Katie Cash [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles 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 and that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior Vice President at Smartegies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008,
Katie Cash [00:00:43]:
we all know that AI has quickly become one of the most talked about topics in AEC marketing. I don’t think I have had one conversation or been to a single event or webinar where AI has not come up right. It just seems to be part of every everyday vernacular. But for many firms in AEC that have dabbled in it, the experience has been a little bit mixed. Some love it and are like full blown adopted. Others are a little bit like, I put some garbage in, I got garbage out. It’s not for me, it’s not taking over the world. But really what we’re starting to see in the world of marketing is more content, right? It’s allowing us to produce much more content at speed.
Katie Cash [00:01:25]:
It is also meaning there’s more revisions because we know when the robots wrote it and so it requires a human eye to fix some of that, maybe delete more than just the EM dashes that it’s putting in, but really make it sound a little bit more authentic. But it’s also putting what I would say, sometimes unnecessary pressure on already stretched in house marketing teams that are already trying to do so much. And so what’s becoming clear is AI is not just changing how we get work done, but it’s exposing how work gets done in the first place. So a little bit of a double edged sword today. And today my guest on the show has seen that from both sides. Today I get to talk to the head of AEC Marketing Innovation from OpenAsset. I get to talk to Rachelle Ray, not Rachael Ray, just so that you’re not confused. And Rachelle has spent years inside an architectural firm before she switched over to OpenAsset.
Katie Cash [00:02:24]:
She lived the day in and the day out reality inside a professional services firm. And now that she helps AEC firms across, you know, the nation, across the world, she has a much broader view of what’s going on in the industry. So today I’m really excited to talk to Rachelle about what’s really changing, what’s not What AEC firm should do differently as we continue to add to our technology stack and find ways to work more efficiently, more effectively, maybe do more with less, maybe minimize some of the burnout that our industry comes to experience with AEC marketers. So, Rochelle, I’m so excited to have you and to kind of pick your brain today.
Rachelle Ray [00:03:04]:
Katie, thank you so much for having me today. I am so excited to talk about this topic that kind of wraps around all of my passion topics that you just touched on, which is marketers, headaches and burnout and how to actually work with this new fancy magical AI tool. Right.
Katie Cash [00:03:21]:
It’s. It’s part magic, part wizardry, you know, part reality. So, yeah, we’re all just trying to figure it out. We all want it. I just came back from a conference and you guys were there and all kinds of activity around your booth wanting to know about, you know, how to use the tool, how it plugs in with everything. Everybody’s trying to figure out the latest and greatest tool. But I want to pause and kind of go back in time a little bit and I want you to think a little bit about your time before you are at OpenAsset. And maybe let’s talk what the proposal production process looked like before this whole AI innovation.
Katie Cash [00:03:59]:
Like, what did that really look like? What did it feel like? How did things get put together?
Rachelle Ray [00:04:04]:
Yeah, so I, as you said, have worked in house. I also worked as a consultant. So I got to kind of stick my fingers in a bunch of different firms processes and kind of across the board it was largely the same. An RFP comes in.
Katie Cash [00:04:17]:
Right.
Rachelle Ray [00:04:18]:
Maybe we knew it was coming, maybe we didn’t. We go, no go. It, which I’m going to put in air quotes here. Go no go. Whether we had a process or any sort of questionnaire largely just became someone’s gut check. Usually a principal saying, no, we got a good chance at this one. And then marketing kind of disappeared and waved our magic wand in the corner and produced this beautiful proposal.
Katie Cash [00:04:42]:
Right.
Rachelle Ray [00:04:43]:
And there’s some chaos between producing that proposal, getting edits, working with the technical team. But really everything I tried to do was an exercise in efficiency. So I put a ton of emphasis on organization and proposal closeouts and templating to capture any new information we got in a proposal so that we had easy access to the latest information. Because, you know, we’re doing a lot of, I’ve heard it called dumpster diving into your server to go find information.
Katie Cash [00:05:11]:
Yeah.
Rachelle Ray [00:05:12]:
And so the more structured I could have my teams be, the easier it was to retrieve that information because that was the biggest struggle for us. But of course, you know, there’s chaos across the system.
Katie Cash [00:05:22]:
I love calling it dumpster diving. Like I have in my mind, you know, you go dumpster diving, you come out with this gem and you’re like, oh, my gosh, this was the winning healthcare approach. Like, I’m gonna save it, it’s gonna be great. But what I often experienced was like, my current self being mad at my past self for not closing out my proposal process, because I know that project profile I wrote up was so whiz bang perfect, but I can’t remember what dang proposal it lives in. So here I am and I’ve got like 10 tabs open and I’m trying to do, you know, the search and find for the name. And I called it something different and oh my gosh, it was so, so frustrating. But I think even if you fast forward to today, even with tools and technology, what you just laid out as the proposal production process is largely the same. Even if you know a proposal’s coming down the pipe, you never really know when it’s actually going to hit.
Katie Cash [00:06:19]:
Like, you could be preparing for it for, say, February. I have clients that have fabulously documented pipeline and they, you know, this is when it’s going to come out and they’re actively planning workload. Some of them, gasp, have already started writing the response because they’re the incumbent and they know what it’s going to look like. Yeah, people actually do that. But at the same time it’s like, okay, but it didn’t come out in February. I wonder why it didn’t come out in February. Is it getting funded? Like, there’s all this curiosity that happens and then for whatever reason, we still wind up being reactive and the proposal finally comes out and something is new and different or nuanced that you weren’t prepared for. New information comes in over the top and kind of derails you.
Katie Cash [00:07:02]:
Maybe you’ve got a new. A new hire that needs a resume and he doesn’t have a headshot and all the things right. And then you just kind of go into survival mode. The AEC marketer’s just like, the deadline is here, we’re telling a good story. This is going to be compliant, it’s going to be compelling. We’re going to make it to the short list. But in reality, I have to feel like every time I go through this, I’m like, there’s a better way to do this. There’s a better way to do this.
Katie Cash [00:07:28]:
What patterns do you see, Rochelle, where these firms continue to get stuck in? Well, this is the way we’ve always done things. They’re trying to maybe plug it with a technology tool, but they’re not changing human behavior behind the tool. And so they just keep repeating the process.
Rachelle Ray [00:07:44]:
Yes. Oh, my gosh, yes. I’m like, I can’t stop nodding along with every example you just gave. It’s still reality. So I see a lot of the same patterns. The most consistent one that I see is this kind of volume shop mentality. Like, the more we go after, the more likely we are to win. This is sometimes called the gambler’s fallacy, Right.
Rachelle Ray [00:08:04]:
Where you think you put more money in and you’re more likely to win. If you’ve ever been to Vegas, you know, that’s not how that actually works. I see this across my clients as well, where they’re like, well, we don’t really fit this strategically, but we need to go after it. And so they’re wasting resources, they’re wasting effort. They’re burning out their marketing teams who don’t understand why they’re going after this, who have better things to be working on. And it’s just causing a lot of issues. And it doesn’t matter what kind of tools you have, because AI might speed things up for you, but if it’s speeding up your work on garbage or something that’s not in your wheelhouse, it’s not doing anything for you. It’s still detracting resources from strategic pursuits.
Rachelle Ray [00:08:48]:
And I can’t get firms to break this. I see it across the industry. They just. They’re stuck in this mentality, especially when they panic about the market.
Katie Cash [00:08:56]:
So I want to speak to that. I want to unpack that a little bit. So if you’ve been on the podcast for a while, you’ve listened to a few episodes, you know, some of my backstory. And I used to work on the owner side, and I had to review proposals. I’ve had lots of owners here on this very show talk about procurement. And what I often hear is, yes, it is almost in everybody’s best interest to have interest in their projects. They want people to respond to their RFPs. You know, if it’s a public procurement, they need lots of attention so that they can, you know, find the best group of providers that are going to fit their needs in their community.
Katie Cash [00:09:33]:
On the private side, if it’s more private and it’s invitation only, they want, you know, obviously they’re seeking that. But what I’VE heard across the board is nobody wants their time to be wasted. So if you are someone that’s been kind of caught up in this volume game, I want you to think about these opportunities as they come across your desk or across your InMail and decide whether or not it really is helpful for that particular client organization to receive a proposal from you. And I want you to think about a few key things. Number one is, do you have capacity to adequately service that client? This industry is built on reputation. If you get a job and you get an at Bath and you blow it because you don’t have the right superintendent on the job, you don’t have enough attention in pre con, you know, your architect is already doing five other jobs and they can’t give it the best attention, you are going to risk your reputation. And that’s even harder to overcome than saying, hey, Mr. Client, this is an awesome project, this would be great for us, but we really don’t have capacity to give you our top team and we would really respectfully decline, but look forward to working with you in the future.
Katie Cash [00:10:42]:
I’ve even had some clients postpone their projects because people were so honest and they were like, oh, well, thank you for, you know, making me aware of this. We really want you to be part of this. What if we gave you three more months? What if we didn’t start until so and so, you know, the funding’s not even in place. Let me tell you a little bit more. They really do appreciate the honesty. So capacity is number one, because I do think that’s a real red flag on your reputation moving forward. The second, second one is, I hear this a lot, Rachelle, and you probably see it like it’s a designer, you know, an architect or a contractor is trying to get in with a new client and they’re chasing work because it’s everything that’s being advertised and they just want to get their foot in the door. But the scope of the project, whether the size or the complexity or the type of it, really doesn’t align with their portfolio.
Katie Cash [00:11:34]:
But they feel like we really need to let them know that we’re interested. And, you know, we’re not going to get this one, but we’ll get the next one. I would tell you an honest conversation would still go a lot further than making them sift through 20 of those. And by the way, it’s costing you time and money too. Mr. Architect, Mr. Contractor, putting in a proposal, you know you’re not going to get shortlisted on. Or what if you do get Shortlisted on it, like, how are you actually going to do the work? So I still believe honesty is the best policy.
Katie Cash [00:12:05]:
You can still say, hey, Mr. Client, I want you to know that we really do want to do work with you. When we’re looking at opportunities, we try to match our capacity and our capabilities with the project needs and we just don’t think this is a right fit right now. We’re going to be looking for the next one. And you might even go as far as to offer some recommendations and say that you’ve shared it with some others in your network. Like you can still show good faith effort, that you are still interested, you still value that partnership. Just because you don’t submit doesn’t mean you will never get work with them. And I think that’s one of the hardest human traits to break is this whole idea of, well, yeah, but if they don’t see our proposal, they don’t know we exist.
Katie Cash [00:12:45]:
I’m like, yeah, but if you submit a proposal that just makes them say no to you, are you giving a good recommendation for them to say yes to you in the future? Because they’ve already said no, you’re not for them. It just seems so silly to me, but maybe that’s just, that’s just me having been in the industry too long. Calling all AEC marketers, it is our time to rally. The next generation of leaders in AEC are not going to look like our predecessors. The next AEC marketers are not just going to respond to RFPs. They will shape demand before pursuits ever exist. They’ll understand brand, they’ll understand visibility and market strategy. And they’re going to understand it not from just a standpoint of marketing buzzwords, but truly how it drives revenue for their specific firm.
Katie Cash [00:13:33]:
That is the shift that my partner in strategy, Judy Sparks, has laid out in her latest edition of the Modern AEC Marketer. Her new book is a guide for marketers, seller doers and principals alike, all who know that the industry is changing and they want to be part of that change. Maybe some of them even want to lead the change. And if you’re ready to stop playing it small and start influencing how your firm grows with intention, this book is for you. Go on over to Amazon, you can search for the Modern AEC marketer and you can get a copy of Judy’s new book today. It’s available in paperback as well as on Kindle. Now I do understand that some firms, you know, looking at pipeline, they, they need to get work and they might be shooting for things Just to fill backlog, and that’s totally fine. And that’s a different business case.
Katie Cash [00:14:24]:
But for most of us, at least the clients I’m working with, they say we have more work than we have people. We have to be really selective, we have to be really thoughtful. And they’re actively recruiting so they can say yes to more. But it’s not so much the other way around. Okay, so we started this off, kind of teased it about this AI exposing these gaps and we’ve talked about, you know, our human nature to over complicate things and not being able to say no. Let’s talk a little bit, Rachelle, on what you’re seeing when you’re working with clients that start to introduce AI or any other tools or technology automation into the proposal workflow process. Like, what does that look like? What are some tips to do it right? Like, what are some things to maybe consider? Maybe talk through a little bit of that experience for us?
Rachelle Ray [00:15:12]:
Absolutely, absolutely. We have generally reached the consensus that we need to be embracing AI. So everyone is kind of on board now. Two years ago there was kind of the super early adopters that jumped in with both feet and were like, I need to learn everything about this and plug it in everywhere I can. And then we kind of had the, the more reserved firms who were like, you know what, we’re going to wait, see if this pans out, see, you know, what tools kind of rise to the top. But I think we’ve come to the conclusion that everybody needs to be embracing AI. It’s just a matter of figuring out what works for you.
Katie Cash [00:15:45]:
Right.
Rachelle Ray [00:15:45]:
Unfortunately, what I am seeing is kind of a chaotic piecemeal adoption of things. And because AI, like it touches every facet of your business. It’s not just marketing, because LLMs are good with words. It touches HR, finance, business development, design. Like you can, you can plug Claude into revit it. It really touches every aspect, every department in your business. But what I’m seeing in adoption is either individuals finding tools that work for them or. Or departments finding tools that work to them.
Rachelle Ray [00:16:20]:
And we’re not talking. Right? And so it’s this very piecemeal tech stack at a firm where nobody fully knows what’s going on. There’s shadow IT problems where maybe it has said you’re only allowed to use these tools. And then, you know, you go to conferences and the speaker’s like, Hey, 20 bucks for ChatGPT. You should do that. And so your team, because they can see that efficiency, is doing it themselves on their private computers. Or their private accounts. And so there’s.
Rachelle Ray [00:16:49]:
There’s a lot of chaos in your AI adoption. And with that comes this lack of training and lack of consistency and lack of governance. Right. So I see people hitting the AI magic button is what I call it, where they just have whatever tool they’re using, magically produce something without any training, no structure, no guardrails, and then they send whatever they get back downstream to marketing. And I get it. It’s often the people that are closest to the pain and most eager to find shortcuts, but they’re. Because of their time crunch, or maybe they’re more junior staff, they’re kind of the least qualified to evaluate that output. Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:17:31]:
So that’s one of the friction points, that you don’t know you’re there until you’re exposed. Right. And I kind of heard it explained. One of my clients, the principal of the firm, was like, hey, Katie, like, we have a ton of technology, and just about every tool that we’ve been using for years has added on some component of AI, Right? So even if you just think about the Microsoft suite, there’s AI in Word, there’s AI in Excel. I didn’t know that you had AI in Excel and that, like, as a marketer who doesn’t math, I was like, ooh, that’s dangerous. Like, you don’t want me checking formulas, because I don’t know if it’s right. But then there’s, you know, AI and PowerPoint, things like that. And then he’s got these other pieces, and he goes, you know, all these other things we bought, it’s kind of like a black box.
Katie Cash [00:18:15]:
I don’t know what goes in, I don’t know what comes out. I don’t know who’s using it, who’s saying it’s okay. You know, I have no idea. And so his big request was, can you. Can you kind of map all of our technology and help me organize what everything’s used for and which ones can communicate to each other and which one should be the data input and which one should be, like, the data output? And I was like, you know what? That’s a very thoughtful question. Like, that’s really thinking about how you’re utilizing tools and technology the right way instead of you just keep stacking stuff on top. Because on the other end of the spectrum, I have a client where nothing is integrated and they’re inputting the same data three different places. And because those systems don’t display what they want, they’re then exporting to an Excel file and then making something.
Katie Cash [00:19:06]:
And I was like, the first time you share that, someone’s going to have a human moment and muck it up, like, why are we doing that? Let’s just get the system to report what you want because that’s just some programming on the back end and there’s probably an AI tool that can tell you how to run that program. Let’s figure that out. But I do think marketing also gets to test pilot some of these because we’re perceived as a lower risk, because we’re dealing with words. Right? And so instead of putting together drawings that have to be officially stamped and there’s insurance related to that, it’s a marketing social media post, it’s a blog post, you know, it’s an executive summary going in, a proposal. But still, I think your advice of having some level of governance, especially if you have a younger staff, is really going to help you utilize the tool more efficiently, more effectively, more consistently, with greater confidence than just letting some junior staff member, you know, come in. And I speak of this from experience. When I first got into AEC marketing, I knew a little bit about marketing. I went to school for that.
Katie Cash [00:20:13]:
I had no idea about the business of design and construction. And so I learned it the old school way, the elder millennial way of having lunch with people and asking a bunch of dumb questions of like what’s design bid build and what’s the difference between that and design build and why do they call it that? And you know, help me understand the difference between CM agency and CM at risk. Why can’t they call it something else? You know, I want to rebrand everything, so would make sense in my mind. But now the people, you know, the young AEC marketers who are brilliant, are having the conversations one sided with an AI tool. And there’s not a level of application of this is this is why that’s true or this is how it applies to my business or actually that’s incorrect. That’s largely in this industry. But we work in oil and gas and that’s not, you know, how things are done, I don’t know. But having some level of that.
Katie Cash [00:21:07]:
So Rachelle, who should be part of that governance? What are like some easy things that listeners should tackle or put some guardrails around to start with. I mean, obviously don’t go out and buy your own private systems, right? Like you want it on the enterprise, like you want should be an approved expense.
Rachelle Ray [00:21:27]:
Yes, yes. And if you need to make like a business case for that, please invest in that no shadow idea. I think everybody who will be affected needs to be involved. And as you said, like, marketing proposals is a really good place to start because so many departments are involved. You know, we have our technical teams. You might have legal reviewing things, you might have finance reviewing things. I would argue that it is high risk, actually, because some proposals become contractual documents. So if you have language in them that says you will commit to or guarantee or ensure that beautiful word AI loves to include, and you edited out your EM dashes, but not your insurers and usures, you are contractually obligated based on your proposal to uphold that.
Rachelle Ray [00:22:12]:
And it’s very risky. So I think everybody who will be impacted by output needs to be involved in the selection of a tool, the identification of the need. Right. So making sure it does what you want it to do and is easy for everyone to use. Sometimes we get these like I keep calling them Cadillac AI tools that are, that are purpose built, but they have so many buttons and toggles and magic stars all over them because it’s the AI symbol that marketers get in there and they’re like, cool, yep, I’ll figure out how to use this. But technical team members get in there, your project managers or engineers who don’t have time to learn this. And they instantly check out. Yeah.
Rachelle Ray [00:22:54]:
So you now have a tool that isn’t being adopted by your firm. And even if you, you know, you turn it on or whatever for your entire firm, you can’t just say go. You need to have that full firm buy in. You need to have that training of. Here is where you’re allowed to use this. And I have a real example of this one that I would like to share. I have a client who turned on Copilot for their company. They were really excited about it, did no train it flipped the button and said, congratulations, you now have access to AI.
Rachelle Ray [00:23:20]:
And we’re working on a proposal for a very boring warehouse. It is just an empty metal building for boring storage. But in the proposal, in the rfp, there’s a question about risk. And I asked the project manager, can you please, you know, just write up something brief for me about risk? I’m picturing like site risk because it’s on an active campus, sound because there’s neighborhood nearby. And I get back 10 pages, which is our full proposal page limit by dweg. 10 pages on skiffs. Oh. Which our listeners who might not know that they’re secure government facility.
Rachelle Ray [00:23:51]:
Right. Like it’s a, it’s a high level of control and access And I, I’m tearing through the RFP documents like, where did you find this?
Katie Cash [00:24:00]:
Like, this is not a warehouse for like a offshore DOD facility, right? Like, it’s.
Rachelle Ray [00:24:05]:
Yeah, yeah. I’m like, this is not government, it’s just like a private. And it’s literally like a lumber warehouse. It’s just, it’s empty materials. I’m going through these documents like, what the heck is this? And I reach out to the PM and I’m like, did I miss something? Is this relevant? And he instantly emails back and says yes. And I’m like, no. And I asked if he’s copilot to write it because it was very well written and I usually get bullet points. And he said yes, that’s how I know it’s correct.
Rachelle Ray [00:24:37]:
And so I asked what sources he allowed copilot to look at to write it and he didn’t know. So you can toggle like, you can tell, you can tell your AI systems like, please look in this folder or don’t look at this. And it was open to their entire System into their SharePoint, wherever they have it set up and found that skiff information and returned it. So all that did for me was burn half a day of me stressing out about where this came from and then I had to rewrite it anyway. And so I strongly encourage firms please adopt the tools, but please provide training and expectations for your teams. I would have expected that he knew how to use this, I would have expected that he knew how to review the output as well to make sure and that no matter what tool you use should be in place, whether it is something off the shelf, whether it’s something purpose built, you need that training and that hand holding, at least initially, to make sure that it is working the way you want it to and need it to.
Katie Cash [00:25:42]:
I fully support the idea of training and I would go as far as to say training in contextual groups of how they’re going to use it. You know, like the marketing group is going to use it differently than the HR crew, which is going to use it differently than like the office admin that plans the holiday parties and the lunch and learns she’s going to use it differently, your PM team, so on and so forth, but having some guardrail around, what resources can be shared, how to frame the prompts, how to qa, QC it, how to share it amongst one another. When you’re in one of those enterprise systems, that’s one of the benefits, is the collaboration that happens. But Rochelle, I want to go back to something else you said on the front end of hey, Katie, like, I respectfully disagree. I think marketing is really high risk to use it. And you, you are so right to say that. In, in the back, once you said it, I was like, oh my gosh, I heard a specific client in the back of my head going, we need to update our brand guidelines to have a. They had like a glossary of terms traditionally that was just like, okay, you know, this is how we spell out as built and how we deal with some of the normal AEC lingo.
Katie Cash [00:26:50]:
But they had specifically a list of terms that were not to be used because their insurance and their legal team deemed them to be like, contractually, like promising. And so it had to get documented. And then, you know, now what I think is brilliant though is they kind of have this style guide that talks about the brand tone and, you know, tone of voice and like key message pillars and brand promise. But then they’ve also got like this do not use, you know, always use kind of scenario. So when their marketing team prepares stuff, the first round of revisions, it goes through a bottom for like scanning. And so they share the rfp, they’ve got their draft, they share these other brand reference guides. And it’s checking to see, like, is it compliant? Have we answered everything? Is it compelling? Are we telling our brand story? And like, are we supporting the way that we like to position? And I thought that that was really, really smart. And I hadn’t thought about, okay, this is now really part of our organization.
Katie Cash [00:27:49]:
It’s part of the ecosystem. How do you document it? How, you know, where. Where does it latch onto? And it really does latch onto everything. So I thought that that was really, really smart, really a way to kind of encapsulate that. The other thing I think is great with that I’ve seen other clients do that works really well is they don’t just do training one time like, hey, you’re getting copilot, here you go. But they might have revolving open drop in lunch and learns for people to come in and kind of troubleshoot, like, hey, I’m doing this and I’m getting that. How’s that working? But then they also kind of have a feedback loop where they are sharing, whether it’s internally through like a teams channel or a slack, the prompts that are getting the great results. They’re sharing those amongst themselves or they are sharing where they’re like, hey, I’m getting like, I’m putting good stuff in and I’m getting crap.
Katie Cash [00:28:41]:
And I’m constantly telling I’M having an argument with a robot on. You are not listening. Do you see this file I gave you? Please refer to this file. And then, you know, we also see this, which I think is incredibly frustrating for marketers. They will upload because I think this QA QC thing is becoming more and more of an expectation of, don’t send it to your busy pm. Get AI to do a first, you know, redline review or whatever for you before you send it to them. And the marketer is. Are doing those and they’ll get the feedback and then they send it to the pm, who clearly is using AI to get feedback as well.
Katie Cash [00:29:20]:
And it’s totally different, but it’s things that the first round should have picked up. And so they’re trying to say, hey, my teammate just ran it through this. This is what it gave us. How do you, like, how did you miss this? And I jokingly was mentoring a young marketer and she, she struggles with spelling because we’re typing too fast. And I’m like, there’s no more excuses for misspelling, like between spell check and word or indesign whatever tool you’re using. And then AI, like, it’s to check it. I was like, but back in the day, my spell check never found that. I was always saying, the project manger for your team is going to be Derek.
Katie Cash [00:30:02]:
Nope. Because project manger, those are real words, but human reading, it knows that. And so now I was like, okay, if, you know, you always misspell this and it’s still a real word, then just tell it to look for it and make sure that you’re using it in the right context. Like, you can, you can work with your strengths or your weaknesses in using a tool like this. So those are just so Rochelle, let’s, let’s focus maybe to the future. We’ve talked about how proposals used to get made, how they’re still being made, how we’re trying to use tools, some guardrails to be smarter with tools. But for the AEC marketers listening today, what kind of skills do you think they need to develop that maybe their predecessors, like me and you didn’t have to? Or maybe we’re. We’re doing it alongside them now.
Katie Cash [00:30:50]:
What. What are some of those new skills that they should upskill around?
Rachelle Ray [00:30:53]:
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got three. I’m sure there are many more. But the three that I think are going to be the most advantageous for us in the age of AI is data literacy. Right. So understanding what data is actually matters. How it’s structured and how to use it to make better pursuit decisions or stronger strategies in your pursuits. And that digital literacy I’m going to extend to kind of like relationship understanding. Right.
Rachelle Ray [00:31:19]:
That’s a very human thing. And I, I always bristled at the business development side of my job. I very much like to be the marketer on my computer, looking at my proposals down. I like people, but I didn’t want to interact with them. But I think we need to embrace that. We need to embrace understanding those relationships, building them and understanding how that translates into data that becomes essential part of our pursuits and that leads into knowledge management. Right. So not just building and maintaining a content library so that the AI has something to work, but understanding those threads.
Rachelle Ray [00:31:56]:
Right. So seeing that you have a project manager going to a client site, they’re probably going to have a conversation with that client and now a bunch of stuff lives in their head. I need to understand knowledge management, how do I capture that and then put it in a place where the AI can access it? Which leads into third skill systems thinking and seeing how people and processes and technologies connect and then being able to design workflows that use AI intelligently rather than just kind of, you know, tossing it onto existing broken process or putting it in place and hoping it works. We need to figure out those connections like, like you were saying earlier, kind of customizing it to the individual user groups and how they’re going to come in and tailoring it to them. So I think if you can master those three skills, you are going to be set up for success as an AEC marketer in the age of AI.
Katie Cash [00:32:53]:
I love all those. I think that’s all really, really smart. And I start sitting here thinking how many data points we really have available today. So many points of data. And then I also think about, you know, the technical staff and the relationship between most technical staffs and the marketing team is usually at a point of need where there’s a deadline looming. And I’m going to stand up for the technical team here and say, marketers, y’ all always come to the technical team kind of under the gun. And you’re asking me about things that I did years ago and I’m like, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. Like, how am I supposed to remember, you know, how many maximum subs we had on site for that job I did 12 months ago, so you can put it in your award submission.
Katie Cash [00:33:43]:
So finding a way to understand kind of the project life cycle and what information may be helpful and Some of it’s a guessing game and some of it we know, right? Like I call some of it structured data, you know, and RFP is going to want to know square footage, completion date, how many change orders. But other is like unstructured data. It’s the, what was the impact that your firm made on the project? That’s going to give me a story that the human is going to connect with, that’s going to have some type of emotion. But you have to get all that in real time through your technical team. And so finding a way to map that workflow where you’re eliminating as many friction points as possible. And you’re right. Earlier you said, you know, a lot of these systems, systems, they’re bespoke, they’re, they’re purpose built, but they don’t really think about the end user or the variety of end users. Where it may seem completely logical to the marketer, but to my engineering in house, folks that only know how to read a spreadsheet, they don’t even know how to get to go.
Katie Cash [00:34:45]:
And so they’re just not going to use it. So finding a way to make that easier for, I think content collection, organization, slicing and dicing is just really, really good. But I mean, all those stories, they happen on the job site all day, every day, and they’re like little moments. And what I often find through consulting is my technical teams that do this day in and day out, that’s just a Monday, and they don’t understand how special it is. And then us marketers are like, what you did?
Rachelle Ray [00:35:17]:
That.
Katie Cash [00:35:18]:
That was great. I didn’t know that you overheard during a community meeting a mom say, I really wish that the next library had, you know, sunlight so it wouldn’t feel like I’m walking into a dungeon when I come to bring my kid for story time. And that’s what inspired your whole design. I would have never known that. Like, that’s a great story. How many other, like director library folks of the communities that we’re trying to sell to can relate to that one mom not wanting to go in a dark dungeon. Like, let’s bring those stories out. So I love that.
Katie Cash [00:35:53]:
Find a way to understand data, understand the human components, understand the workflows. Those are all really, really solid advice. And that’s why I love having partners like y’. All. Rochelle, I just want to say, you know, publicly, a couple months ago, smartgies had our annual conference. Smart Win OpenAsset was there. Y’ all were fully supportive. I think it was a really great event.
Katie Cash [00:36:15]:
And I Just came back from another industry event with SNPs, and you guys were there again, supporting the marketer, supporting, you know, doing things more efficiently, working smarter together. And you continue to add new bells and whistles. I think you called them like the little stars on all the little tools. But it’s great. And, and one thing that I do appreciate is how well you listen to your, to your clients. Obviously you’ve lived it, so you’re passionate about it too. But if anyone wants to learn more about either OpenAsset and the tools that you guys provide to the AEC industry or they want to connect with you and just maybe like, like get to know you a little bit better. Rochelle, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
Rachelle Ray [00:36:56]:
LinkedIn for me, absolutely. LinkedIn. Rachelle Ray, marketing I think. I don’t know. You can find me pretty easily. And then OpenAsset is pretty active everywhere. Right. We’re on LinkedIn, Instagram.
Rachelle Ray [00:37:07]:
You can get to our website as well, openasset.com or. I think that’s the easiest and best way to reach out to our team.
Katie Cash [00:37:14]:
Well, I loved today’s conversation. I think it was really honest. I hope it was entertaining. I think this is a lot of conversations that firms are just kind of in the middle of and just trying to figure their way through. So hopefully there’s some helpful steps in today’s conversation that the listeners can take with them as they approach these different challenges. And I just want to thank everybody for listening to the end. We will see you again next time right here on AEC Marketing for Principals.
Katie Cash [00:37:42]:
AEC Marketing for Principals is presented by Smartegies, 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 Smartegies. 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 podcastmartigees.com and if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast [email protected] podcast podcast. 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.