Katie Cash [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principals podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principals to address trends, challenges, and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends, and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners that that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior Vice President at Smartagies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. AEC leaders often say that they want marketing to be more strategic. I’m sure you are all sitting there nodding your head along. Either you’ve been one saying that or you’ve been on the receiving end where you’ve heard that. And the way they want stronger visibility, you know, they want better data management, they want more qualified opportunities, closer connection between marketing and business development.
Katie Cash [00:01:07]:
But creating that kind of marketing function is more than just adding tools or launching a campaign or really just saying that you want it. It often requires changing how people actually work across the organization. It is behavioral change. It is organizational change, and it’s really having conversations conversations to help people understand more about marketing, um, what marketing can do, what sales does, and the expectations from the team. And so today’s guest, I’m excited to talk to, um, because he’s doing that in real time. He’s experiencing it firsthand. Kevin Johnson is the Senior Director of Marketing and Sales Enablement at H.J. Russell & Company.
Katie Cash [00:01:51]:
He has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and creative strategy. He’s a guru of all things data and analytics, um, and a really, really strong leader. And in his current role, he is helping a legacy brand, you know, well-established organization rethink how marketing can support its people, um, its markets, and its continued growth. So, Kevin, I’m so excited to have you on AEC Marketing for Principles today. Thank you for carving time out.
Kevin Johnson [00:02:23]:
Well, thank you, Katie Cash. I appreciate this opportunity and looking forward to this wonderful conversation.
Katie Cash [00:02:29]:
Kevin, let’s not delay any, right? Like, let’s get to it. So I wanna begin with a phrase that I feel like gets used pretty often in our industry, and it’s basically this whole request of like leaders or technical operations that are the internal clients of marketing asking marketing or saying they want marketing to be more strategic. We want it to be more proactive. You know, we want you to be involved. Basically, they’re asking for things not to be last minute and to help them get ahead of RFPs, ahead of the market, you know, ahead of reputation, whatever it might be. But strategic marketing doesn’t happen just because somebody asks for it, right? It doesn’t happen in a snap. It doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s certainly not the same approach from one firm to a next because there’s so many nuances that happen across the industry.
Katie Cash [00:03:19]:
So I would love for you just to maybe share your perspective about what being truly strategic and what a strategic marketing function looks like today inside of an AEC firm. And I know you’re representing a PM firm, but what does that look like?
Kevin Johnson [00:03:36]:
That’s a very good question. And one of the things that, uh, I should say a book that I read way back when, um, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey, he said this, seek first to understand before being understood. Seek first to understand before being understood. And what that means with strategic marketing and what it means to me is start learning the business first. Um, focus on those objectives, those goals, And not so much the marketing deliverables, but it’s really about understanding the business and where the business is trying to grow, which markets and clients need to be prioritized. And then just reviewing what we have now, like reviewing the pipeline, determining how marketing can support those goals, and shifting really the mindset of what do we need to do? Like if someone comes to us, what do you need for us to do? And change that to more of what are you trying to do? In other words, uh, business development, our leader comes to us and say, make this for us. It’s not so much of us saying, oh yeah, we’ll make it, but it’s seeking first to understand the purpose. And then we make that decision from there, try to get the understanding where they’re going, and then we make the decision from there.
Kevin Johnson [00:04:55]:
That’s strategy. So it’s shifting from this mindset of I’m just gonna do, do, do, do, do, but it’s shifting the mindset to why am I doing what I’m doing? And does this make sense?
Katie Cash [00:05:07]:
I think that’s super helpful. And I find there’s some organizations that just culturally how they’re structured, marketing hasn’t always been, you know, under the tent, if you will, to understand where the firm is strategically trying to grow or some of the challenges. And they’ve really just been, you know, like a menu of services. I need a proposal, I need a presentation, I need a, you know, trade show banner up. I need some shirts, whatever. And the marketers have just been fulfilling those orders. And in that scenario, in that culture, they’re always just going to be reactive, right? There’s no way for them to be proactive because there’s nothing outside of a sales-initiated ask. But when marketing is privy to some of the conversations, or even if you’ve got a marketer that’s got a curious nature to them to ask some questions about, hey, I’ve been picking up on we’re chasing a lot of Hotels.
Katie Cash [00:05:58]:
Can you tell me a little bit more about that? What’s going on in that world? You know, who are you really trying to get in front of? I don’t know how you’re gonna use this. It will just allow, I think, the marketing team to leverage their skillset and be, you know, stronger storytellers, stronger graphics.
Kevin Johnson [00:06:16]:
Mm-hmm.
Katie Cash [00:06:16]:
Um, I come with a wrong, a strong graphic background, but knowing what you’re trying to do, Kevin, I can only imagine will set you up for a stronger creative brief for execution. Right. You know, having that context is super, super helpful. And the only way to start learning about it is to start asking questions, start reading some things. You know, I feel like marketers can take, um, the first step there and investing in themselves to learn a little bit more, to get a little outside of just the deliverables. But then outside of that, how do you start to kind of bring sales and marketing together when sometimes They’ve been very siloed, you know, and, um, one salutes the other. What does that look like?
Kevin Johnson [00:06:58]:
Bringing sales and marketing together, to me, it’s like a yin and yang. It goes together. They both functions work well and well together. I see marketing and sales enablement really part of the same growth strategy. Um, marketing creates awareness and positioning. Well, sales enablement takes our content and what we create, the information, the tools, and put it into the hands of the clients and to those that are important to us. And this helps really, marketing is creating the content and our business developers, our seller-doers, are putting it in their hands. This really helps us in improving client relationships while pursuing work.
Kevin Johnson [00:07:44]:
So the question is, what can marketing provide that helps our seller-doers have better content, in the conversation. So what are we doing to help our seller-doers to be better, to help them to sell, to help them to be more efficient in what they’re doing? And that’s, to me, that’s an important part of marketing and then the sales. We’re empowering our seller-doers, our business development, to be more efficient and more effective, and even sometimes providing them with data to help nudge that conversation a little bit further.
Katie Cash [00:08:18]:
Yeah. You know, I think in my time in the industry and having worked with different firms, I get to be a fly on the wall and kind of see how a lot of these, um, organizations are structured, Kevin. And I think a lot of them, they’ve got sales teams, whether it’s, you know, 100% dedicated full-time business developers out there pounding the streets, knocking on doors, or they’ve got seller doers like you mentioned, you’ve got it at Russell.
Kevin Johnson [00:08:43]:
Mm-hmm.
Katie Cash [00:08:44]:
And A lot of times I don’t see marketing get brought in until there is what I call a sales-initiated ask, right? You’ve got those individuals that they’ve hooked a meeting and now they need something to go use at the meeting, or they’re going to a trade show, they need something for the trade show, or there’s an RFP, or they’ve got an interview. And, you know, again, there’s a marketing or sales-initiated ask that engages marketing, and it’s really just about producing the deliverable. And what I find in that type of structure is it really doesn’t enable strategic marketing or proactive marketing because you’re just coming in at the bottom again. And so more and more what we’re seeing, and I think what I’ve been witnessing you do with your team, is find a way to have conversations earlier, more frequently. You know, you shared a little bit earlier, hey, you know, who are the primary accounts you’re trying to talk to? You know, let me understand who that is and then I can, I can build some narrative. Maybe it’s on social media, maybe it’s Um, I know you’ve done a lot with your website at the H.J. Russell & Company, but there’s other ways that marketing can support outside of an immediate need of we’ve got a meeting, we’ve got a proposal to do. And the more and more frequent that I’ve seen you, particularly in your organization, bring the seller doers in and talking with your marketing team on this is what we’re doing as one organization.
Kevin Johnson [00:10:09]:
Yep.
Katie Cash [00:10:09]:
Then they’re both kind of rowing in the same direction. You are enabling them to be more effective. You are enabling those business developers to go further, faster, because they’ve got the data that tells them, you know, this is who’s engaging, they’re warm, like, go after it. And then they come back and they’re like, yeah, that was a great meeting. That was so good. You know, and the partnership and the sparks are starting to fly. And I think slowly over time, you work at a legacy brand, they’re starting to think a little bit differently. They’re starting to be open to some new ideas.
Katie Cash [00:10:41]:
So maybe talk a little bit about when you first stepped into the organization, you came from a different type of enterprise. How did you catalog and think through maybe some of the first steps that started leading to some of these wins that you’ve been experiencing?
Kevin Johnson [00:11:01]:
Well, some of the things, I guess the question is so more like me coming into this role. I’ve been in about a year and a half, and what are the opportunities I recognized? Right? What are some of the things I recognized? Perhaps the biggest opportunity, in my opinion, was connecting things that were operated separately, almost.
Katie Cash [00:11:20]:
Right.
Kevin Johnson [00:11:20]:
Like, it, of course, H.J. Russell is a well-known brand, and we have offices across the United States, Dallas, Boston, Florida, um, even LA program management. And one of the things that I noticed is we had to make sure we connect Everyone together, bring people together to more collaborate. So what did that look like? Right? Again, seeking first to understand, speaking to our business unit leaders, learning their pipelines, putting together, bringing in a CRM, and we called it Project Mark. I appreciate Smartigy’s help on helping us research that. But you know, I worked with several CRMs, and so we we put in Project Mark, and that seemed to be very helpful for us. And the goal was to unite everybody. Gather.
Kevin Johnson [00:12:07]:
I also recognized what knowledge already existed that was inside our firm. We have some really skilled people inside this firm and people that have great connections, great contacts, and having them share that information with other business unit leaders. We established a meeting. And so what that did is added this cross-collaboration strategic meeting to where we could share clientele and actually gain more business. So our executives and our tech National professionals. They know their clients, they know their industry extremely well. And where we help out is we just try to capture that knowledge and turn it into something meaningful. And this is what I noticed when I first came in.
Kevin Johnson [00:12:52]:
Capture that knowledge, build a new website, capture that knowledge, adjust our RFP strategies, make these micro changes and help tell the story and really help move the needle forward to help us win some of these projects we recently won.
Katie Cash [00:13:08]:
If you’ve been in the industry for a moment and you look around, You probably realize that AEC marketing has changed, but the problem is that a lot of AEC marketing training hasn’t. We’re still talking about things for AEC marketers that were covered 20 years ago, even though our world has changed. That’s why Smartogee’s created SmartSkills, our online learning environment. It’s not fluff. It’s not theory. It’s not recycled advice. SmartSkills provides AEC marketers, seller-doers, and leaders with practical training on the skills for firms need right now for their marketing efforts. From account-based marketing and strategies to digital strategies to the anatomy of winning proposals and interview coaching techniques, through communications, both internal and external, AI adoption, and talent strategies that help to retain and recruit the best talent in an overcrowded market.
Katie Cash [00:14:03]:
For $275, your annual subscription will give you 12 months of Smart Skills sessions, plus access to our entire on-demand library. Every month we roll out a new training, and every month you get access to that on demand, or you can join us live for each event. Because winning more work doesn’t start when an RFQ lands in your inbox. We want you to get smarter before that next pursuit starts. So visit smaragdz.com/smartskills and learn more about our subscription. And you’ve been there, you mentioned just a little over a year and a half, and you’ve made some pretty big ripples in terms of effects of your thought, your leadership, kind of your direction there. So I want to applaud you for that and appreciate the plug on Project Mark. We did have some really great conversations in some previous episodes where we talked with some individuals from Project Mark.
Katie Cash [00:14:59]:
So listeners, if you haven’t checked it out and you’re thinking about data management and some CRMs, you might want to check out that particular episode that’s earlier in the season. But back to this whole idea of building a strategic marketing function within an organization. I’m a raving fan for AEC marketers. I think they are so great, super smart, super efficient. And one thing that I witness is that for the most part, as a group, they’re pretty resilient and can go with the flow and adapt to change at a rapid pace. I know I’ve experienced that through my career. I’ll date myself, but, you know, when I first came in, I was doing proposals in Microsoft Word, and then we tried to do it in PowerPoint, Don’t recommend that. That did not work for me.
Katie Cash [00:15:45]:
Um, and then like overnight we were in InDesign and then, you know, we’ve continued to evolve, um, in terms of tools and technology. We started building data management systems. We, you know, now you’ve got these AI systems, you’ve got proposal automation. And at the same time, what used to be marketing was doing proposals and presentations and, you know, making things look pretty grew to, okay, now they’re managing the website. Now they’re managing social media. Now they’re doing PR. Now they’re doing events.
Kevin Johnson [00:16:11]:
Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:16:11]:
Now we’re doing content creation with videos to feed all of these other things. And the marketer’s like, yeah, give me more. I got it. Okay. Give me some more. Another hat, another hat, another hat, another hat. But at the same time, on the flip side, there’s always been this constant request for being proactive, not as, you know, not as reactive. So things don’t always feel last minute.
Katie Cash [00:16:33]:
And this whole idea of being strategic and coming up above the particular ask that’s being thought of them. But not a whole lot of holistic looking at the organization, realizing what you’re really asking for is some change management. We got to do things differently. We would love to be more proactive, but that means we got to get involved up here versus down here. We would love to be more strategic, but that means we need insight here, not here when the RFP comes out. So again, I’m always going to advocate for the marketer, not just because I am one, but because I just think that they’re great. You’re a great goal. But sometimes the internal clientele has to be part of that change as well.
Katie Cash [00:17:11]:
Kevin, right? Like, it’s got to happen on both sides. So, I think you have modeled a really great leader and how you can bring that together and help both sides understand how to work more collaboratively together and how a little bit of change over here, say on the operations technical, you know, internal client team, if you will, can get them what they’re asking for with a little bit of change on the marketing thought process too. So, can you maybe talk a little bit about bridging those teams together and I feel like you’re gonna say, you know, seek first to understand again, butâ
Kevin Johnson [00:17:44]:
Well, well, well, of course. And, and, and really, really that whole model, you know, us marketing, we bring all this talent, you know, I, I can, I can speak with you about the data analytics, the, the InDesign, all the stuff, the web design, all that stuff. I can speak to all of that, but all of that, all that is good and dandy, but if we don’t understand the why, We don’t understand where we going, we’ll just be shooting to the stars and we won’t really get anywhere. So really establishing change, and I believe that’s kind of like the question you were asking, and what’s the challenge with that? Thinking about that, I, I do not assume everything needs to be changed just because from where I came from, we did things differently. Of course, you know, you said it well, seek first to understand before being understood. But going into a job, another layer I would add to that is look at what’s working. Look at what’s working, what’s not working. Understand the why behind that.
Kevin Johnson [00:18:44]:
Take the history that, you know, I got 20 years in the business and say, this is what was working for where my last role is and necessarily was working there. Will it work here or will it not work here? So my approach really, and if I were to put 3 things, it would be start small, prove the value, and build trust. And what I mean by that is I got another book. I mean, it’s Stephen Collins, Great by Choice, I believe it was called. One of, one of my favorite One of the things that changed me like 15, 16 years ago when I was reading on leadership, it was fire bullets, then cannonballs. And so when I say start small, the whole motive is you have a ship on one side there, you in 2 boats and you got one cannonball. How do you fire that cannonball and make sure you don’t miss? And the point is you shoot bullets, you have unlimited bullets, you shoot bullets and then you hit the ship and then you put the cannonball in that trajectory and you’ll win the war. So start small is meaning learn the business, figure out where you can help and start, keep things going.
Kevin Johnson [00:19:48]:
Keep, do the proposals, do the presentations, keep that going, but fire that bullet saying, okay, I talked to everybody. I understand this is where we need to go. So then start small. And then when you start small and you see value in that, then you say, hey, Look, this tends to be working, whether it was some KPI that’s showing this tends to be working. And when they see that small change you implement and they see that it’s starting to work, that’s when the value and to build trust comes. They start to build trust, and now you can put more energy into that effort. And then again, like I said, 5 bullets and cannonball, then you can fire the cannonball. And now you know you’re going into a right trajectory.
Kevin Johnson [00:20:32]:
And then of course you continue to monitor analytics. We all about analytics and make data-informed decisions. That’s the buzzword, to change and to pivot if you need to, but you’re going in the right direction.
Katie Cash [00:20:45]:
So, I’m gonna ask you, what were some of the small changes that you made to kind of test the appetite for change and new ideas at Rusty when you joined? What were some of those?
Kevin Johnson [00:20:58]:
Oh, absolutely. There’s a, there’s a lot.
Katie Cash [00:21:00]:
Yeah.
Kevin Johnson [00:21:01]:
Um, gosh. Okay. Perhaps the big one wasâ
Katie Cash [00:21:05]:
You can go straight to Cannonballs. Are you gonna?
Kevin Johnson [00:21:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. I, it’s kind of the same concept.
Katie Cash [00:21:10]:
Okay.
Kevin Johnson [00:21:11]:
See, H.J. Russell Legacy Brand, we didn’t have a CRM culture. I mean, so everyone was used to their way of doing things. So the 5 bullets and Cannonballs, of course I had to sell them on the CRM, but I didn’t sell it to where they have to implement a whole lot of things at first. We started working it. We built from the backend while we’re still doing proposals, while we’re still doing everything that needs to get done. We start building the backend and implementing the CRM, which was ProjectMark.
Katie Cash [00:21:43]:
Wow.
Kevin Johnson [00:21:44]:
From there, we had meetings and we slowly introduced them. A lot of times in marketing, we must understand that we require a lot of information. And if we constantly just say, hey, we got this. If we said, hey, we got this CRM, I need all of you to get everything in by this time, it’s not gonna be well never see because we are just saying we need everything. So what, what was the bullets? Our team started implementing projects and things for them just a little bit, and we’re saying, hey, look at this. We have a meeting, we show them the value. I also showed them what they were using in the past, which was Excel spreadsheet. And so it was a slow, I like to say this, crawl, walk, run.
Kevin Johnson [00:22:27]:
When in a new organization, crawl, walk, run. And so we started with this crawling process. Now we are at about, from a year and a half, no CRM, we are now at about 70% utilization of our CRM with all our business units across the United States. Now we’re still working and it’s the same crawl, walk, run. We’re still working to get that to 100%. But again, we make these micro changes. Once they get used to it, once the leaders understand it, now they are putting in the information. Now they are reporting using the information.
Kevin Johnson [00:23:05]:
That project market study spreadsheets. So that’s just one small, I guess, fire bullets than cannonballs. They saw the bullet that we fired, the bullet that they saw, hey, this may work. Then we put more energy and effort into that, and then we just pushed it forward. Now, again, even like any ship, when you, when you have the, some of you boat riders, when you’re, when you’re riding the ship, you’re gonna have to steer it a little bit just to keep it balanced. And that’s where we are now. So I’m telling you, and it’s making us a lot more efficient. It provides accountability, but it also provides transparency.
Kevin Johnson [00:23:39]:
And so it’s been a wonderful thing, that CRM that we got in. And I know many people using CRMs can testify with me, getting one of those started is a really good thing.
Katie Cash [00:23:50]:
It’s certainly, I think, a wishlist item for a lot of marketers operating without one. And it’s certainly something that I think people can leverage in a smart way. to, you know, make those data-informed decisions to help bridge the gap across the organizational enterprise and to help elevate marketing, really. So, I think that was, that was a good first example. I think that’s great. Okay.
Kevin Johnson [00:24:15]:
Yeah, I figured that would be a big one.
Katie Cash [00:24:17]:
I like, I like that one. I like that one. Okay. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the nuance of, you know, the internal clients that marketing serves, you know, are often operational business folks, right? They are leaders that are focused on delivering projects. They’re managing risk. They’re trying to protect the margins for the firm. They’re dealing with clients that are calling them hot and heavy with real challenges, right? Like, my building’s falling, or nothing got delivered to the site today. I thought you were pouring concrete, whatever it might be.
Katie Cash [00:24:55]:
And so sometimes I find that Marketers don’t exercise some EQ sometimes to understand that world before they start layering on like some marketing things that just feel like nice to have, not have to have, kind of like a CRM. Like they worked for 50 years without one. Why do they need one now? And I don’t have time to do that. And so I thought it was really smart in your story. You said, we did it. We did the backlog first. We didn’t put a lot of onus on them first until we could kind of prove proof of concept. So, So I want you to maybe talk a little bit more about how marketers can better understand what their internal clients’ day-to-day looks like so that we can be better equipped to approach with requests or ideas in a manner that will be better received because we’ve taken time to understand who our internal clients are.
Katie Cash [00:25:52]:
Because a lot of it is about working with personalities, right?
Kevin Johnson [00:25:57]:
Yes, yes, yes. So, it’s, so the question more so is about how do we work with our internal clients and their needs while still delivering? Is that what I’m getting at?
Katie Cash [00:26:08]:
I’ll share this story, but like, I find, um, I find a lot of marketers, especially younger marketers, get frustrated trying to serve their internal team because they feel like they’re not responsive. They don’t give good direction. The comments that they get are non-actionable. You know, they’re not like actual red lines to things, or they just don’t feel like marketing is a priority. So therefore, marketing spends all night and all weekend working on proposals because the technical team didn’t get them the stuff, right? There’s a whole like meme category on the internet for AEC marketers that kind of amplify that sentiment. But from the perspective where I sit, it’s, we’ve got to take a minute and realize who our internal clients are and they don’t work for us. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Katie Cash [00:26:53]:
And they actually pay our paycheck. In their world, Yes. Is a lot harder than ours, and it’s a person. So let’s recognize who we’re trying to service and find a way to connect with them person to person where we can get them what they need, but we can also work better together is kind of the idea there.
Kevin Johnson [00:27:12]:
Yeah. Okay. I see what you’re saying. It’s how can we work with them? Because there is some frustrations in marketing. We always trying to, uh, get some information response. The responsive is a challenge. To us sometimes, because I think it’s for us to work with our internal clients, which is our execs and those that need help from us. We need, I think we need to understand their world first.
Kevin Johnson [00:27:37]:
And it goes back to understanding. And a lot of times understanding, understanding their world first will help us to know how to respond better, more efficient. See, strategy is in everything. It’s not just external. You gotta use strategy when you’re dealing with your internal clients because they do pay the bills. We are their to support our internal clients as much as we’re there to support our external clients. So like I tell my team, we’ve gotta understand what is on their mind is different than what’s on our mind. They’re thinking about client schedules, risk, all that stuff, staffing, hiring, firing, that sort of thing.
Kevin Johnson [00:28:13]:
And we at marketing, we just think about, hey, this is what we gotta produce and we need this information now. One strategy that I implemented That I think worked well for us when it comes to gaining response and trying to get our clients to respond. That is something that really just calling them and talking to them, scheduling 5 minutes. If we need content, if we need anything, we just call them, hey, let’s get 5 minutes of your time. Let’s get 10 minutes of your time. And we just fill out the information with them while they’re there. A lot of times we are sending marketing, we send documentation to them and we say, we need this by this time and that time, and they’re busy. And because they’re busy, they sometimes they don’t see our email or sometimes they don’t take it as a level of importance.
Kevin Johnson [00:29:02]:
And a lot of times marketers just get frustrated with that. And sometimes we don’t even follow up, which I think every marketer should learn to follow up. When we understand their world, we learn, we’ll figure out a strategy to work with them.
Katie Cash [00:29:15]:
Yeah.
Kevin Johnson [00:29:15]:
Uh, to make it more of a collaborative, I would say a collaborative response than a transactional response. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Katie Cash [00:29:23]:
For sure.
Kevin Johnson [00:29:23]:
So to me, collaboration will always beat transactional, meaning, hey, instead of saying, hey, I need your name, your email, I need like a resume, I need all this information filled out, and you just give ’em a document. That in my opinion is transactional. But if we call them and say, hey, let’s talk 5 minutes, 10 minutes, let’s just go through this together, that’s collaborative and that works way better.
Katie Cash [00:29:47]:
And I always try to push for a win-win, a collaborative I think that’s really helpful, advocating to speaking their language, being more collaborative than task-oriented, transactional is really, really helpful. So do you have any stories, Kevin, where you could protect the names, but things that you’ve learned in those collaboration conversations with your internal teams that have told you, oh, This is why that’s XYZ, or, hey, I’ve rethought this. We need to go about it a different way based on a conversation. Like, have you had any of those aha moments where maybe you could share some of those stories?
Kevin Johnson [00:30:30]:
So me coming in into this role and just observing the marketing department, probably the first 6 months or so, seeing how our internal clients was reacting to marketing requests was an eye-opener for me. So one thing I learned when I came in, the marketing team was not looked at too favorably. And through my research and just monitoring, it’s because that there was a lack of communication in certain areas where there was need. And because of that, marketing was, there was a lack of respect for marketing and marketing had a lack of respect for the internal clients. So what we had to do is shift the mindset to a win-win. And so with that being done, the way we approach our internal clients had to be done differently, had to be established differently. We don’t come with a problem. If we mention a problem, we have a solution for that problem.
Kevin Johnson [00:31:37]:
So we always try to bring a solution in. So what I established is, I know there’s a problem, there’s an issue, maybe we’re having a challenge with this internal client, and you know the challenge, but don’t just bring the challenge, bring the solution. So in other words, explain the problem, but also provide a solution, and then let the conversation lean off of the solution we provided, not so much on the problem. So So I had to bring about a change in the marketing department to how we communicate our challenges to our internal clients. So I had to meet with all of them. I had to talk with all of them and hear, seek first to understand, and then get that information and then bring back to our team and make our team more of a collaborative team. And it worked. It’s working now.
Katie Cash [00:32:33]:
Kevin, I appreciate you sharing your story, and I know you are currently working to both change the marketing function within your organization and the way your organization thinks about marketing and kind of rebuilding that trust, rebuilding that internal reputation for the excellence that your team delivers to your internal clients. I would love for you to maybe share a recommendation, or it could even be a wish item, if you will, but what do you hope hope more AEC firms change in terms of how they view or how they structure or even how they could support marketing moving forward? You’ve kind of lived through this whole change idea in the last 18 months or so, doing a lot.
Kevin Johnson [00:33:21]:
Yes.
Katie Cash [00:33:21]:
It’s not done. I know you’re still working on things.
Kevin Johnson [00:33:23]:
It’s still work.
Katie Cash [00:33:24]:
And it’s never done, right? We are always evolving, always getting smarter, always, um, finding ways to work more efficiently. But what is one thing that you hope more AEC firms, in terms of how they view structure, or support marketing?
Kevin Johnson [00:33:39]:
So my hope forâ to see AEC firms, they look at marketing not just as a production shop, just do, do, do, do, do, but look at it as a growth shop. Look at it as a growth partner to help grow the business, to help generate leads, to help meet our financial goals. I mean, now execution still matters. That’s always gonna be there, but marketing should also help. We should also help our firms understand our client relationship and equip our, really equip our seller-doers to be more efficient. So ultimately, I want them to look at us as marketing as a growth partner, not just the production shop. And that’s been the challenge. And for most of us marketers, because we’re pumping out information, but they should not look at us just for that, but look at us as a growth shop.
Kevin Johnson [00:34:43]:
Like we help to grow the business, help to grow the company.
Katie Cash [00:34:47]:
I love that.
Kevin Johnson [00:34:47]:
And that’s, to me, that’s one thing I would, if I can leave anybody, anyone that’s listening to this, don’t let your shop just look like just just a simple production, but find ways that you can sell or you can advertise or you can promote that we’re not just a production shop, we are a growth, strategic growth partner. And that’s what I would say.
Katie Cash [00:35:13]:
I think that’s smart. You know, it’s marketing and AEC has evolved a lot more from just being the in-house kinkos, right?
Kevin Johnson [00:35:20]:
Yeah, I like that.
Katie Cash [00:35:22]:
And I think a lot of marketers would welcome the conversation where their business development partners, you know, their internal clients would come to them and be like, hey, I just learned this. How can you help me XYZ? And for the technical team to know that they don’t have to have the answer to know what they’re asking for.
Kevin Johnson [00:35:40]:
Mm-hmm.
Katie Cash [00:35:40]:
Um, you know, you kind of have to think about it in the world of design and construction. Owners hire architects because they can’t draw it out, but they know what they kind of want. They know what they need. They know they need so many spaces and they’ve got, you know, what the mission is. And they leave it to the architect to come up with the solution. Um, you know, same with construction, right? It’s the same with marketing, you know, allow the marketers to be there to help find ways to communicate, to connect you with the audience where they live online, offline, to help give you information on what’s working and how the brand is being perceived and what engagement looks like and how to really dig into what that really means and be that true partner. So. I appreciate that.
Katie Cash [00:36:20]:
So I support that on both sides of the table, Kevin. Really, really great. And thank you for sharing the honest perspective and what your journey has looked like kind of on this whole trajectory of change. I know you stepped into a role and weren’t quite sure what you were stepping into, but had a lot of faith, a lot of trust, and you’ve continued to garner a lot of faith and trust in your leadership and continue to watch you. And anybody listening, I would encourage you to check out H.J. Russell and connect with Kevin and continue to watch what they’re doing. I think this has been a valuable reminder for everybody listening today. So Kevin, thank you for being here.
Kevin Johnson [00:36:59]:
Well, thank you so much, Katie. I appreciate you. I have much respect for you, Judy. Um, of course the book that I got to put a plug for Judy’s book.
Katie Cash [00:37:08]:
Um, I was waiting for you to say, I read this really great book written by Judy Clark.
Kevin Johnson [00:37:12]:
I did. And it’s funny because you see it right here, you know. I mean, so it, you know, it would be a very good book on strategy, especially for those looking to go beyond just a doer mentality. And that’s a challenge for all of us marketers going from a doer to more of a strategic thinker. And for anybody that’s new in this world and you got the role and you’ve been mostly a doer, check out this book, look at the podcast, and just learn to think strategically because that is where true change happens, is when strategy meets production. So, that’s my little plug for the book.
Katie Cash [00:38:00]:
We appreciate it, Kevin, and we appreciate your partnership. And for everyone listening, thank you for staying till the end. We will see you here next time, right back on AEC Marketing for Principals. We’ll see you soon. AEC Marketing for Principals is presented by Smartagies, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior VP at Smartagies. I would love to hear from you if you have a question, a guest request, or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to [email protected]. And if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast page at smartages.com/podcast.
Katie Cash [00:38:50]:
We hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues about our show and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.