It was 1993.
I was the receptionist and marketing coordinator at Hanscomb, Inc.,a brand that would later become Faithful & Gould.
I earned $16,900 a year, worked 50+ hours a week, and went to college full-time in the evenings. I loved my first job.
I remember wanting to make a good impression on my first day. I arrived early and sat patiently at the front desk, watching the secondhand move around the clock mounted above the front door. At 8 AM sharp, I turn the phone to “on.” We are officially open for business. Within seconds, the phone rings, and I overzealously answer, “Thank you for calling Hanscomb. How may I be of service?”
Unfortunately, it didn’t go over as well as I had hoped. The gruff New Yorker on the other end of the line was not amused by my southern girl twang and chipper disposition. But, while my execution needed work, I still think I was asking the right question.
Let’s fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was working in Orlando, Florida, and had the opportunity to spend a day at the SMPS SERC (https://smps-serc.org/) and cheer on Katie Cash (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kacash/) and Jeni Dzenis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenibaladzenis/) . They crushed it, btw!
My biggest takeaway from the experience was that there is a new energy among veteran AEC marketers and our newest Gen Z teammates alike.
Our industry was built on a relationship-based sales model. Seller-doers and business developers are responsible for generating leads, building relationships, and driving revenue. For many firms still today, the seller-doer / BD channel is the primary source for generating leads and nurturing relationships. So naturally, most firms built their marketing infrastructure to support the relationship-based sales model. Seller-doers and BD professionals network with people of interest who may need their services, and Voila! a lead is born.
Take a moment and think about the last project you nurtured from lead inception to contract award. The lead could have originated during a round of golf, an industry luncheon, or passed along through your supplier network. Often this process can take months or even years.
I mentioned in my inaugural letter (http://us9.campaign-archive.com/?u=4e09f285a144e0eb42f685e2c&id=b81869469d) that the most remarkable innovations often occur after a crisis. Perhaps a global pandemic was what the AEC industry needed to realize we are living in a digital age. When talent costs a premium and bandwidth is the greatest commodity, more firms are turning to new ways to generate leads and nurture relationships.
As marketing principals, it is our responsibility to dig into our company’s strategic goals and ask ourselves,
“How may I be of service?” Here are two ways our growth-minded clients answer that question every day:
01. Understand your highest value accounts and pivot accordingly. If you are budgeting, planning, staffing, and executing your marketing operations like always, you’ll be fine…at least for the next year or two, maybe five if you are a big brand. But mark my words – you read it here first – in a few years, you will notice your competitors who were early adopters of Account-Based Growth strategies will have a marked advantage. Here’s the pill that’s hardest to swallow – they will likely be spending less than they did with the relationship-based sales model while winning more projects, attracting the best talent, and adding more profit to their bottom line.
02. Train. Retrain. Keep doing it. I’m just going to spit this out because there is no good way to say it. The band-aid method it is. Most AEC marketers have had zero formal training in social media, digital advertising, brand positioning, data analytics, consumer behavior, and many other things they need to know. There, I said it. It’s crazy that marketing professionals must fight for this in our industry. Understanding the google algorithm isn’t something you can intuitively know, much less how to develop a strategy that will drive strategic goals. Duh, Judy. Who on earth would assume that?
The good news is that there are so many options for training both within the AEC marketing space and the broader B2B space. Where is my favorite spot to get my marketing geek on? Hands down, it’s MarketingProf’s B2B Forum (https://mpb2b.marketingprofs.com) . We would love for as many AEC Marketing Principals to join us this Fall in Boston (https://mpb2b.marketingprofs.com/register-fall-main/) , MA. If you decide to go, let us know here (http://eepurl.com/hZAf2n) and we will include you in the AEC Meet-UP while we are there!
Thanks for hanging to the end. Three newsletters in a row!
I couldn’t do it without all of you encouraging me to keep writing, speaking my mind, and sharing my passion for the industry I love.
