Coping with a Chaotic Market: Using Standard Presentation Processes

It’s no surprise to anyone in our industry that the market is heating up and that A/E/C firms are writing more proposals and preparing for more presentations than ever before.  Unfortunately, the extra work isn’t translating into higher hit rates or increases in the bottom line.  Firms are working harder for less work, and marketing departments are becoming increasingly stretched and stressed. 

I’ve written before about the importance of being more selective in the projects we pursue and about making strong go/no go decisions.  However, it is true that even when we do our homework, A/E/C firms are still competing for work and their marketing departments are completely tapped out.  So, what can we do?

I’ve recently been working with firms to develop presentation “templates” and standard processes.  In addition to standard visuals, such as always having a site aerial (Google Earth and Terraserver.com are great sources), these might include templated presentation preparation processes, including checklists and meeting agendas.  And, we might go so far as to design standard presentation visual templates or designs for backdrops, boards, or PPTs.

The more we can do ahead of time, before a pursuit, to make the time leading up to the actual presentation easier, the better.  Such planning saves our teams in time, money, and stress.  In our “Winning the Shortlist” video instructional materials, we’ve provided some easy to use checklists and preparation techniques.  One of these tools is a process to get a team ready for an interview in three meetings.  I call this the “Four Stages in Three Meetings Process.”  In this process, marketing professionals can establish clear expectations for pre-meeting preparation and for the outcomes of each meeting.  Before the first meeting, for example, team members receive a “dossier” of information about the project, including the RFP and the submittal.  Each team member is expected to read the material and, if applicable, visit the site prior to the meeting.  In that first meeting, the team starts the development of presentation strategy.  In the second meeting, the team “stumbles through” the presentation content and finalizes visuals.  By the third and final meeting, the team is ready for choreography and rehearsals.

While for a large, high profile project, we may need more time right before the interview, we can establish standard processes to streamline the design and delivery of most interviews.  By having a documented process, marketing professionals – with the support of their leadership – can share the responsibility for interview preparation with their teams.  The process, and the shared responsibility, helps firms compete more successfully with less cost to their teams and organizations.

I also recommend firms use checklists for pre-interview and in fact, pre-proposal, reconnaissance.  This checklist can also be found in the instructional guide and includes basic information that marketing professionals and teams can and should gather.  This includes information about the project, the client, the site, the selectors, the competition, the interview, and the selection process.  For example, every team member should be able to answer why the project is being done and who stands to gain or lose from the project.  And, this information should be integrated into the entire interview.  On the presentation I just finished, my team started our coaching process for a $30 million project with a clear understanding of what we needed to communicate to beat the competition.  We also finished the coaching by checking the list to make sure our messages were clear and unambiguous.

We can’t change the fact that for marketing professionals and our firms, the market has heated up. But, we can work smarter.  Most of us are already working harder.  Now’s the time to put in place some templates and standard processes to be more successful in this chaotic environment.

Customer Service 101

Last week, I received yet another box from Tiffany’s in the mail. In it was a lovely pair of silver earrings. I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I have a boyfriend.  I’m trying my best to reassure him of the truth - that this box, and the three previous ones, actually came from a major airline. And, no I do not have a boyfriend who flies for a major carrier.

To reward my frequent traveling on their flights across the nation, this particular airline has sent me hundreds of dollars in gifts from Tiffany’s in the last six months. In other words, I’ve gotten more little blue boxes this year from the airline than I have in 24 years of marriage. (Yes, Mike; this is a hint.) But, seriously, all this swag makes me think about customer service and what companies really need to do to keep their customer’s happy.  Let me be clear, I love the Tiffany’s swag. It’s really fun. And, anyone would be happy to get silver earrings in the mail no matter who they’re from. However, truthfully, the little blue boxes do not impact in any way my choice of airline.

There was one memorable moment in the St. Louis airport several months ago when I literally thought I’d be willing to give back all the Tiffany’s boxes if only I could get a courteous counter agent to help me with a horrendously delayed flight. I’d have traded the earrings for someone, anyone, to help me navigate my way home. Customer service is about understanding what your customer’s real need is and then finding a way to either meet it or empathize with his or her pain in some meaningful way.

How does this apply to A/ E/ C firms? I think one of the fortunate aspects of doing business in a difficult economy is that we don’t give away as many useless key chains, flashlights or bottles of wine. We have the opportunity to build far more customer loyalty by focusing on the basics of customer service - really listening, and going out of our way to make our clients’ lives easier, and keeping our commitments.  Perhaps the greatest gift we can give our clients is good advice and an open ear when they need us. When we “pull the rabbit out of the hat” or “leap tall buildings in a single bound” to solve a client problem or avoid catastrophe on a project, that’s the real gift.  I’ve gotten more positive client feedback by coming in after a long day to help a client fix a challenging proposal or write a budget paper for Council than I ever did sending even a great bottle of wine.

And, so to my airline friends, I choose my airline partners based on how well you treat me when times are good and by how hard you’ve worked to get me home when things go badly. I don’t expect you to be perfect and I’m really a very understanding business traveler.  My clients certainly know that I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect perfection from you. But I do expect you to try harder to gain my trust and loyalty by being there for me when I need you with kind and courteous service. So, leave the little blue boxes from Tiffany’s to my husband, and stick with your core business – flying planes.

 Oh, and buy the way, that whole charging for baggage thing? Let’s get rid of that too.

Presentation Visuals

I hate PowerPoint. Please forgive my bluntness. No aspersions to our neighbors at Microsoft intended, but, I have to say that the worst thing that ever happened to presentations in the A/E/C industry was the advent of PowerPoint. I have seen many PowerPoint Presentations that constrain creativity, make content boring, and serve only as a crutch that diminishes the quality of a team’s short-list interview. Oftentimes the biggest challenge I have as a coach is convincing a team that they are better than the technology they’ve chosen to communicate their message.

In many cases, the best thing that can happen to the presentation is to have a hard drive malfunction right before they go live. The best presentations I’ve seen in the last 18 months, have been executed seamlessly without the use of PowerPoint.  These teams used beautiful banners, life sized time-lines, and interactive 3D models.  They turned on the lights and looked audience members right in the eyes. They talked right to selectors, not at moving bullets or even beautiful images. The speakers on these teams said something meaningful about the project and they illustrated their points with low tech, but high impact visual aids. They proved the point that illustrating your points is not the same as simply typing your notes into Power Point.

PowerPoint was never intended to make words fly – that’s an unfortunate feature that has been misused by everyone since the program’s creation. In fact, anyone over the age of 13 who uses such distracting PowerPoint transitions as “flying”, “boxing”, or “wiping” should have his/her license to use the MS Office suite permanently revoked.  That said, used correctly, PowerPoint is actually an amazing tool useful to animate a site plan, make an image big enough for people to see or to show a phased site build-out. None of these involve flying, bouncing, or fading words.

While the impact of PowerPoint on your budget may appear small, consider how long it takes for your team to create endless slides while it draws their focus away from creating compelling content. Consider also that the use of PowerPoint no longer differentiates a presentation. And, a bad PowerPoint is worse than using no visuals at all.

If you want to distinguish your presentation in this industry, take a risk. Use images rather than words and more often than not, step away from the visual crutch to look selectors in the eye and really talk to them about their project. That’s what wins. 

There’s no award given in the industry for PowerPoint prowess. As far as I know, the AIA has no special award for Most Beautiful PowerPoint Presentation. But, I’ll bet each of us could personally give an award for the Worst PowerPoint of the Year. It is certainly odd that the best of them isn’t memorable but, that the worst stay with us forever. 

The Importance of Succession Planning for your Business

Succession Planning doesn’t just happen. While a crucial part of the future for any firm, it is often an unpopular topic.

I’m working with an incredible organization in St Louis that makes me believe in the positive things that forward thinking leadership teams can do for their companies. This firm, Alberici Construction, has been around for a long time but their group of leaders is not content to rest on their current successes. They are taking active steps to identify and train their next generation of leaders, looking two, five and 15 years into the future.  In thinking about how they develop leaders, train them, and mentor them, Alberici is charting the course to maintain its values as it adapts to a changing world.

It’s refreshing to see a group of busy managers pause to reflect on not what they want their firm to do for them, but rather on the future company that few of them will still be around to enjoy.

What is particularly impressive about this firm, is that every single one of their leaders - from the President of the company to the CFO and the market leads - is participating as a training developer and as a trainer/coach in this program. Not a single one of them is bowing out.

Each leader is actively excited about being a part of the leadership development team. No executive is too busy or too important.  This is clearly a team that “gets it.” They get that their primary job as leaders is to develop the next generation of employees to be better skilled and better prepared for an uncertain future. I’m feeling truly honored to be part of this team and learning many lessons about getting ready for the future right now. 

For more info about Communication Resources Northwest, click here.

Meg Winch, President

Meg specializes in the facilitation and training of communication and organizational skills, working with project team members to enhance the communication behaviors critical to their jobs.  She is a trained facilitator of formal partnering and public involvement processes.  She regularly works with teams to develop presentations, manage messages, and develop communication strategies and agreements. Meg also works with both public and private sector clients to develop comprehensive programs of both qualitative and quantitative research.