Transcript- How Data and Technology Can Drive Revenue and What Your Firm Should be Doing to Take Advantage.

[00:00:18] Katie Cash: Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us. For to days episode, I’m excited to have with us a very special longtime friend guests, Ms. Lindsay Diven, who is a senior consultant at full sail partners. Lindsay you and I go back a few years when we used to work together in house at a really large big E little A firm. And it’s so fun to see old colleagues and catch up with them and see what they’ve been up to. So thank you for sharing some time with us today and talking a little bit about data and the influence of data on today’s AEC revenue drivers.

[00:00:53] Lindsay Diven: Yeah. Hi Katie. It’s so nice being on here. Thank you so much. And it’s, I love that we get to talk and catch up and do this at the same time. So I love it. Thank you.

[00:01:02] Katie Cash: Yeah, it’s really fun. So for our listeners out there, why don’t you kind of kick us off and share a little bit about you and your journey? I know you’re similar to me. We both kind of came up through the AEC industry, loving marketing and loving design and construction, but , you’ve kind of. Had a few different little tangents and now really specializing in some of the technology side that relates to design and construction. So I’d love for you to share a little bit of your story and what it is that you’re doing these days.

[00:01:32] Lindsay Diven: Yeah, thanks. So I started out like a lot of people. I was a marketing coordinator at an engineering firm in south Florida and quickly gravitated towards the side of the business that really helped organize and set up our business development strategy in our sales forecasting and all of those reports.

[00:01:53] So I always had a little bit of those analytics side of it. So I started there. Worked my way up, became a regional marketing manager at a larger firm. And really helps set up , their business development, capture, planning, pre-proposal strategy, whatever you want to call it, that process.

[00:02:11] And all of their sales reports, and then went to where we worked, where we crossed paths and first met at the architecture firm and did that for the whole firm and for the whole company. And so kind of just, I always gravitated towards that. Helping set up, not only the marketing department and training the marketing coordinators and setting up the proposal process, but really the, the organization of the sales and the pursuit development side.

[00:02:37] And then not only helping set up that process, but with that process is all the reports and all the data and all the analytics. So when it was time for me to kind of look at what I needed to do next, it was just kind of natural that for me, I might interest to kind of just go into the technology side.

[00:02:54] I’ve always been kind of geeky like that. Even in college setting up my own HTML websites, like back in the day. And so. So this opportunity came with full sale partners. I was actually their client, so I got to know them really well. And this opportunity came in now I get to help firms all over the country, large, small, medium help them do the same thing every day.

[00:03:18] So it’s not just working with one firm, but working with dozens at a time to help bring this organization around their business development processes, help them set up the reports and the analytics to see what’s working and what’s not working. So they can make better decisions for their, their business development marketing.

[00:03:37] Katie Cash: I love that. And, you know, I feel so fortunate because being the host of this podcast, I get to talk with all these great guests and spend time with owners and understand their procurement. And I get to spend time with other C-suite professionals across design and construction, but every now and then I get to talk with a fellow marketer that shares my love of data.

[00:03:56] I like to pick out on it too. So I’m super excited to have you today. And especially as we’re in season three, where we’re talking about the AEC revenue drivers. I really do believe that there’s been a lot of advancements and the world of technology and CRM and, and different tools that like you mentioned, provide the data, provide the reports to executives so they can make informed decisions.

[00:04:21] And so why don’t you share with us maybe From your perspective, since you’re a long time user of different tools, and now you’re a consultant on it. What have you seen change in the world of CRM and data analytics in the last few years that you feel like really is enabling the C-suite to have informed data to make those decisions?

[00:04:42] Lindsay Diven: So what’s really changed in the world of CRM. I mean, not necessarily the tech or the tools, but really just people realizing that they need it.

[00:04:51] That it’s a necessity. Like our industry, we lag in a lot of other things with technology and marketing, but now I think pre. Pandemic, there was the need people realizing firms realizing, Hey, we have principals retiring. We have that next generation. We need to share all of our knowledge and, and , who we know our contacts, what our relationships are with them.

[00:05:16] And so what better way to do that with the CRM? And then the other need with resource planning there’s this war for talent, right? And so you have your, you have your backlog, which, your contracted backlog. Okay. I need 10 engineers, but then you need to know what. Potentially coming in the door.

[00:05:34] So how many more people do you need to hire? Because it’s taking longer and longer to find those people. So that was kind of the driver. That’s, what’s been the driver pre pandemic. It’s still the driver now, but the pandemic really pushed it forward because now we’re not all working. I can’t just go down the hall and ask Katie, Hey, have you met with this person before?

[00:05:54] I’m getting ready to call them? Like you guys were in different locations, right? So you needed that centralized location to find out who last talked to this client or this contact before. So you can have an intelligent call and the clients and the contacts. They’re assuming that we’re. Talking internally and that we already know that I had a conversation with John three weeks ago and we talked about this, so they are expecting it.

[00:06:22] They’re expecting that. So, so the demand has changed and then on the software side, so now people are realizing that, right. But on the software side, it’s all changed. Completely for ease of use. Right? All of the interfaces. Deltek is going through a big change right now with vantage point. It’s all usability user interface, design.

[00:06:44] And then connectivity. So it’s integrated into your daily, what you’re already using outlook, your iPhone, your Android app. So it’s all about ease of use because you and I both know it’s really hard. People are busy, they don’t want to stop and say, oh, I talked to John on the phone and here’s what we talked about.

[00:07:06] Like, so you’ve got to make it part of. The what they’re using day to day. So that’s some of the tech side and what’s driving that to make sure because the demand is there. We need to have that intelligence. Centralized in one location. And so now it’s up to the tech to make it as seamless as possible to get that information in there.

[00:07:27] Katie Cash: Well, and I want to go back to one thing that you just said, cause it I, I work with all these different clients in when you were talking about a lot of the clients that you’re working with, trying to help them through succession planning and. And understanding legacy relationships and the contacts and making sure that you have those well-documented so that as the firm continues they can continue building on those relationships.

[00:07:49] I honestly just had a client there an engineering firm that came to us and they’re, they’re getting ready to do succession planning. And we’re trying to come up with how do we announce the new level of leadership and, and instill confidence in this next wave. So they retain their customers and kind of move forward.

[00:08:08] And the leadership Lindsay brought me a physical trapper keeper. Like I just dated myself by calling out to the product itself, but legitimate was a trapper keeper of physical business cards, where they had scratched out people’s titles over the years and changed it or updated phone numbers or added emails.

[00:08:30] And then there was just random pieces of paper. There were printouts from what looked to be trade shows. I mean, it was not remotely organized in any fashion. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, okay, so we’re starting kind of at the level of a kindergartner right now, and we’re going to start maybe taking some time and putting this to Excel, digitizing it then we had to spend some time cleaning up the list before we were ready to even talk about CRM.

[00:08:59] But I think the biggest thing that really has changed that we’ve seen is, is what you just mentioned, that. No longer is the tech that’s available out there. So cumbersome where people are intimidated to try it, right. It’s kind of working into their natural daily habits. It’s integrating with other tools they’re using.

[00:09:18] They’re not having to go in and out of different apps. There’s, there’s so many ways that your technology talks to each other that you have. That’s really nice integrated data ecosystem, if you will. So when we look at that and from your vantage point, what are some of those, like most critical data points that you feel like AEC firms need to really be tracking and watching so that they keep their eye on the growth of the firm.

[00:09:47] Lindsay Diven: well, I mean, besides just, I would say the basic of contacts and their contact information, which you and I both know, and anybody listening to this is never going to be up-to-date because people just move around all the time. But for the revenue growth side, it’s really. I will say most firms, whether it’s an Excel or a CRM or somewhere, they have a list of projects they’re pursuing.

[00:10:10] Whether it’s a pie in the sky, 10 years out, it’s our fee on the street next month, they have some kind of list of that. But where I think they’re missing a lot of having it in one place is one piece, but then where they’re really missing the data points where they really need from a business perspective to make decisions like hiring is the data points of, well, what do we think this project is going to be worth to our firm.

[00:10:37] So, whether you call it estimated fee, gross margin, whatever you call it in your firm, but what is it going to be? What’s the value, the dollar value to our firm. I see so many firms and even my clients and I hire highly, highly encouraged. They don’t track that. And they, and, and CRM systems allow you to track that you can put it in Excel in a column and put a probability to it.

[00:11:03] And that helps you weight it because you’re not going to win all of them. Right. I have not met a firm today that has a hundred percent hit rate. So you have to put some probability to it, but you need to put some kind of scale or size of that project because that. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to know what that, how that project is going to impact the operations of your firm.

[00:11:26] If you win the project and all those projects added up, really help you to form well, can you afford to open that off of us? Can you afford to expand into that new market? Are you going to be able to, are you going to have the workload to do that? Are you going to need to lay off? Are you going to can you make that strategic hire?

[00:11:47] And so it has such far implications and I work with so many firms, big and small that are like, well, we just need, we just track when the, our fees are going to come out. We don’t we don’t know the dollar amount. We don’t, we won’t know until we get the contract. And I say, phooey, you’ve done a project like that before.

[00:12:07] What did that kind of project? I worked at architecture firm. We did elementary schools. How much does an elementary school cost design? What is our fee typically? How much do we typically send out? You, you should know.

[00:12:20] Katie Cash: Oh, at least estimate

[00:12:22] Lindsay Diven: upside. Yes. And then put a weight put a probability.

[00:12:25] What’s our likelihood of winning. I don’t know, maybe 25% chance. I don’t know. , and then you get a weighted fee. That is one of the most under utilized. Areas when it comes to pursuit, planning and pursuit in sales forecasting that I see that just drives me bonkers. It just is like the equivalent of you’re going to go remodel your house, but you’re like, ah, I don’t know what I’m going to spend on the kitchen or the bathrooms.

[00:12:51] Like what just, it’s just going to be, it’s just going to end up being whatever it is. I won’t know until everything’s under contract. Well, no, you put like a budget to it, like you say. Okay. $25,000 for the kitchen, $5,000 for the bathroom. Like you put some estimates around it and that’s your house. And then we have, I have principals that I work with that don’t even do that for their business. And that’s a little scary quite honestly.

[00:13:16] Katie Cash: Well, and I think you, and I both know there’s different types of sales folks out there, right? Whether they’re seller doers or they’re true business developers I’ve sat through plenty sales meetings quarterly annually sales meetings, and maybe there’s one person that has.

[00:13:30] Three projects on their list. And they’re very confident that they’re going to close two of the three, right they they’ve done the work, they know the value, they know the competitive landscape, like they’re ready for it. And then you’ve got the BD guy who has 900 projects on his list and it’s like anybody he met at a trade show or read about in the paper has somehow made it onto this opportunity list.

[00:13:53] And I’m sitting here going. Okay, John Smith, help me understand how you’re going to close all that. Like how are you even chasing it and maintaining those relationships? So I do think that by building a daily habit, building a process for capturing those opportunities, having a way to maybe I add some of that, that data that ranks the probability of closing helps or even tracks where is the lead and the whole buyer’s journey like a lot of times these projects, Lindsay, you, and I know they’re tracking for years, right.

[00:14:24] And so you’re going to see that project time and time again on these sales reports. But when do you know as the executive team, Hey, it’s time to staff up for this project or, hey, we’ve got enough work in the Midwest that really justifies us opening. In office there we’re making some great headway.

[00:14:40] I think we could really make a name for ourselves out there. What, what do you think is maybe the biggest area where people misinterpret data and maybe they’re like they read into something that’s really not there.

[00:14:55] Lindsay Diven: Yeah. I think what you were just describing of the you’ve got to take, especially if you have multiple seller-doers or business development managers.

[00:15:06] You have different personalities of and the way that they track their own. So I think. You have to also as like a BD manager or director or principal, that’s looking at these reports, you also have to look at who’s adding the opportunities on the log.

[00:15:24] We had I had an old at my previous firm, I had a VD well, he was a market sector leader and he was the biggest sandbagger ever, he would.

[00:15:33] Put his projects on, we knew they were coming, but he would put their probabilities so low and their dollar amounts so low that when he came in and he got his book sales, he was like double his goal and he would set his goal so low. And so we knew after working with him for about a year, I’m like, no, I pushed him.

[00:15:52] And I just as the director, I was able to kind of. Not fudging numbers, but I would be, I would put a realistic lens on them. Right. So I think from like an, a leader at a firm or an executive at a firm, knowing who’s inputting the data and knowing, understanding their personalities, and it could be like a whole office or a whole region or a person, because if you have different offices and their office managers are inputting data, they it’s all forecasts.

[00:16:21] So you’re really Putting getting data in how people are interpreting it and then putting it in and putting it on the rapport and then the report generates. So. I think understanding first that it’s a forecast. And so it’s not exact, right. We’re not talking about contracts. We’re not talking about backlog.

[00:16:41] We’re talking about things we think are going to happen in the future. So while they’re very important and they are used to make some decisions, knowing. The people that are entering and providing you the data and understanding kind of their mindset and the way that they manage their data is really important as somebody who’s looking at these reports, especially when they get the the high level and the total.

[00:17:07] So I see that, and when. I see that one as from leaders are misinterpreting data. They’re not remembering that it’s humans entering it and the humans have different perspectives or risk tolerances, or sandbagging characteristics when they’re inputting the data. So so that is one, especially with sales and forecast data, because like I said, it’s.

[00:17:33] I have a good friend, Stacy ho and she says Salesforce casting is a little bit of a science and it’s a little bit of crystal ball. It’s a little bit of seeing the future. So you’ve got to make sure. And in a world where we work with engineers and architects and construction managers, they’re so exact, and this is not exact so it’s, you gotta just remember that when you’re interpreting the data and it’s going to change as people come to me and they’re like, well, this month it was this and this month, it was that. And I go, well, you know, dates, change, values, change. That’s what you need to look at it. On a regular basis.

[00:18:06] Katie Cash: Right. And, and I think people forget and I think it goes in there and it’s set in stone, but it’s not you have to think of your your CRM system, your sales tools, whatever you’re using as a living, breathing extension of your firm and the data can be updated and should be updated you should definitely be cleaning your data if , We typically say if, if not quarterly, at least twice a year because people move around projects, change dates, change, and, and you want to be able to make those informed decisions based on accurate data or at least data that you’re confident in.

[00:18:38] And so it sounds like from what you’re saying, you don’t want to just have a rules of engagement in terms of, okay, we’re going to spell things this way and. , this is the type of information we’re tracking, but also you want to have some kind of general way of framing, the, the entry around realistic probability, maybe around maybe there’s some competitive assessments or maybe there’s just triggers that you put into your system to make sure that you’re actively looking at it.

[00:19:08] So you don’t set it and forget it.

[00:19:10] Lindsay Diven: Absolutely. Yep. And most CRMs have workflows and automations to to trigger alerts or notices and whatever CRM system you use. But to help automate that. So you don’t have to like, remember

[00:19:25] Katie Cash: great. Yeah. Cause we all have too much going on. I need some help remembering things.

[00:19:31] So I know I think everybody probably listening knows Deltek. A number of our listeners probably use Deltek it’s, it’s been around, it’s probably one of the oldest, most trusted CRM out in the business and you guys have grown and have different modules these days. And. My understanding is at full sail partners, you’re really helping firms integrate and onboard and leverage their Dell systems to, to meet their business needs.

[00:19:57] What are some of the new, or maybe unappreciated features that tech offers today in 2021 that people might not

[00:20:05] Lindsay Diven: realize. Yeah. So I would say one of the most from a marketing standpoint, one of the most underutilized areas, and it’s been around for a long time, even envision. And now it’s enhanced in the new vantage point is the marketing campaigns info center or hub as it’s called now marketing campaigns.

[00:20:24] A lot of firms just use this to build lists. It’s a way to organize your marketing activity and, and then it, and then associate. Contacts potential projects slash opportunities were projects and attribute it back to those marketing activities. So when you create a marketing campaign record, It’s really for all those organized marketing efforts outside of proposals.

[00:20:51] So if you’re doing a trade show that has pre-show mailings, post show mailings client events, like you could put that all in one record and then whoever showed up, whoever you have up for, you can put that , Associate that contact to that record. And then what helps your sales team? Because when they’re looking at that contact record, they could see all the marketing campaigns, they’ve our marketing touch points they’ve had. And then if you hear about a project or you get , hear about something or a lead, you enter that in, you can attribute it back to that marketing effort.

[00:21:26] And it shows it on there. And then if that potential project turns into a real project, it attributes that an advantage point, it even shows you the estimated dollar amounts. So it really starts the software makes it easy. Now it’s harder in real life, right. But with our kind of business, but for those firms that are doing, and we this past year, especially, we’ve been seeing a lot of our firms.

[00:21:50] Up their marketing game, right? Because conferences were canceled in person events. So they’ve shifted into these proactive content marketing, inbound marketing. And there’s no way to really track the results. Well, the marketing campaigns hub allows you to do that. And then we’ve created some connectors.

[00:22:11] The one that I’m excited to our newest one will be HubSpot. So we have a lot of firms that use inbound marketing using HubSpot. And so all of that data comes in and you can see all the marketing intelligence comes into the contact records. And, and so it really helps your sales team or your seller doers to say, oh, I.

[00:22:31] This person has received these email campaigns. That’s filled out. These forms has looked at our website on these pages. It really links. It kind of just connects what marketing is doing to drive revenue. And it makes it visible to the sales team and what they’re doing and, and you don’t even need the HubSpot connector to do that.

[00:22:53] Just within marketing campaign. So I think for years and years and years, that is the area of Deltak that I’ve seen the most under utilized. And even with vantage point, there’s the outlook connector. And so your sales team, when they have the Alec connector and they click on an email from a contact, it’ll show you all the marketing campaigns that contact has been associated with.

[00:23:16] Not only the projects, but the marketing campaign. So you can see what work and what marketing touch points, that person. So you kind of get that full picture of that full perspective of how that contact has interacted with your firm. That was great. Yeah. And so it’s really, again, linking back marketing efforts back to like, well, how does this help our firm? How does this drive revenue? This helps. Make that visible a little

[00:23:45] Katie Cash: bit. And , when you work in marketing for design and construction sometimes maybe, maybe the marketing department is thought of just as the proposal production team or they can’t what does marketing do all day?

[00:23:56] Right. , it’s just overhead. But one thing that we really love to emphasize with the clients that we work with is that marketing really does need to support your sales efforts. And so if there’s certain sales goals of you want to. , get this much market share in healthcare, or you want to break into the Texas market or whatever that might be.

[00:24:15] Your marketing efforts need to help support those, those goals. And I think one of the areas where sometimes people struggle is having that. Clear picture of what sales and marketing are doing and understanding how they’re playing together. So it sounds kind of like this marketing hub that you have when used properly, that you kind of get that holistic view of what the right hand is doing for the left hand.

[00:24:39] And if did I hear you correctly, that it gives you some insights in terms of maybe what the cost of client acquisition might be?

[00:24:47] Lindsay Diven: Yeah, you can you can set up like a project number to track all the expenses with that marketing effort. So that particular marketing campaign. So like to use your example, maybe you want to go into the Texas market.

[00:25:00] So you set up you do a marketing campaign for that. You can set up a number to track your time and expenses, and then as you are. Getting leads, getting contacts, eventually turning into projects. You can just attribute or associate those back to that marketing campaign record. And then you’ll see the cost and you’ll see the estimated revenue and then the actual revenue.

[00:25:22] So you can calculate an ROI, but it gives you all those those numbers there. And I do, I have some clients that do set up a marketing campaign. If they are pursuing a particular client, then they set it up. As if they’re like a client capture strategy. Cause there’s. There’s, it’s not really a project, so you don’t really want to put it in a project record.

[00:25:44] So the marketing campaigns hub is a good way to utilize that. I’ve had clients use it for markets like geographic or industry markets, as well as some client capture to organize all that, because you can put it you could put tasks and assignments and then you can put all the con you can associate all the contacts and then any projects that get identified, you can attribute it back there.

[00:26:06] And it’s kind of a nice. Organized place to put it all into the database. And I think that

[00:26:12] Katie Cash: works really nicely to go back to something that you said in the very beginning is, Hey folks, your clients are expecting that you’re talking internally amongst yourselves. And so if John Smith has a conversation with ABC company and then Jane DOE comes and calls on them too, they want to make sure that both of the salespeople or the seller doers are well-informed on.

[00:26:35] What the previous conversations were so they can pick up, right. Everybody’s busy. They don’t want to be asked the same questions over and over again. And so utilizing a tool like your Dell tech system can kind of give people that are stepping into maybe a pursuit plan, some idea of all the groundwork that’s been laid thus far, what marketing campaigns.

[00:26:55] , you can even get data. It sounds like to know what they’ve engaged with. If you have sent out emails or pre-show mailers, , did they go to your booth? , are they engaging with your ad campaigns, whatever that might be. So that, that sounds really, really helpful in terms of providing the decision makers at the table with reliable, informative data, to think about how they might drive revenue for the firm, or like you mentioned when to pull the trigger on hiring additional resources. So lindsay, before we kind of break ways today, I think, I think everything you’ve shared with us about data so far has been really helpful. I think you’re right 2020 and the pandemic really did force our industry of design and construction to think about sales and marketing differently because we had to, and now we’ve got some new habits and a new appreciation maybe for technology and the integration of technology for our daily workflows.

[00:27:51] But. Outside of that day job. I know you do something else. And I know you have a group called marketers take flight, and I think it would be a complete disservice if I didn’t let you talk a little bit about that, cause I’m sure a number of our listeners would really appreciate what you’re doing there and might have some people that they’d love to send your way.

[00:28:09] Lindsay Diven: Yeah, so, thanks. Yeah. So like you said, I work full-time for a full sale partners as a senior consultant, helping with CRM systems, but about seven or eight years ago, I saw a need in the market to provide resources and training for new marketing coordinators to our industry. Or, and those folks new to proposal management and our industry, maybe there, they were on the technical side, but now they’re helping out with proposals.

[00:28:35] There’s no, there’s no training. Right? I think you and I both got marketing degrees, but we were never, we never learned how to put together a proposal until we were on the job. So I, I started it as a blog in 2012, marketers, take flight.com. And two years ago I put together some online training because a lot of times also marketing coordinators, they don’t have the capacity or the budget to go to conferences or to do in-person training.

[00:29:00] And there, there wasn’t any, so I put together a whole online training program called the proposal pro course, and it’s really like. Your, your fundamentals of proposal management, and now it gets low. , I, I run that once per year. I’ve done it three for three courses now had about 50 students through it. And so really it just created , I still did a gap in the market. I needed it when I was hiring new marketing coordinators. Cause I didn’t have time to train them on the job. Right. So I would have loved to send them to a course where they th they can do at their desk. So I developed it. And then as a part of that, also I have a podcast as well.

[00:29:38] I’m going to shamelessly plug that the marketers take slate podcasts, and that’s all about proposals, marketing, career development. Again, for those marketing professionals and business development professionals who are new either to their jobs, like early career or new to the industry. I get a lot of listeners that I’ve worked in other industries, but AEC we’re like a little bit.

[00:29:58] Different. And so they need help kind of navigating our industry. So th that’s really who it’s for. So I do have a lot of, I do have some principals and some directors that listen, but mostly it’s it’s people who are new to their career are new to the industry.

[00:30:15] Katie Cash: And you were spot on, there is such a gap in that. Cause I, I did, I came out of school with my little marketing degree ready to take on the world of consumer brands and whatnot. But I found myself at an international design build firm, quickly learning the difference between Traditional heartbeat versus cm at risk versus cm agency versus design build and all these different things.

[00:30:38] And I remember coming to my desk, I got my beautiful little welcome package and I had an RFP that was due, I think, four days later. And I’m like, what is an RFP? What is this? ? So I I grit my teeth I, I made it through that one. And then that firm at the time, Did empower me to go to the national SMPs conference.

[00:30:57] And I went a few days beforehand to do that kind of proposal bootcamp, which helped me understand. I’m like, oh, okay, this is what a proposal is. And this is these are what all the acronyms mean and all that great stuff, but you’re right outside of that, there really is no other place to really get the training behind how to do a proposal, how to manage your proposal. And then the reality is that you’re probably going to be having multiple proposals to manage and juggle at the same time, because we don’t get the luxury of telling owner agencies, Hey, yo, you just advertise this last week.

[00:31:30] I’m working on this one. Why are you doing another one? , so that’s really funny and , I’m sitting here today. And SNPs seems to be where everybody goes to find marketers for design and construction. It’s it’s our peer group industry. There were over 200 positions advertised, I think on the Orlando chapter alone, there’s over 150 advertised here in Atlanta.

[00:31:53] Everybody needs talent and they pay a premium for someone who knows design and construction because they’re too busy to teach them the industry. And so I think what you’ve provided through marketers take flight fills a very real gap that allows these brands to hire someone straight out of school with a marketing or communications degree, send them through your program.

[00:32:15] And then they come out with a confidence to know how to run and manage a proposal. And that’s something that, that really is quite. Amazing. And I’m, I’m sure that these principals listening are gonna write down that URL. You’re going to subscribe to Lindsay’s podcasts and just start maybe rethinking how you go about recruitment and marketing, because that talent pool is so shallow and we’re all basically just stealing from each other at this point.

[00:32:41] Right. And the proposals are going to continue coming. We know that that’s part of the world that we’re in. So thank you for doing that. I’m just going to say thank you for that. Cause that that’s a resource for my new employees to go through and that we can also refer our clients to you as they’re hiring new folks.

[00:32:59] Lindsay Diven: Well, thank you. I appreciate the referrals. So it’s it’s I love it. I love , having the students go through I have a lot of managers like you that sign their students, their new hires up to be students. And so it’s about an eight week class a lot of information, but then they get access to it all the time that they can refer back to.

[00:33:21] So, because we have a lot of people that. , go back when they need a refresher on how to do run a proposal review meeting and they’ll go back and watch that module. Well,

[00:33:31] Katie Cash: I think part of it too is just being part of a community. Cause a lot of, a lot of brands they have one proposal coordinator that’s like a one man band, if you will.

[00:33:40] And just knowing that you’re not alone on an island and there’s other people hitting their head against the wall at the same time as you, because their RFP asked the same questions, four different ways and five different sections. You’re trying to figure out why do I have to answer this again? I’m just having that peer network sometimes just to ask best practices or just to.

[00:33:58] Air grievances with is really helpful. Yep. Yep. Lindsay, this has been really great. I want to thank you again for coming on our show and for our listeners out there just a quick recap. CRM and other technology tools that relate to sales, forecasting resource allocation are really great tools when you take the time to build workflows and input data so that you can accurately look at and predict revenue for your firm so that you can enable those great decisions.

[00:34:30] And if you’re looking for someone to help you expedite your onboarding with Deltek, or maybe just figure out. A better way to use your data in Deltek. Make sure you reach out to Lindsay and her team over at full sail partners. They get the Smartegies thumb of approval for being super helpful with that.

[00:34:49] And then for any of our principals out there looking to hire new marketing coordinators make sure you send your new hires to the marketers take flight group, where they can. Earn their wings, if you will, underneath Lindsay’s leadership and come out with a lot of confidence for proposal management.

[00:35:08] And so thank you again, everyone for listening. Have a great day. We’ll see you next time.

[00:35:13]