Audio:                   Welcome to AEC Marketing for Principals, brought to you by Smartegies where we help design and construction firms navigate sales and leverage marketing to win more projects. Here are your hosts, Katie Cash and Judy Sparks.

Katie Cash:                    Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the AEC Marketing for Principals Podcast where we sit down and we talk about effective ways to market and to sell to owners. I'm your host Katie Cash, and as always, I will be joined today by my partner in strategy, Miss Judy Sparks, the Founder and President of Smartegies, a full service marketing agency focused on the design and construction space.

So today, folks, we're going to be talking about a firsthand research study that we produced at Smartegies where we went out and spoke directly to public sector and institutional owners about what they really want to know and what they really are looking for as professional service firms are selling to them and marketing to them for their projects. And I find this topic to be extremely interesting because myself, that's how I got into this industry. I started out on the owner side. I worked for a large state agency that was responsible for not only the procurement of professional services for all publicly funded projects but also for actually selling the bonds to finance those and managing the construction process throughout. So I got to see everything from soup to nuts, and really while I was there, my main job was to be the eliminator. So I would get this great stack of proposals that would come in whenever we had advertised a new project, and my job was to review them, make sure that people abided by the format, the minimum qualifications, and I looked for ways to make that stack smaller.

So I kind of got indoctrinated on how to do proposals by looking at them through a fine tooth comb and with really black and white glasses. Either you pass or you failed. Did you answer the question? Did you follow my format? And at the end of the day, did you persuade me that you should be awarded the maximum amount of points that are granted for whatever that particular section is. So it was really interesting for me to go back to that kind of role and see if the way that I was pursuing awarding work when I was on the owner side was still true today because a lot has changed over the course of the 10, 15 year time span.

So we recently did a survey. As part of this survey, we spoke to over 29 institutional and public sector owners. Again, these are state officials, healthcare systems, K-12 school districts, large research universities, and we specifically sought out the individuals that you typically see on a selection committee. Again, these are habitual buyers of professional services. They're key decision makers. They sit through countless interviews year over year. A lot of them review proposals on their nights and weekends looking at who they want to work with, who they want to gear up for their next project. Most of them found out that they are hiring professional service firms, 10 and more times a year. So again, habitual buyers. They have seen the dog and pony show from multiple firms time and time again.

This part wasn't surprising to me in terms of the survey questions, but 97% of those individuals that we interviewed said that yes, they do subscribe to a formal process. Meaning that they are procuring their services very formally. They're advertising it. There is a set qualification in terms of response of a proposal that they're asking for. There's weighted criteria in how their scoring them. Some of them include an interview process, and there's weighted criteria for that as well. As we get into today's episode, we're going to break down all those different decision points at what helps individuals on these selection committees determine how they're going to weight and grade individuals on whether not they are going to move onto the next process or what their preferences are.

Another key fact, just in terms of this survey group that we spoke with, is over half of them are part of large selection committees. So a lot of times when we're working with firms in our space, they are thinking the selection committee might be three people. But based on this research that we did, the selection committees have grown, and now they're more in the four to eight people mindset, which is very interesting. As you can imagine, when you're trying to sell or persuade on individual to buy your services, that's a challenge in and of itself. But whenever you're trying to persuade a group of individuals, often with different perspectives, maybe some of them might have legacy relationships with your competitors. It becomes a much more calculated process at how you might be able to present your information, your benefits, your values in a more effective way to get the entire selection committee on your side.

So as part of this survey, we talked a lot about what their marketing preferences are. And so before we really dive into all of that, I really would like my partner in strategy over here, Judy, to chime in on exactly why we felt that this was a right time to do an owner survey, and really why it was important for us at Smartegies to be the ones to go out into the marketplace and get the truth from the mouth of the owners.

Judy Sparks:                  Thanks, Katie. I think that it's really important that our audience knows that at Smartegies, one of the things that is a core value is that we believe that marketing should always be evidence-based. We take a lot of care in making sure that the advice that we give to our clients is not just simply our opinion or something we think we intuitively sense. But that anytime we have the ability to actually test our theories and come back with solid evidence that the advice that the advice that we're giving is in fact the right thing to do. We always prefer to take that method.

So the reason why we did the survey is, as you can imagine, as a consultant in a space that's heavily comprised of technical professionals who are reaching out because their area of expertise often is not marketing. It's a much more comforting for a marketing consultant to go to their owner at a construction company or an architectural company and say, "Listen, that's a great question, and we have a great answer. And it's not our opinion, but it's the opinion of the people you're selling to." So we try very hard to do this type of primary research in order to make sure that the practices and recommendations that we're making to our clients is actually validated.

So thinking about things from an owner's point of view, I think that it's really interesting and special, Katie, frankly, that you had that experience that you had. To spend the first part of your career on the owner's side and understand that point of view before coming over to the private side of the table and helping firms win business with owners. A lot of marketers and principals, for that matter, do not have that opportunity, and oftentimes, what I hear in the board rooms when getting short listed for a project or when strategizing about how to go after a strategic client or a strategic pursuit, typically I hear some complaining. And it's not meant to be as negative as I just made it sound, but a lot of time there's a lot of focus on what the firm is going through. And very few times, if ever, do I hear one of my clients say, "Gosh, we have five days to prepare for our interview," or, "We have to respond to this RFP." Never do I hear them say, "Gosh, that's so much better than what the owner must have to go through when they receive all these submittals."

So I think about the poor guy on the other side or woman that receives 20 proposals for the same job, and has the pleasure of getting to read all of that.

Katie Cash:                    Oh, such a pleasure. Let me tell you guys. I think if I had to read another proposal that was like, "You should pick us because we finish on time and on budget." I was like, "Oh, man. Sign me up," because nobody ever does that because that's what everybody puts out. That's our value prop. We're on time. We're on budget.

Judy Sparks:                  Exactly, or let me throw in an owner testimonial quote in the margin, because that's going to definitely persuade you. So I don't really mean to poke fun at our clientele, but there are some go-to tactics that have been used over and over and over again. And I think with very little regard of what is that user experience, what is that experience for the reader. And so I talk to owners a lot about this.

I have a really great contact at one of the largest urban school districts in the country, and he and I were speaking recently. To protect innocent, let's call him Max. So I said, "Max, what is it like? You buy professional services almost every week. You're sitting in an interview almost every week. Whether it's for a program management firm or design firm or a construction company or some sort of equipment vendor. Did you know that your job as Associate Vice President of Facilities for one of the largest urban school districts in the country really meant that you were a Purchasing Manager?"

And he chuckled and said, "You know, Judy, it's funny. People think that this is the only job I have, the only thing I need to do all day is read their proposal." He's like, "The reality is is that selecting firms is one very small part of my daily scope. So when you take out my project responsibilities, you take out my HR responsibilities, my general management responsibilities, my reporting responsibilities to the board, and you take out things like a lunch break and maybe some time to take breaks throughout the day. And, by the way, I have a whole personal life outside of work. When you get 20 proposals and you have about a week to review them before issuing a short list, really it comes down to breaking down the time. How much time per proposal can I allocated?"

And what he told me was shocking because they have a standard issue RFQ or RFP, and it asks a lot of questions. But the reality is he really only allocates eight to 10 minutes per proposal. So what he told me is he sets his timer, and he starts reading. At 10 minutes, he stops reading. So if he hasn't found the answers that he needs in order to score the scorecard within that time, guess what. The firms, they don't get the points. So they don't do as well. So being concise, making sure that you are thinking about what does the reader want to see, framing your proposal or say your cover letter around the selection criteria, very helpful. So I thought that was very interesting that firms spend hours and hours and hours, sometimes weeks. I think, as you know, Katie, we do a lot of proposals for our firms as an extension of their marketing teams. Everyone's been there. Six proposals come in at once, and they only have three marketing coordinators. Do we pass up opportunities, or do we outsource to an outside firm to help us respond to all of them?

So we do quite a bit of production work for firms, and we know that sometimes we'll spend over 200 hours preparing a response. And so when you think about all of those hours preparing a response and an owner allocating 10 minutes to read it, it's a little heart breaking, isn't it?

Katie Cash:                    Yeah. Well, and I don't want to burst any bubbles. But when I was on the owner side, there were certain pieces that companies would always include in the proposal that I never asked for. So I automatically skip over that, and I think they put it in there as like value add, surprise and delight pieces. But the reality is it didn't match up with my scorecard. I didn't ask for it. I ain't looking at it. I probably really hurt somebody's feelings by saying that because they spent so much time designing all the things that are going in the appendix of additional information that I did not ask for. I'm not ever going to look at.

But, yeah, as we did this survey, we did find a lot of other little surprising details. I'll start with one. We asked these owners when it comes to hiring firms for a project, what is the number one thing that you are looking for? So their number one answer I do not think is all that surprising. Their number one answer is that they are looking to make sure that the firm has experience with their building type, which seems like a no brainer. If I'm an owner, whether I'm public sector, private sector, it's my first time building this particular project type or it's my 11th time, and I know what I'm getting into, you really don't want to have the added risk of hiring someone for the first time to build that particular or design that particular project type.

It comes even more important if it's a very complex project like a BSL lab or if it's a mission critical space or a component of a hospital that's very technical piece of a project. And what we find is that firms that we work with a lot of times chase all kinds of work where they really, in some cases, they don't have the resume for that particular building type. But maybe they have a relationship or maybe they have some projects that are kind of similar but not exactly the same. And it's a hard conversation to help them kind of think through whether or not it's worth the effort in chasing a project where we know the number one criteria for selection is experience with the building type, and they might be coming in a little bit short because regardless of how good that relationship is, we know that expertise travels and that somebody on the short list, somebody else submitting is going to come in with five or 10 or more exactly the same types of projects to show.

So not all that surprising that owners wait the most important factor being experience with the building type, but it is something to consider as you're reviewing your go, no-go scoring on whether or not you are going to chase a project. If you can't say with confidence, "Yes, I've designed, built. I've engineered. I've managed five of these projects just like this. I can do it in my sleep."

What was surprising in that question is what came up as number two. So I'm going to keep you hanging for a minute on what that might've been. But a lot of you are probably thinking through, "Well, I'm sure it's price." Well, no. Sorry, folks. Price came in dead last, and you can argue with me all day long that it might be, "Well, it depends on if it's a contractor because contractors only have to buy the job." Well, that might be true, but that's not the number one thing that's coming up with getting you to the short list or pre-qualified or even ultimately awarding all the contracts that we were seeing with this particular owner group.

And then a number of you might be arguing that it's relationship. People aren't going to work with strangers. They need to know who they're working with. They need to have been called upon by a particular professional service firm before they're going to award the project, and I'm going to burst your bubble too there and say sorry. Relationship came in second to last.

The number two thing when it comes to owners selecting professional service firms for their project, which was surprising to me, is the strength of the brand. So the strength of the brand of that architect, of that engineer, of that contract was what was coming in right behind, pretty closely too, with the experience in the building type, which I found to be incredibly interesting. And, Judy, you've been in the industry for a long time. I would love for you to kind of share your perspective on what you think about that. This whole idea of the strength of the brand being a weighted criteria.

Judy Sparks:                  Well, I think it makes sense. If you think about it, Katie, there's an old saying, and I've said it before in past episodes. "Nobody's ever been fired for hiring an IBM." Right. So when it comes to strength of brand it's really, in our industry, more about reputation management and making sure that your brand is prominent and associated with the things that you want your brand to be associated with. And I think that branding has been around as a concept for a long, long time but just did not play much relevance in the AEC space simply because it has been a relationship-based game. I remember 25 years ago starting in this industry, my boss at the time explained to me that we are never going to win a project unless we know the owner before he advertises. So we spent an enormous amount of time marketing to owners way in advance of a project, sometimes two years, sometimes even more than that.

So I always learned growing up that we have really long sales cycles. So one to two year sales cycles, and that the key differentiator is if you're at the table and the owner knows you better than your competitors and you know the owner better than your competitors know the owner, then there's a higher likelihood of success. We used to call that competitive intelligence selling. So in a competitive intelligence model, it was about really getting to know your targets ahead of time, what their issues were, and building this consultative friendship with the owner leading up to a project. And at an appropriate stage in that consultative friendship, it turns into a social friendship.

That has been very prominent for many, many years. So what's changed? Well, relationships are still really important. My clients when they hear me say relationships can in fourth in this survey, they are absolutely not having it. They're saying, "No, no. I know that relationships play a big role." And i'm not saying they don't. All I'm saying is they're less prominent because everybody has them. So 25 years ago, I remember the firm I worked with represented BMW North America when they came to the U.S. for the first time with their assembly plant in South Carolina. And I remember my boss at the time took great care to start the relationship with BMW North America in Germany two years before they came. So we were probably the only firm that did that at that time. Today, that is business development 101. We have very savvy business development teams in the marketplace now that are reaching higher into the food chain much earlier in the process, and so relationships cancel each other out.

Also, most firms have specialized, like you said, number one criteria, experience in my building type. Well, how do you gain experience in the building type? You focus, and you specialize. So therefore, the trade shows you go to, the conferences you go to, all of the places that you spend doing business development are in environments where that type of owner is. So if you and all of your competitors are at the same events, meeting the same people, one can assume that they're not just making friends with you. They're making friends with you and your competitor.

So it maybe true that you still need to have a relationship before winning a project. But the difference is you're not the only one with the relationships. So, Katie, how many times have we been helping firms on a project where they talked about an owner, and we know that owner. And we've worked with their competitor in the past, and all of the competitors claim to have the best relationship with that said owner.

Katie Cash:                    Yeah, every time.

Judy Sparks:                  Every time. So we know just through our day-to-day experience is that owners have a lot of great relationships. It's in their best interest to do so. So not to hurt any feelings, again, that you're not so special. But to think that you are the only service provider that has that degree of relationship with an owner in most cases can be a bit short sided.

So with that said, if everyone has a relationship and it comes down to experience in the building type and everybody has that too, then strength of brand really comes down to this concept or risk management. So I know firms A, B, C, and D personally. I've gotten to know them. I know them all well, and firms A, B, C, and D all have equal resume. But firm A is a small, local provider that has done a lot of this building type locally, but we're trying to compete on a national level. And this is often the case in say the healthcare world or the higher education world where those institutions are competing for the top faculty, and they're competing for the top students in the college or university arena or the top physicians in the healthcare arena. And facilities play a major part in that.

So you want to go with a firm that not only sees things locally but sees best practices nationally. And then you have another firm that is... Or maybe two or three firms that are national players. So then you're starting to think reputation wise, "Which brand do I feel most comfortable with?" Because at the end of the day, if the project goes wrong, the person in charge of that project, it's a reflection of them. It is a risk for their personal reputation, their personal career. So it makes sense to me that strength of brand would play a role.

Now I've talked a lot about relationships and how everybody has them. Now I'm going to maybe talk out of the other side of my mouth just a little bit and say one of the most surprising things that we have seen from this survey is that maybe the sales cycles have shortened, and maybe relationships, if it is a factor, they seem to be a neutral factor. But when they're not a factor, they're really absent. So the survey indicated that 28% of owners indicated that providers start calling on them six to 12 months before a project starts.

So what I said earlier, two years before the BMW project, we were in Germany. We're seeing now six to 12 months is plenty of time to set the pregame. However, what was shocking is that 33% of the owners said that no one has called on them before the project is advertised or firms are invited. So here relationships are not playing a factor because there are none. So strength of brand and their reputation and what an owner thinks of a brand plays a huge role. I don't know anybody, but I've heard of this firm. That plays a huge role.

Katie Cash:                    So let's talk a little bit about I'm hearing you on strength the brand. Everything is matching up. But what I'm also is sticking in the back of my mind is this whole idea and this mindset that people design buildings or people build buildings, not companies. So can you shed a little bit of light about the strength of the individual personal brands on the project teams too? Is that come into fact here or is it really just the strength of the corporate organization from a risk standpoint?

Judy Sparks:                  Well, I think that is an excellent question, Katie. I think it's both. I think that the personal brand is extremely important because that's the person you're going to deal with day to day. At the end of the day, you're right. It's people who design and build buildings. So you have to have great confidence in the individuals that are being proposed on a project, and I find that owners are not just taking your word for it. With incestuous nature of our industry, it's not uncommon that three national firms would be competing for a project claiming all the same past experience. Why? Because people move around. So they're showing their firm experience. They're showing their personal experience.

So owners have admitted to us that they don't take your word for it in the proposal. They will actually go to sources like LinkedIn and match up the person's job history with the timing of a project to figure out who's project is that really. Is it the firm's project? And is the person who did that project still there, or are they going somewhere else? So different owners feel differently about this. But at the end of the day, the firm brand is still so, so important because at the end of the day, it's the firm that's going to sign the contract, not the individual.

So if your firm has a reputation of being particularly litigious or delivering late or having a lot of liquidated damages or having a lot of turnover on your staff where your people are leaving midstream, those are nightmare situations for an owner. So the firm reputation is still very important when it comes to evaluating a strength of a brand.

Katie Cash:                    So for our listeners out there, help us connect the dots in terms of if owners are saying that strength of the brand is really important, how are they getting out there with that messaging if they're... One, if they're not calling on people before the RFP and RFQ's come out, and then, two, one of the other interesting facts that we found from this survey is that these owners really do appreciate, early 72% of them that responded said that they want to hear from the seller doers in the sales cycle, those individuals that are technically trained, that can talk more sophisticatedly about solutions to their project needs. We know that all of those seller doers in our industry right now are really more doer sellers if at all because everybody's so busy. So how are you going to build a brand, and how are you going to build the reputation of a brand if there isn't a relationship or if you're not really getting out there in the pre-game? How could principals who are listening today understand how to do that?

Judy Sparks:                  Well, Katie, that's another really great point that you're bringing up. The seller doers are traditionally doer sellers. I mean, if you're a billable member of a team and a client calls on a current project, that is always going to take precedent over a new opportunity. Or at least that's been my observation. And then when you take an economic climate like we have today where I think I read recently we're nearly at 0% unemployment. So everybody's busy, everybody's working. You and I live it every single day when clients are asking us, "Hey, can you take your marketing practices and apply it to recruiting rather than marketing because we actually need to win employees more than we need to win clients." And then I hear that no one's calling on owners. 33% of owners that we surveyed said, "No one calls on me before a project." That is so unusual.

Well, the reason why is everyone's busy. So we've talked many times in past episodes about this shift that's occurring in our industry where we're shifting from a relationship-based sales culture to a marketing centric culture, where the marketing departments within these organizations are being looked at as more than overhead now. They are actually being looked at as revenue drivers, strategic drivers. They are asked to be proactive instead of reactive. And my favorite part of all of this is they're actually being held accountable. That if they put something together and push it out to the marketplace, principals are wanting to see results. I grew up in an era where marketing was the person down the hall that put proposals together. That was early in my career.

And so to think how far we've come where CEOs are asking their Chief Marketing Officers, which yes, audience, that's a thing. Chief Marketing Officer is a member of the C Suite. You can Google it is. It is prominent in every industry, and starting to definitely take a place in the AEC world. They are holding their CMOs accountable for results. They want marketing qualified leads. So they want marketing ROI on every dollar spent.

So if owners are not able to have the one to one interaction of salespeople or seller doers or doer sellers, the marketing department really needs to be strategic and thoughtful and intentional about keeping the brand front and center and prominent, in front of their potential buying audience all the time. And the most affordable and effective way we have found to do this is through digital. So digital is just one other channel. There's lots of marketing channels, and a channel for you listeners who might not be familiar with this term, is simply just a conduit to get your message to its intended audience. And there are several marketing channels. Traditional sales is one of them. Other channels may include print, trade shows and conferences. You might have traditional print advertising. But digital has seemed to really take in favor over all of those other channels today simply because it's affordable, it is fast, and it can be measured.

So one of the things we ask our owners in the survey is, "Are you online, and are you being sold to online?" Because we've been doing the digital thing for quite a few years now, Katie. But when we first started, do you remember the early arguments we would have with our principals of our clients firms? Do you remember what they would question us on?

Katie Cash:                    Oh yeah. Yeah. Do we really need a website?

Judy Sparks:                  Do we really need a website? Are my owners really buying engineering services online? Are my owners really reading that spam email coming in through their inbox? We get those questions still today, but less often. I think most firms have realized that this is a digital age, and the buying audience is getting younger. And these audiences grew up with more technology than their predecessors. And it's very comfortable and acceptable and oftentimes preferred to be communicated with electronically.

So one of the segments of our survey really focused on what is your online behavior. So overwhelmingly, 85% of our survey owners indicated that they much prefer to receive marketing collateral and promotional material from companies digitally versus through print or other means. So that's really telling. I don't know about you, Katie, but I don't have a file cabinet anymore. Do you?

Katie Cash:                    No. I mean, I have a digital file system on my computer, but not a physical one.

Judy Sparks:                  Exactly. So I feel bad for the file cabinet manufacturers because there's less demand for your product. But those owners do not really want paper. In fact, we're even seeing it in the procurement process. I mean, it's very rare today that we actually have to print, punch, and bind a proposal. They want it electronically uploaded. So digital is definitely become a way of life.

The other thing that our clients ask us is, "Is it really worth us writing this blog post every week? It's a lot of work." And I would say that our survey indicated that 75% of the owners indicated that they have read industry related blog posts relevant to their work within the last year. Now, I will say there's no point in writing a blog post and then not doing anything to drive traffic to your blog. I think that's the biggest mistake that our clients make is that they spend a lot of time and effort crafting their research, crafting their white paper, crafting their eBook, and they put it up on their website, and they say, "See, it didn't work. Nobody's come there to see it." Well, it doesn't work like that. So if you're going to take the time to create content, then you really need to take the time and allocate a budget to drive traffic to that content if you want to see results.

Katie Cash:                    I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I know that a lot of clients we work with are doing their little knowledge center of blog posts, and sadly, a lot of them already been tracking analytics to know if anybody's coming to look at it. But some of them just assume that they put it out there, and the world is waiting for that next best tip on how to plan for a healthcare expansion. And all these owners are just going to flock to it. But you do have to be really thoughtful about how you're going to alert individuals both friends, acquaintances, clients, and then strangers about that. So I do just echo that sentiment.

I want to switch gears a little bit at this point in the podcast, and talk more about what firms should do when they've made it to the short list and now they have an audience with the owner. And they have the ability to go present. Because we learned in our survey that the majority of these owners are still requiring a formal interview as part of their process, and I love the joke that we have going around in our industry, "Don't lose it in the interview." And there's some truth to that. And we found some interesting things in some of our survey questions. So I'm going to pivot a little bit, and now we're going to talk about what owners prefer to hear, see, and who they prefer to talk to as part of the interview process.

So one of the things we ask them is a very tactical question for in-house marketers these days is, "What presentation format do you prefer?" And I've worked with architects large and small, national brands, small boutique companies, and it always cracks me up. They are working on their designs up until the very last minute, which is great because they're putting time and effort into their thought and how they're going to creatively communicate their thoughts and ideas to this owner. But there's always this conversation about, "We need to get boards printed. We need to put this on a board." And we hear a lot of other clients talk about they want to utilize Prezi, and they want to utilize this technology and that technology because it talks and it shows that they are keeping up with the times.

When we came and asked these owners, "What presentation format do you prefer?" The vast majority of them prefer good, old fashioned slides. Whether it is in an Adobe PDF that's being presented or if it's in PowerPoint. Nobody, absolutely nobody wanted Prezi. In fact, that got the most negative comments, and I think it's just because people have used and abused those features and put the swirls and animations and transitions on there to the point that some of our owners even commented that it makes them sick. And they need a motion sickness warning before people come in with a Prezi.

A lot of people said that they don't need boards. They're hard to use. It becomes a physical prop in presentations, and you always have to worry about whether or not the easel is going to hold up. But still, it's just funny to me. I can just think back to all the stories I've had coaching teams where they're like, "No, we want to have a board so that I can take it off the easel and go sit it on the table right in front of the owner. And it's really engaging." And the owner's like, "No, I don't want that. I want you to keep the slides simple." And what I just want to share with the audience listening is regardless of what tool you use to communicate during your presentation, it's to make sure that you remember that the conversation is more important than the tool you're using. So utilize a tool that's going to support you but not become your crutch that you refer to. Nobody likes to have a beautifully designed slides, and then the presenter stand with their back to the audience reading the slides to them story time.

Judy Sparks:                  Katie, that reminds me of the time that we visited with the Vice Chancellor for the Board of Regions, and he indicated one of his biggest pet peeves is when contractors put their schedule on a board and you still can't read it. I think he went on a 10 minute rant about, "Why would you do that? Why would you first put it in a presentation slide, project it, and start your slide with, 'I know you can't read this,' and then on top of that, print it on a board that I can't read."

Katie Cash:                    Yeah, it's terrible.

Judy Sparks:                  So I thought that was really funny.

Katie Cash:                    I think that there is very little tolerance for that. It's an important point. The other fun part about my job where I get to get on a plane each week and go and coach other teams all across the country as they prepare for these presentations is the number one question we always get and the type of conversation that derails the group the most is the debate over what is the room going to look like and how should we arrange the tables. All of this, that, and the other. And the only reason I bring that up here is to the point of being mindful of your presentation environment and how that's going to impact the visibility of your slides. Because you're right, nobody wants to be in the audience squinting, trying to evolve into a higher creature and read what is on your slide. So do not put something on there that can't be read from the back of the room by a 60-year-old woman that has one eye. You need to make it very visible for them to see.

You laugh at it, but it's true. You don't ever want to draw the attention away from your presenters because people often can't listen and read at the same time. And if they're trying to read your slides, they're not listening. You're going to lose some credibility, lose some momentum.

So I'll get off my soap box on that. I'm going to move on to some of the other findings that we had in our survey, which was really about who do you want to hear from during the presentation. Every instance that I've worked with clients, there's always this debate on who should go. There's this school of thought that we need to only send our best presenters. The people that have the gift of gab that are very energetic and are really good at public speaking. And then there's this other school of thought that it needs to be the project team themselves, even if they mumble and stumble the entire way because we really want them to know who they're going to get to work with. And the reality is that yes, these owners do want to hear from the project team themselves. They want to know who they're going to be working with on a daily basis. They want to be able to connect with that individual personally, but they also want to have the understanding of how that individual's going to be able to communicate with them, what area they're responsible for of the project, how often they're going to see them, and really start to build that rapport as part of the presentation process.

Sometimes this is a little bit hard for my clients to swallow because a lot of times the studio directors, the principals, or even the owners who's name is on the door are really insistent at going and being part of the presentation. And a number of them have gotten so accustomed to that that they carry the weight of the presentation for a lot of these opportunities, and what we found from this interview with these owners is that that's a really big no-no. Sometimes it warrants executive-level participation, and sometimes that goes a long way by just showing your corporate commitment. But at the end of the day, they still want the majority of the presentation to be given by the project team themselves. And don't ever, this is kind of going to be one of those broad statements. Don't ever present with a team that you know good and well is not going to be the actual team to work on the project. We call that the bait and switch, and no owner likes that. They know when they're being sold to and when they're being over-promised. They would rather have the realistic team come to them and be the ones that they're going to see from presentation to completion. That's really, really important for these owners as part of that.

So I mention that just only to reemphasize the importance of exposing your project team members to the project early so that they have that reference going into the presentations themselves. It's shocking to me the number of times firms have hired us, and I get on a plane. And I've known that I'm coming. I've prepared my pitch. I've got all of my practice rituals ready to go, and I get to the meeting with my client. And nobody at the table has read the RFP, know that you guys have been short listed, they know who you're up against. A number of them don't even know what day they're going to present, and they've just shown up cold. And it's been the marketing and business development individuals that have put forth the effort up until this point. But now the hand off really happens and it's on the technical team to really seal it and close the deal in the interview.

So I encourage firms out there listening to engage your technical staff early in the pursuit so that they can buy into the solution, and they can buy into how you might be positioning for the work. And they can come with that background of knowledge as you make your way to the presentation itself, and if you're working with individuals that have not presented formally in the past or that really are not comfortable with public speaking, there's a lot of individuals that are. That's the number one fear of all individuals is this idea to get up in front of your peers or in front of a large group and give a presentation. Give them some time to get ready for that. Go the extra mile and give them some assistance with a coach or maybe even give them some time to practice and rehearse. It really does go a long way.

So I want to share some other things as it relates to content that is presented during these presentations. We asked owners, again, "When you're hiring firms, what do you want to see from them?" So I'm going to speak directly to architects here for a minute, and we get this question all the time. Do I really need to do concepts? Should I do a model? Should I do a video? What is the level of effort that we need to spend to secure the project to showcase in our interview? And 80% of our owners that we surveyed said, "Yes, absolutely, I would love to see design concepts during the interview."

They were very forthcoming with saying, "I'm not sitting there looking at your design concepts thinking I'm buying off a sheet right now. I fully understand that these are concepts absent of the nuance of owner preferences because we haven't had the kick off. We haven't done the short yet. These are just your ideas." But if I'm going to sit there and entrust an architect with hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, and I'm going to engage them, and I'm going to put my personal reputation on the line by saying, "Yes, I want to hire these folks." I at least need to know how you're thinking about my site, how you're thinking about my project, and how you might utilize tools to convey that information for me so that I can ensure that we're on the same page as we progress through the design iteration process.

So architects out there, yes, owners do want to see design concepts. Most of them do like to see multiple options just so they feel like there's more than one way that you can approach and look at things. I'm speaking to architects right now, but it is not only the architects out there that are putting skin in the game upfront and early. We work a lot with contractors, and for contractors, the equivalent of doing a design model is maybe preparing a full blown cost model. It's also utilizing then technology to showcase how you might phase and how you might build the project over the length of the schedule. I mean, I've even seen firms go as far as to presenting a full blown G&P during the interview. I know that sounds extreme, but it happens. Firms out there are highly competitive. Some of them are very confident in their pricing or their phasing plans or their subcontractor relationships, and they're going the extra mile in this interview to convey that to the owners. And it's making a difference.

Engineers out there, they're putting skin in the game as well. They're thinking through how they might explore technologies as they've advanced. They are also looking at new methods and new equipment. We work with a lot of MEP firms, and they'll sit there and they'll talk about if you want to do a heat pump versus this type of HVAC equipment versus VRVF. They'll go through all the different models, and how that impacts the project in terms of cost, in terms of maintenance, in terms of ability to get in the facility quicker. All of those different things come into play. So it's not just the architects who are showcasing some of their ideas on the front end, and owners are really opening up to that.

So, Judy, you might talk a little bit about just the level of effort, the cost to client acquisition and how firms should really start evaluating how much more they put into a project as they're approaching these interviews. If you have any lasting thoughts there.

Judy Sparks:                  Well, Katie, I think we had a whole episode planned on the idea of account-based marketing, and really that idea is a philosophy that we're seeing widely adopted across our industry because of this cost of client acquisition. I recently spent time with an owner of one of the largest children's hospitals in the country, and he indicated to me that they were building $1 billion new campus for their hospital system. And all of the largest, most formidable, top healthcare builders in the country were on the shortlist. And he said unapologetically, "The firm that comes to the table needs to outwork their competition if they want to win." He was not going to risk his project on firms that said, "We can do this," or, "We have done this," but they've come to the project with, "We will do this." Not only did they say it, they gave him strong reasons to believe. Here is the model, here are the subs we talk to, here is the pricing we've gotten in. This is what we know about the site. Here are where the utilities are.

So you can imagine that the winning contractor probably spent well over six figures of man power and real hard costs putting their presentation together. But it's for a project that's $1 billion over the course of 10 years. So that is a pretty healthy project for a firm, and the owners position was, "You're asking me to take a leap of faith. You need to give me a reason to believe. The more evidence you can show me that you are the right firm and you've thought things through, the more likely I'm going to give you my project."

So we're seeing that all across the board. Now that's an extreme example because it's $1 billion project. We're seeing this on $10 million projects. Maybe not to the level of effort I've just described, but it's not uncommon for a firm to spend $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 to go after a $10 million job. And that might include doing a 3D animated fly through because if you think about selection committees, maybe there's one or two technical professionals sitting on the owner's side, evaluating the firms. But typically, especially in the public sector, it's user groups that are represented or they might be administrators that don't have a technical degree. And these people are visual learners typically. You have to present the information in such a way that they can comprehend it if they are not an architect themselves or an engineer themselves.

So in order to put that level of effort, going back to your original question. The cost of client acquisition, that struggle is real for firms, and so therefore, firms have had to be very, very selective about which projects they pursue. And so this philosophy of account-based marketing has been a great fit for our industry because it's essentially a philosophy that allocates your marketing dollars, both time and hard dollars, to your highest valued clients and prospects. So it forces us to take that go, no-go decision to just another level.

Katie Cash:                    And with that, folks, I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode where we've dissected some of the findings from our owner's survey. We didn't get through all the topics. So if you would like to, you can download a copy of our survey from the website. It is smartegies.com. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-G-I-E-S.com. Again, you can download a copy of our owner's survey right there and see the statistics for yourself, see how your firm might be matching up with the rest of them or how you might want to pivot some of your sales and marketing efforts. But again, thanks for turning into today's podcast for the AEC Marketing for Principals, and take care. Thanks.

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