Katie Cash [00:00:08]:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of AEC Marketing for Principals. I am excited to talk with you today about a particular topic I think we all need to learn and embrace a little bit more, and that is the topic of project management. And for whatever reason, I feel like AEC firms in particular place a lot of value on project management when it to technical delivery of services, right? So if you’re in an engineering firm or an architectural firm, construction, whatever it might be, I bet you have a host of individuals with the title project manager. And when you think about it, that role is critically important. You don’t just let a team come together willy-nilly to build a building. That would be ridiculous, right? There’s someone to manage the process. There’s someone to chaperone the schedule.
Katie Cash [00:00:58]:
There’s someone to really oversee the big things, right? Schedule, cost, quality, You know, what the workflow looks like. But then when you get to marketing, I would argue that we too need project management skills, and we might even need a dedicated project manager to help us with our deliverables as well, because just like you delivering your buildings, we are also delivering things that have a budget, have a schedule, there’s a certain level of quality expected, and oftentimes we’re trying to coordinate different working groups together to put this piece of deliverable together. But sometimes, all too often, marketing is just put on the wheel to get things done, and we have to learn project management either on the job. That’s kind of how I did back in the day, and I didn’t realize that it was actually a learned behavior. I just, I just made lists and, you know, I put things on a whiteboard to know what my deadlines were, but that wasn’t real project management. And in fact, I don’t think I really understood what real project management was until We hire today’s guest. So today I’m talking to one of the best hires that Smartegies has ever made. Um, I get the pleasure of talking to our Director of Operations, Meredith Schroeder, who really helps keep our agency in lockstep with what we’re supposed to be delivering, keeping us focused, um, keeping the strategy team like on task with what we promise and Meredith, I’m sorry.
Katie Cash [00:02:30]:
I know we promise a lot of things, but I think you have been instrumental in helping our agency simplify our processes, maybe even determine if we have a process, because, you know, a lot of marketing is done intuitively. So Meredith, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to talk through things with you today.
Meredith Schroeder [00:02:50]:
Thank you, Katie. I’m happy to be here. I’m a big Katie Cash fan, of course. Been listening to the podcast for years now, um, and we always have great conversations. And so I’m hoping we can bring something valuable to our friends today.
Katie Cash [00:03:06]:
Well, I have no doubt in my mind that this is going to be very helpful and there’ll be a nugget or two in here for everybody listening. So I really wanted to have you on the show this season. I know, you know, you’ve been a listener, you’ve been part of the team for a while. Every season we have new themes. This theme is all about changemakers. And I’ve been talking with individuals across the industry about how they change their careers, what they’ve adopted within their organizations. that made major change. And I think you are the biggest disruptor that we’ve brought into Smartegies in a good way.
Katie Cash [00:03:40]:
And, you know, a couple months ago, you hosted a Smart Skills session, one of our online webinar programs, learning platforms, all about project management. And it was a raging hit, like lots of engagement, lots of questions, lots of positive feedback. And I thought we could just continue the conversation here today. And one of the things that I wanted to start off with is let’s just level set for everybody that’s listening. What do you really do? Like, what does a director of operations do for a marketing agency? And I would say for the marketers listening, think about your marketing department like your own little agency. You all have different deliverables. Somebody’s writing, somebody’s designing, maybe somebody’s coordinating things. You might have a PR team.
Katie Cash [00:04:23]:
Think about that as your own little agency. And Meredith, what do you do as director of operations for us?
Meredith Schroeder [00:04:29]:
That’s a good way to look at it, Katie. I think, um, my job as director of operations is to make everybody else’s job easier and just make sure that everyone has the tools they need, the processes in place to do the work that’s on our plate and to deliver for our clients. And so that everybody is able to do that without pulling their hair out. They know where to find what they need. They know what’s do today. They know what they need to be working towards next week, and they have the resources they need to make that happen.
Katie Cash [00:05:05]:
I think that is amazing. And when I think about my own personal journey, when I started out as a coordinator right out of college, I was at, you know, a technical firm, an international design-build firm with like 20 different people on the marketing team. Our idea of project management, Meredith, was I had like this giant whiteboard in the hallway that was on a grid system and it was the monthly calendar and everybody had a its own color, and you had to write down what your due date was, and that was it. You know, then it was kind of like, fend for yourself. And our team would grow, and our team would shift and change, and we added new players and things like that, but it always felt like we were understaffed, we were unorganized, like we were still reacting to what our internal clients needed. And One of the things I feel like you’ve done really, really well is help to build systems for internal accountability, for channels of communication to know what’s on deck, what’s coming up next, what really needs to get done. And what I’d really love to maybe unpack a little bit is what are some of those telltale signs when, maybe when you were looking at us or things that you would advise others in a similar position to look for in their team to know if their ways of working are simply ineffective? You know, maybe they’ve outgrown those, or maybe what they used to do doesn’t work today because they’ve got new tools or systems or a new CEO with a new vision. Like, um, how do you identify when things need to change?
Meredith Schroeder [00:06:41]:
Yeah, sure. A couple of those symptoms are everything is reactive. Everything you do is just a reaction to something that someone requested, or you’re like, oh no, that meeting’s tomorrow, or everything is happening last minute. Those are a couple of the telltale signs, being very reactive and everything’s last minute because there’s just so much on your plate or it’s not organized in a proper way for you to plan and prepare ahead. So when you start to see those issues, that’s going to happen regardless from time to time, but when it’s the norm instead of the exception, then there’s probably some issues that need to be addressed.
Katie Cash [00:07:21]:
That’s a really big friction point that we observe working with some of our clients is you’ve got the marketing team, just burning the midnight oil, trying to get everything done and feeling like they can never get ahead. And then you’ve got their technical, you know, internal clients, if you will, feeling like everything is last minute. You know, they feel like they sometimes they get railroaded and not know that they needed to provide insight and things like that. And I feel like that’s just a, sometimes we feel like, well, that’s just how it goes. That’s just how it is, but there’s a better way.
Meredith Schroeder [00:07:54]:
There is. It doesn’t have to be like that. Every day, every week.
Katie Cash [00:07:58]:
You can manage the chaos. So, I feel like the things that people try to do is they try to just buy a new tool. Well, we’ll get a project management tool. We’ll use Microsoft Planner. We’ll use Monday. We’ll use whatever it is, Asana, and feel like that’s going to fix things. Or they’ll say, well, we need to develop a process. Um, I know before you, Meredith, we had a ton of documented processes that we never used.
Meredith Schroeder [00:08:25]:
Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:08:25]:
And then sometimes I feel like it’s just a mind shift change of, hey, nope, everything is not freaking urgent right now. This is urgent. Let’s not worry about that till tomorrow. That’s a tomorrow thing. So how do you coach some of the listeners maybe through what to focus on first? You know, when do they seek out a tool to help? When do they really need to hone in on the process? When do they need to take a breath and say, okay, change the mindset here. This is really what we’re trying to Do, or maybe it’s all of it. I don’t know.
Meredith Schroeder [00:08:59]:
Well, one of the first questions I ask is, does everybody know everything that’s on your plate? Like, do you know for the marketing department as a whole, everything that’s assigned right now or everything that is coming due? Do you know? And does it live somewhere? Do you have one place where you can look at that and see that this person is working on these 3 initiatives, these 3 people are working on this RFQ this week, this This one’s coming. It’s due in a couple of weeks. Do you know what’s on your plate? Because if you don’t, then that’s one of the first things to address is understanding the workload and seeing all the different requests that have come in, events that are on the horizon, social medias need some attention, all the different parts and pieces the marketing team is working on. When everything is feeling like it’s last minute and urgent, it’s likely because we’re not looking at the full list of all the, the, the entire workload.
Katie Cash [00:10:08]:
Well, and I feel like too, like knowing what’s on your plate and then knowing what level of effort it should take, 2 different things. You know, I know early in my career when I was in-house and I had an RFP that was due in 2 weeks, I felt like I had 2 weeks to work on it. But in reality, you’re not working on it all day, every day for 2 weeks, right? There’s some major milestones where you break things down. And as you go through those milestones, there’s time gaps where you could fit in some other things. And maybe it’s properly going through the closeout process and updating files from the previous proposal. Maybe it is planning editorial for the next month for social media, but you find a way to kind of float things in, but when you just kind of Only focus on, oh, well, this is the deadline and there’s no idea of, hey, how much time and really when are all of these things going to hit? It wasn’t until you, when I realized that you could really plan things out and I did have capacity. It wasn’t just that, you know, I have this crazy color-coded, you know, fancy sheet. This is still how I do project management, y’all.
Katie Cash [00:11:12]:
Don’t, don’t be like, but Meredith tells me every day what I need to get done. And I’m like, oh, I didn’t have that on my list. Okay. I’m glad we talked. So what do you think people kind of tend to maybe misunderstand or underestimate about having some good operations in place for their teams?
Meredith Schroeder [00:11:32]:
You’re right. It often is underestimated because I’m focusing on what I need to do, right? Okay, this piece is due by Friday, and so I’m going to have it done by Friday, but who needs to review it before it’s submitted to wherever it’s going? And then are you allowing time for revisions? So a good project manager or department manager is able to look at that big picture and understand it’s not just do it and it’s done. Understand the process to get the deliverable from start to finish and everything that needs to happen in between. And then you can start to look at, oh yes, there’s This isn’t due for another 2 weeks, but I need to get it to Katie by Friday so that she has time to review it, and then I can button it up before it’s actually due. So having a good understanding of the timeline and all the hands that need to be involved will help understand how you need to prioritize level of effort. When you have 3 things that are on your plate, Which one really needs to come first? Because where else does it need to go before it hits the finish line?
Katie Cash [00:12:47]:
I think that’s super, super important. And it’s, you know, it’s so funny because again, I feel like our industry is really good at project delivery, right? You know, we know the 4 phases of design. We know what happens in pre-con and decisions made in pre-con are cheaper than when you’re in construction. Like, we know all of that as an industry, but for some reason when we go to marketing, it’s just like everything is just an equally weighted task, and you’re like, no, not really. Like, let’s take a real scenario. I’m coaching a team right now, coaching them through how to prepare proposals, right? You know, it’s procurement season. It’s always procurement season somewhere in the world, but they’re, you know, looking to step up their game and doing proposals. And traditionally, the business developer or the technical lead would just flip the RFP to marketing.
Katie Cash [00:13:36]:
Marketing would go through their past materials. You know, everything boilerplate, put a draft together, and then they would get shortlisted or they wouldn’t. But now they’re really starting to focus in on projects that are determined to be like must-wins, and there needs to be more of a concentrated effort around it. So no longer is that marketing coordinator only planning out her workload, but she has to take into account, okay, this is the deadline. The deadline does not move, right? When the RFP comes out, there’s a definite deadline that you have to back into. Usually there’s a date. Sometimes there’s a time. Now, if you have to print it like this one, she has to back up because they don’t print in-house, they send it out.
Katie Cash [00:14:17]:
So that means she loses 2 more days. And then you’ve got to factor in, you know, well, there’s— this principal is traveling, he has to do the final sign-off because there’s notary forms that are required for his signature. So that has to happen and all this, that, and the other. But when you break it down, You’ve got a marketing coordinator that’s got a little over 14 working days to put together a must-win proposal. She’s got 12 internal clients that she has to coordinate around to get information from them. Somebody’s putting a schedule together. Somebody’s bidding the job. It’s construction.
Katie Cash [00:14:53]:
They got to put some numbers together. Um, somebody’s working on, you know, the site logistics plan. There’s all these different components that are outside of marketing, but she’s ultimately responsible for hitting the deadline. And P.S., these people don’t work for her, Meredith. Like, they’re her internal clients. And so, you know, she’s trying to build this plan. She’s trying to hold everybody accountable. She’s trying not to pull her hair out.
Katie Cash [00:15:18]:
Probably. I’m just projecting here. She has not shared that with me. But none of this is really trained. None of that was disclosed in the job description. You know, it’s like, I’m going to make social media posts and I’m going to do all this great And it’s like, no, you’re going to be a full-time project manager. So how do you coach someone? Let’s talk specifically to the marketers. How do you coach marketers to be stronger project managers, to build those relationships with internal clients that they’re going to need to help them put their proposals together, but in a way where, you know, they don’t work for them? Um, the marketing team doesn’t have authority over how those individuals spend their time.
Katie Cash [00:15:56]:
Um, they can’t command that they get markups to them by a certain time, they can ask for it. But how do you coach through that?
Meredith Schroeder [00:16:03]:
So much like I mentioned, I think my job is to make our team’s jobs easier, make it easy for you all to, to get your work done. The same principle applies when you’re working with your internal clients. So if you are asking an engineer for a write-up that’s going to be included in A proposal, make sure she knows exactly what you need. You know, say, here’s the question. Can you help me? I’ve drafted what I know. Can you review it? Can you add some more context to it? And I need this by Thursday. Will that work for you? Be very specific about the need, when you need it. Follow up and make sure they understand, but giving them The, the info they need so that they can do what you’re asking easily.
Meredith Schroeder [00:16:57]:
Don’t just throw something through email and say, hey, I need you to do number 2. What does that mean? What can you do as the marketer to give them a starting point so that they’re not digging through and starting from scratch? They’re trying to run their projects and, you know, do their day job, so to speak. So. The more we can do as marketers to facilitate the marketing that we’re asking them to do, the easier it’s going to be and the better result you’re going to get. You’re going to get it more likely on time and you’re going to get what you need the more specific you can be with your request and just make it as easy for them to reply as possible.
Katie Cash [00:17:40]:
Yeah, I think that was, that was a hard truth I learned early in my career and I’ve tried to embrace that is These internal clients, they’ve got a day job and their day job is pretty stressful and it’s, you know, they’ve got to design structural systems so that buildings don’t fall and collapse. They’ve got to get, you know, fire marshal approval on the building to get turnover. They’ve gotta do all kinds of different things. They’ve gotta manage a concrete pour at 5 in the morning before the heat is, you know, too blazing and everybody’s passing out or whatever it might be. My little marketing request is not their priority. They’re part of the team. They’re not trying to be dismissive and not be helpful, but they’ve got other things going on. So I think what you said, Meredith, about making it easy for them, like, hey, don’t just say, hey, I’m working on this RFP, see attached, I need your help with the project approach.
Katie Cash [00:18:33]:
Well, the project approach has 12 sub-bullets.
Meredith Schroeder [00:18:36]:
Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:18:37]:
Why, what part do you need? And then I loved your suggestion of, you know, maybe giving them resources. Hey, here’s how we’ve answered it in the last 3 proposals for this client. This is our standard boilerplate. But I think it needs to be more specific. Or, hey, based on the kickoff call, I tried to draft it. Can you make sure this is technically accurate? I don’t wanna misrepresent how we’re gonna do this. Today, there’s so many tools available, whether you have an asset management tool like OpenAsset that has the AI built in where you can scrub past proposals and see how you’ve answered things, whether you can use meeting transcripts and pull out some of the the technical pieces and then work with an AI tool to draft something. Or maybe you’re just gifted with interpreting what technical people are saying and you can draft it.
Katie Cash [00:19:26]:
Making it easy for them to review. I think asking the specific thing. I was also told, hey, don’t just say Thursday. Be like Thursday, June 7th at 4:00 PM. You know, be very, very specific because, you know, when people search Outlook, and I don’t mean to like Knock on Outlook, but you’ve all experienced this. You know, there’s an email in your inbox and you go to search for it and you can’t find it. And you’re like, I’m pretty sure it came from this person and it was about this and it won’t find it. Be very specific with the ask.
Katie Cash [00:19:55]:
And then sometimes Outlook will work in your favor and it’ll pull those through.
Meredith Schroeder [00:20:02]:
Right. And, you know, back to being kind of the project manager, give the team a little heads up. You know, don’t drop it on them and say, here, I need this tomorrow morning.
Katie Cash [00:20:16]:
Yeah.
Meredith Schroeder [00:20:17]:
How realistic is that? Like you said, Katie, they’re doing their day job and they’ve got a lot on their plate already. If you know that next week you’re going to need Anna to weigh in on something, you could go ahead and give her a heads up now. Hey Anna, we’ve got this RFQ. It’s about XYZ. It’s a healthcare project. I know you worked on this. I’m going to need your input next week. And you might even say, I know I’m going to need something from you next Tuesday, Wednesday.
Meredith Schroeder [00:20:47]:
Can we maybe go ahead and block some time on your calendar? There’s nothing wrong with that. Ask for it ahead of time. They will appreciate that much more than, hey, here this is. I need it tomorrow morning. It’s just not realistic. And so then Backing up and taking a bigger look at, again, knowing all the assignments, deliverables that are on the team’s plate, looking ahead and knowing, all right, we just got this RFQ. It’s due in 2 weeks, but we also have these 3 other things that are happening. The team’s going to this conference.
Meredith Schroeder [00:21:22]:
Looking at it all together will really help you Be less reactive and be able to be more proactive. Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:21:30]:
And I think 2 things I just thought about, um, like one, I’m really, I’m living one of those experiences just now. I got an email from a client this morning at 6:19 in the morning, a marketer that had been burning the midnight oil, working through to get a proposal done that’s due today at 9. It just so happened that I woke up early this morning and was scrolling my phone and saw this email, but this proposal goes in at 9. This morning, and I got it at 6:19, and it’s 50 pages, and it’s like, hey, here’s my draft, you know, welcome any feedback. So now I’m kind of just going through like minimum glaring edits that have to be made where they’re going to lose credibility, you know, they’re non-compliant, but there’s not enough time for us to put finishing on it that would really make it like a hell yeah, I want to work with this firm kind of thing. And I know marketers don’t intend to do this, but when you give people little time to review it, you don’t know what’s going on in their world. So you are jeopardizing your chance of getting a response, getting what you need, and being able to produce the best document that you can. I know it’s really frustrating.
Katie Cash [00:22:42]:
We hear a lot from the technical teams about how they get things last minute. Why does it always have to be last minute? And they don’t understand. They don’t understand that Marketing has asked 12 different people to weigh in on providing content, and none of those people hit their deadline. And so now they’re just trying to put something together. But I think there’s better things that we could do collectively as a team to kind of orchestrate that.
Meredith Schroeder [00:23:05]:
And, you know, sometimes it happens the other way around too, right? Like you hear from a technical team member, oh, I forgot to tell you, we’ve got this ribbon cutting 2 days from now. And we need somebody there. Okay, well, we also have these things happening this week. I’ve got to figure out what I can shuffle around. So to get ahead of that, the best thing to do is create some processes for the firm, marketing requests. You know there’s going to be a groundbreaking. You know that one of your folks is going to be speaking at a conference. There should be some process to notify marketing ahead of time so that you can plan for that.
Meredith Schroeder [00:23:48]:
And it gets worked into your workflow with all the other parts and pieces.
Katie Cash [00:23:52]:
Yeah. Sometimes I find, you know, Meredith, you and I get to work together with a lot of clients and some of our, our tasks are more organizational audits, right? Like how are, how’s everybody working together? What are the, what tools are talking to each other? And it always surprises me. Some of the most sophisticated brands in our space are so siloed and it’s like, oh, well, That’s over there and that’s over here. There should be something in an easy way, and it’s probably just an integration to make tools talk together. But yes, somewhere, somewhere in the system, somebody has to put in a request to go to a conference and that gets approved or denied in most cases, right? And when they put in that request, there’s usually a date that it’s going to happen and where it’s going to be. If you can magically connect those to marketing so that marketing could build an annual event calendar, then they’re in a better position to promote that the firm is participating, who’s going, and oh, by the way, when you forget that you’re going to that conference next week and you need to take a bunch of beach towels and can you get beach towels made, we’re not having to find the crappy ones that were overruns, not in our core color, because it just so happens that you’re sponsoring the beach blanket bingo and we got to give out beach towels. Not that that really just happened and we had to turn beach house in 3 days, but that really helps marketing. And I think too, like there’s other scenarios where a new, new person gets hired and you could connect HR and marketing so that marketing now knows, hey, there’s this new personnel asset that we probably need to make a marketing resume for.
Katie Cash [00:25:32]:
So I’m not having to do that in the throes of an RFP when it happens to be that person’s out on PTO. I don’t know why it happens that way, but it always happens that way.
Meredith Schroeder [00:25:41]:
Yeah. Right. And these are the things that you don’t learn when you’re working on your marketing degree, right?
Katie Cash [00:25:46]:
No.
Meredith Schroeder [00:25:46]:
They’re not teaching you how to implement processes, but somehow that becomes part of the job once you’re in the daily grind and, you know, you’re just trying to help the firm promote all the great things that you’re doing, but you can’t do it when you don’t know that they’re happening. Um, so if you can Take some time to take a step back and identify a couple of those little pain points where you could implement a simple process. And then just informing the team of, okay, next time this happens, these are the steps we need to take so that marketing can be in a better place to support you and to support the firm.
Katie Cash [00:26:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. I really do advocate that marketing is a support function for the entire organization. And there’s lots of ways that marketing gets pulled into things. And there’s lots of ways the marketing team could benefit from just having more Access to knowledge. I want to talk a little bit now. I want to pivot just a little bit, and that was my Friends pun for you, Meredith, because I love Friends.
Meredith Schroeder [00:26:50]:
Thank you.
Katie Cash [00:26:51]:
Um, but one of the things I feel like we see constantly is marketing teams feeling overwhelmed and technical teams feeling like it’s a capacity issue. We need to add another marketer. We need another marketer. We need a We need marketing interns. We need this. We need that. But I’ve also seen like well-staffed organizations struggle. And, you know, it could be because their workload wasn’t visible.
Katie Cash [00:27:17]:
It could be because they’re just working highly inefficiently, whatever it might be. How can you coach our listeners today to really understand the difference between a real staffing problem, like you need more bodies, from a workflow problem?
Meredith Schroeder [00:27:35]:
Yeah, you touched on it there about is it visible? That’s really a big issue there is if the work is not visible. If it’s just on a spreadsheet, the deliverable, when it’s due, who’s owning it, who needs to review it, just having a list to know everything that’s in the pipeline right now. Or if you’ve moved beyond that using Monday or Airtable or Asana or any of those tools out there to make sure you can see the work that’s on the plate because it might be a capacity issue. You might look at it and say, whoa, I didn’t realize we had all of this going on and it’s just little old me over here trying to get it done. I need another person. Or maybe there’s 5 of you on the team and you still need to add someone else, but you don’t really know until you can see the work. Another piece of that is how the marketing team is logging their time on a daily basis and understanding, is the team spending 80% of their time responding to RFQs? Are they spending, you know, 30% of their time preparing for events? Is one person spending all of their time on social media? Or do you think they are, but they really have some available bandwidth they could be supporting on the RFQs? So I encourage our marketing friends to look at how you’re entering your time. Are you just logging 8 hours a day to marketing? That’s not really helpful data.
Meredith Schroeder [00:29:12]:
If you have some data that says, okay, Meredith is spending 20% of her day planning for social media and 50% of the time on RFQs. And then this much time looking ahead at events or however it plays out, you can see where the majority of the time is being spent. You might see that way more hours are being spent on one initiative than you expected or than you think is warranted. And maybe that’s a discussion that needs to be had is, hey, we’re spending these many hours on social media. I don’t really think that’s necessary. Let’s talk about that. You might find that it is necessary. So making sure the work is visible and how the time is being spent will help you understand, is there a capacity issue or do some things need to be reprioritized? Do we need to talk about level of effort that’s being spent? And again, are we being so reactive all the time that it feels like it’s a capacity issue, but if we were able to look ahead and plan, It might, we might find that we have a little more breathing room.
Katie Cash [00:30:27]:
I think that is probably the best advice that you have given today is anybody listening, if your system, your timesheet system does not have specific tasks broken out for marketing to bill their time differently, like don’t bucket it all together. Like Meredith said, that is not valuable data. You don’t understand how anybody’s really spending their time there, and you don’t really know if you need to add capacity here or there. I would argue you want to be pretty specific with those tasks. And like, I would advocate that every time there is a marketing request, it gets its own time log. So you know how much time was spent chasing that proposal that your business developer said, We’re, we don’t, we’re not going to win this one, but this is a really good chance for us to get in front of the client. And at the end of the day, you can see how much time everybody spent putting that we’re not going to win it proposal together, not to get shortlisted. And you’re going to say, hey, so we spent, um, $40,000 chasing a project we knew we weren’t going to get when business developer, you could have just taken that person to lunch for a $24 burger.
Katie Cash [00:31:43]:
So do the math. It’s shocking, team, what you wind up catching when you start really documenting how the marketing team and others, because again, going back to the first segment we talked about earlier today, marketing is a team sport. It’s an internal service. They’re going to require some direction and support and reviews of your technical team who has billable hours. So all of that should be tracked and then you’ll know how much your cost of client acquisition is. And hopefully you’re pricing things Where you can make that up when you win the job. Or you might uncover a few trends. I know, Meredith, in some of our audits, we’ve uncovered a few trends on clients.
Katie Cash [00:32:24]:
We’ve uncovered, you know, across the marketing organization, there might be certain coordinators whose hit rate and efficiency rate outpace their coworkers. And that encouraged us to dig deeper and understand, well, what did Coordinator A do that made them so much more successful at being efficient and winning, and how do we— make that a standard? How do we train internally for others to do that? And you have to realize it’s not always apples to apples, right? Like somebody that does proposals, like I’m just going to use this as an example, an engineering firm who their proposals is resumes and cut sheets to get on architectural teams versus someone that’s doing a full prime proposal, dare I say an FF330, total different requirement there. But also we’ve uncovered, like with some of our other clients in those timesheet entries, that the marketing team was spending a lot of time doing travel arrangements, hotel bookings, conference registrations for team to go get technical accreditation. And we were able to make the case to leadership then that that really wasn’t a marketing request.
Meredith Schroeder [00:33:37]:
Right.
Katie Cash [00:33:37]:
And that that should either be handled through HR because it is professional development, or it should go through the office administration and they should have some centralized travel piece because All of the back and forth and understanding, you know, does Meredith like an aisle seat or a window seat? And, you know, she’s flying out of here, but really needs to go there. Like, understanding all of that takes a lot of time. And so, finding ways to be efficient. And then, we’ve also uncovered scenarios where we’ve had the one-man band marketer that’s doing conferences, proposals, websites, social media, groundbreaking, and everything. And we’re like, hey, You’re having them do too much and you’re now a firm that could warrant 2 people. So let’s talk about what this person is most efficient in, most passionate about, and let’s build a team that supports in the other areas. But all of that was really data-driven. So without it, you are kind of just guessing in the wind.
Katie Cash [00:34:33]:
And very rarely do I see that work out where it actually solves the problem. More people on A broken workflow is just going to add more chaos.
Meredith Schroeder [00:34:43]:
Absolutely. And just having that data so it can inform you of how the team is really working can be really valuable.
Katie Cash [00:34:51]:
So Meredith, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast was because of the overwhelming success of your SMART skills session. I know we don’t have another hour for you to go through everything that you shared in that SMART skills, and we’ll certainly link it. in the show notes here for anybody that wants to go back and watch it because it is available on demand. But could you maybe share your 5 project management practices for our listeners today? Maybe a Cliff Notes version.
Meredith Schroeder [00:35:19]:
Sure. So the first one is to create alignment early. What does that mean? That means when there’s a new request or a new deliverable that you’re working on, just have a quick conversation. Make sure everybody involved knows exactly what you’re trying to deliver, who’s responsible for what, when it needs to be ready for an internal review, or who needs to bless it. Just have that conversation right up front, get rid of any assumptions, and make sure everything is clear. Who’s the owner? Who’s the reviewer? What’s the final deadline? But when does it need to be ready for review ahead of that deadline? Have those conversations and create that alignment up front.
Katie Cash [00:36:02]:
Yeah, I think the assumption piece is huge. Like, don’t assume everybody is speaking the same language. Technical teams say one thing, marketing hears another. One of the phrases that I think Judy, our founder, says a lot with clients is, I didn’t hear what you meant to say, because something gets lost in translation. So, taking time, you know, go slow before you go fast and start getting into production. Make sure you’re aligned. Make sure you heard what they meant to say.
Meredith Schroeder [00:36:32]:
And absolutely a great tip right now. Yep. So then practice number 2 is to build your timelines around reality. Okay. So like we were talking earlier, let’s say we’re, we want to have a content piece ready to post on social in a couple of weeks. Well, Donna’s going to write this piece and I know she can get it done in a couple hours. So no problem. Well, Donna’s got 5 other things that she’s working on just this week for 5 different clients, and she’s going to be on PTO Monday and Tuesday.
Meredith Schroeder [00:37:06]:
So what’s the reality here? When can she really get to it? Don’t just throw it across the table and say, here, it’s due next Friday. Help your team figure out when it really needs to be ready for review. Who’s got out-of-the-office meetings? Who’s got to go on a site visit? Who’s going to be at a conference? Because your time gets whittled down farther and farther and you need to base your timeline on reality. Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:37:36]:
And everybody that you work with is going to have some other competing priority, no matter who it is. So understanding what their reality looks like and agreeing on the timeline, I think is super helpful because real work also has to get done. I don’t want to say marketing isn’t real work, but there’s other work that the technical team has to get done. Right.
Meredith Schroeder [00:37:54]:
They’re trying to deliver for their clients.
Katie Cash [00:37:56]:
Yeah.
Meredith Schroeder [00:37:58]:
So then practice number 3 is make it easy for others to contribute. We touched on this earlier. Whatever it is you need, if you’re working on a social media post that is a project highlight, this awesome project just opened doors a few weeks ago and we want to feature it, don’t just ask the project manager, hey, can you write up something about this and it’s going on social media? That’s not helpful. Do you know what the project manager is thinking about in their head? so many different things because they’ve moved on from that project probably, but now they’re trying to think back and all the parts and pieces of that project. What do you mean we’re going to put it on social media? What do you want me to say? Draft something for them based on what you already know. It’s been going on for a couple of years. There’s some context that you have already. Write what you know and ask them, say, here’s a draft.
Meredith Schroeder [00:38:50]:
I know it’s not ready, but I just wanted to give you a starting point. Can you fill in some context about the challenge that you faced or, you know, this feature that we want to highlight? Make it easy for them to give you what you need.
Katie Cash [00:39:05]:
It could be taking a draft. It could also just be giving them reference materials. So like one thing that Meredith, you and your team does really, really well for the strategy team is when you assign us things, it’s like Hey, yeah, you’re gonna do this, but here’s the RFP. Here’s the pursuit strategy document that was drafted. Here’s the kickoff transcript. You know, here’s blah, blah, blah, blah. I think all of that translates to the marketers listening here today. If you’re making an ask, give them whatever they need to be successful.
Katie Cash [00:39:35]:
So if it’s, you know, a piece for an RFP, attach the RFP, you know, pull out the exact piece you want. Give them examples. Give them a link to the client website where you pulled something. Give them You know, kickoff meeting transcript. I am a big fan of recording your conversations today. Like, there’s no reason not to. There are always good nuggets that are shared during those discussions that no matter how fast you write or how smart you think your brain is, you’re going to miss it. And so, just relying on, hit the record button in your Teams, let it produce the transcript, go back to it and be like, hey, you said that this was the key driver here, so that’s why I’m thinking our project approach needs to emphasize speed to market, and whatever else it might be.
Katie Cash [00:40:21]:
But all of that is really helpful at getting the person I’m trying to get to respond to respond, because I’m also not going to get bombarded with like 3 different things from him being like, hey, well, where’s the RFP? What’s this project about? Am I part of this job? Like, yeah, go ahead and give them everything. Save yourself from the back and forth. Right.
Meredith Schroeder [00:40:41]:
Make it easy. Practice number 4, we’ve said a couple of times already. Make the work visible. So if you’re operating on Post-it notes and lists in your notebook like Katie is, and you’re the only one on your team, that might work for you. However, how do you show leadership the work that you are trying to produce? And how do you make the case of, I can’t get to this right now because I’ve got these 6 other things that are on my plate? If it’s more than just you on your team, having the entire team’s workload where everyone can look and see what’s what, where you can pitch in, where you can help, who you might be able to grab if they have a little bit of time on their hands to help you with something you’re working on. You know, start with just a list, a spreadsheet. Once you have it there and, you know, that’s Organized, then consider one of these tools, monday.com, Airtable, Asana. There’s so many out there.
Meredith Schroeder [00:41:48]:
Find one that works for you and just make sure that the team knows what’s on the entire team’s plate, what they’re personally responsible for, and when.
Katie Cash [00:41:58]:
I think those project management tools that allow you to have like, here’s the project and all of the subtasks that kind of accordion back up to it with dates are probably the most helpful.
Meredith Schroeder [00:42:11]:
Yeah.
Katie Cash [00:42:11]:
Um, than having a project mentioned like 30 times across something. The other thing I think is super helpful, and it’s something that I have, that I have to do, is I have to protect my schedule. We are all living in a society where it feels like we’re available all the time, but there’s really very little time to actually get real meaningful work done. And the only way that I kind of know what I’m doing So I get my daily to-do from Meredith and the project team, but then I kind of block things out on my calendar. So I have real client meetings. Every marketer is going to have real meetings, right? You have standup meetings, you have internal, whatever that might be, but then you might block off some nice time of writing the COVID letter, doing this, and it kind of helps you exercise some accountability for how much time you’re going to allot for certain things so you don’t spend 2 whole weeks dilly-dallying on a proposal that you probably could have got done a little bit more efficiently if you just kind of blocked it out. So I like to, to block my own calendar and kind of outline exactly what I’m working on and the time it should take me to do it too. And I think that’s really helpful.
Meredith Schroeder [00:43:21]:
Absolutely. The 5th and final practice is to own the deliverable. What does that mean? If you are We keep using the example of proposal because just about everybody can relate to that. But if the proposal is something that you are producing, compiling, putting together, and there’s all these parts and pieces of the proposal, the approach, the resumes, the project descriptions, the budget, the timeline, all of those elements that are going to feed into the proposal, and you’re owning that final deliverable, you don’t just ask someone for a piece. And then, well, she didn’t get it to me in time. Make it happen.
Katie Cash [00:44:05]:
Yeah.
Meredith Schroeder [00:44:06]:
You send an email and don’t get a response, don’t send another email. Call, text, walk down the hall and say, hey, Katie, this thing is due on Friday. Just a reminder, I need your piece by Wednesday. You own it. I like to use the analogy of an orchestra conductor. The conductor is not playing every instrument, but the conductor is making sure everyone is focused on the final deliverable, right? Everyone’s working together and we’re gonna end on the same note.
Katie Cash [00:44:40]:
I think that is really, really great advice. And it’s also, you know, it becomes a bit of a friction point where I’m not saying every marketer does this, or even, you know, the majority of marketers do this, but sometimes Marketers will flip something over and they’re like, well, I didn’t get it. So, you know, what else can I do? I, I, they don’t report to me. They’re not in my office. You know, what else do I do? I don’t want to go around their back and go to their manager. And it’s, well, have you tried calling? Well, I get sent to voicemail. Have you left a voicemail? Well, no. Okay.
Katie Cash [00:45:15]:
We’ll try that. Follow up your voicemail with a, with another email. Hey, just left you a voicemail. Just want to make sure this was on there. Schedule time on their calendar, you know, send a meeting request, find a way, but don’t let them miss their deadline. That’s going to cause you to miss your deadline.
Meredith Schroeder [00:45:32]:
Right.
Katie Cash [00:45:33]:
And, you know, I think that’s one of the hardest parts is you can’t just kind of say, well, I sent it and I asked them CYA, here’s the email. They didn’t respond. No, you still have to own their responsiveness. And, you know, Judy likes to joke that I’m an only child, so I always find a way to get what I want, but every marketer needs to do that. You need to find a way to break through with your internal clients to get what you need. And it’s all for the betterment of the organization, right? You’re not just putting a proposal together because you want to. I don’t know anybody that does that. You do it because the RFP is out and the firm wants to chase it, and you’re trying to build a compelling story, and you need a partner in doing that.
Katie Cash [00:46:11]:
And so if they’re not responding to email, call them. If they’re not responding via phone, you know, you can try texting if you have their personal cell or they have a work-issued cell. Walk down the hall if you’re in the same office. If that, you’re still striking out there, then I think you go to the next person in charge or someone else on the project team and seek some other advice there. Meredith, this has been so great. I’m so glad we got to have a chance to talk and for you to share some of your knowledge. I feel so, so thankful to have you on the team because you have been one of the biggest changemakers that we’ve experienced at Smartegies at helping us manage our chaos in a world where Every client feels like a priority every day, and we certainly want to get out of being reactive. And you have put some processes in place.
Katie Cash [00:46:58]:
You’ve added some calm to our chaos. Before we wrap up, I am going to ask you an ending question. And what is one, just one, I know you gave us 5 practices, but what is the one project management tip that you wish everybody listening today I would go back to the first one, create alignment early.
Meredith Schroeder [00:47:23]:
Or in other words, start before you start. Have a conversation, get everybody on the same page, get rid of any assumptions, make sure everyone has clarity on who owns which pieces, who needs to review it, who needs to approve it, what is the final deadline, but what are some milestones we need to hit ahead of that final deadline? And just have that conversation before you start instead of just having everyone scatter and assuming that everyone knows what’s what.
Katie Cash [00:47:55]:
I love that. Meredith, thank you for your time here. I really appreciate your approach to project management of not just being process for the sake of process and added red tape, but really to add to the spirit of let’s work together, let’s be better together. Empower everybody to do their best possible work and minimize all of the, the friction points that we can. For everyone that has listened to the end, thank you so much. We will see you right back here next time on AEC Marketing for Principals.