a close competition, the client usually looks for reasons not to select you. Thus you should try to determine where you are most vulnerable to being deselected and address it head-on. Your competitors will typically avoid doing this.

Most likely, you have a sense of your potential weaknesses. Your credentials are not as strong, you haven't worked previously with the client, you didn't do the best job uncovering project insights during the sales process, etc. It's always a good idea to ask the client if they have any concerns or questions after reviewing your proposal that they'd like you to address during the shortlist interview. Sometimes they'll share that information with you.

There are a number of ways to address your vulnerabilities, including:

• Lessen their impact by leveraging your strengths, assuming you have some notable strengths that can offset perceived shortcomings. Do this in the context of explaining your project approach and outcomes, not in bragging about your strengths.

• Describe how you'll shore up an apparent weakness. For example, if you don't have an existing working relationship, describe the steps you'll take to build it quickly (see above.)

• Indirectly highlight your competitor's flaws. This obviously requires some nuance, but can be very effective when done correctly.

• Prepare for the toughest questions the client could ask. It's critically important that you anticipate the hardest questions that might come up during the interview, and spend time working on your answers in advance.

Clients say they want shortlisted firms to be well prepared, to personally engage the selection committee, and to show their enthusiasm. Nothing earth shattering there. But it's interesting how seldom those three traits are all evident. Much of the blame is due to misplaced objectives (e.g., focusing on your qualifications) and putting in too little effort.

Remember, the goal is to stand out, not fit in. Don't follow the crowd, become a contrarian. The following table highlights the differences: