New Math: Marketing and Business Development Realities for this Economy

For those of us in the trenches of short-list interviewing, we are aware of the current challenges of wnning work in a very different economy than we’ve ever seen.  Right now, firms are proposing on more and more projects, being short-listed more frequently, and preparing and presenting more interviews.  Unfortunately, this is not resulting in proportionately more work.  And, the truly negative outcomes can be seen in less return on investment for marketing dollars and demoralized team members.  What’s needed is an entirely new approach to the entire business development and marketing lifecycle that culminates in the short-list interview. 

What’s required to win work in this economy is “New Math”.  In the lifecycle of business development and marketing, there are four core elements:  Relationship/Reputation, Proposal, Cost or Fee, and Presentation.  Depending on the characteristics of the pursuit, each accounts for approximately 25% of the chance of being selected.  In the past, we might have been able to “wow” a selection committee with an exceptional interview and walk away with the job. That same interview today will bring us only to a close second.  Thus, we need firms to align business development and marketing efforts – looking at the short-list as the end of a long, intentional process instead of being an event in and of itself.

Relationship/Reputation has four levels of effective client “engagement”, the highest being having a strong relationship with an existing client with whom you have completed similar, successful work.  This requires not only superior performance and project management, but also maintaining the solid relationship with the client after the project has been completed. 

The next level is having a relationship with a potential client based on your having provided advice and/or assistance.  While never having performed a project for the client, the client is aware of the firm’s capabilities and trusts that your firm can do work of a certain type and complexity. 

                 

The third level is when the potential client knows of the firm’s and individual team members’ capabilities through conference presentations, journal and trade publications, or even industry-specific blogs.  In this case, the client knows of the firm’s past projects and can link his/her project to similar projects in the firm’s portfolio. 

The lowest level of effective engagement is when the firm or individual has “borrowed credibility.”  Borrowed credibility comes from an outside reference – usually another credible client who strongly recommends the firm and specific team members for the current work.

In the absence of any of the four levels of Relationship/Reputation, I recommend firms and teams take a hard look at their Go/No Go decision.  If any of these levels are missing, the firm should likely not be going after the work at all. The best decision would be to invest scarce marketing dollars in building client engagement vs. participating in a no-win proposal and presentation cycle.  Firm leadership should be actively publishing in trade journals, and they should be out in the field meeting with potential clients.  At a minimum, each client manager should be regularly meeting with the clients from their current and recently completed projects to maintain the strong relationship and the reference.

Understanding your Clients: The Value of Ongoing, Internal Research

I’m a nerd – I freely admit it.  I love numbers, complex measurement tools, running statistics, and making graphs.  There’s something seductive about taking a dataset and working with it to reveal the “story” it’s trying to tell me. Over the past 20+ years, I’ve designed and implemented dozens of surveys for public and private organizations, and every time I get a clean, fresh data file, I love to stay up late playing in the data, mining its secrets and learning what it is telling me about my clients and their needs.

The economy is tough right now and looks questionable for the foreseeable future. As a result, many firms are cutting back on any kind of organizational research. This is a bad idea on so many levels. Client, employee,  and project research keeps us in touch with what our clients need and expect and most importantly, provides us a mechanism to take lessons learned from one project to the next, constantly improving along the way.

So, how do we conduct meaningful client research without huge monetary outlay?  Answer:  Bring it in-house and be more strategic about the process.  Many of our clients are asking us to assist in the development of internal research programs in which they can gather regular data from clients – or employees – to drive internal understanding and process improvement. They are spending their outside consultant dollars on the analysis of the data or on gathering only the most sensitive or confidential data.  From a consultant perspective, I don’t view this as threatening; rather, I see this as a way to provide my clients the highest value, while enabling them to continue critical research programs when budgets are tight. And, the bright side to all of it is that my clients are becoming more connected to the data, understanding how to gather, interpret, and respond to client and employee feedback in a deeper way.

Savvy firms are continuing programs of both client and employee research – using data to drive decision-making and process improvement. The big change is that they are the data gatherers and the data managers. This requires a commitment to standards of good research and research protocols and a forced objectivity about the results. This is hard, but absolutely necessary. We are helping our clients develop programs of research – setting up surveys, on-line systems, and data gathering protocols. And, most of our clients are taking on their own research programs very successfully, using us to troubleshoot and provide data analysis on confidential files. 

In this economy, information is power. Firms need good information to fuel growth, improve processes, and drive training. They should never sacrifice reconnaissance, as a continued investment in data yields value far beyond its cost. But, firms can be more strategic in the research they do and their principals can get involved – doing the legwork to continue strong client and employee research even when times are tough.

The Value and Disadvantage of Familiarity

My colleagues and I were down in Los Angeles this morning talking with our friends at SMPS about how A/E/C teams can develop winning presentations in this very challenging economy.  One of the participants asked me a very significant question that really made me think:  “How do we design a winning presentation when we are not the incumbent and the client really likes the firm with which they’ve been working?”  Good question.  My answer was fairly simple: You have to work harder than the incumbent. 

Some of my most memorable wins in short-list interviews in the A/E/C industry have been on projects where my team was not the incumbent.  We won because we did more homework and developed a presentation that clearly addressed the real needs, interests, fears, and expectations of selectors and their organizations.  In those presentations, we spent a lot of time on the “alignment” phase of presentation development - getting each team member’s head in the project so that they were fully engaged in understanding the owner’s needs.  This resulted in presentations that were focused on the unique aspects of the project, targeted on solving the owner’s project “pain”, and centered on the advantages they could bring the owner relative to higher value, better quality, and faster delivery.

I’ve found that it’s actually easier to beat an incumbent firm than one thinks because many incumbents get lazy, assuming that the strength of the relationship will carry them to a win. While in many cases this is indeed true, when my non-incumbent teams compete, they always compete “hungry”, offering the client a value proposition that is so compelling, so interesting, and so seductive that we can easily win against a lazy incumbent. Remember incumbents, “familiarity breeds contempt” – this means that in most relationships, partners can get complacent, leaving the door wide open to the new, shiny, and interesting.  Lazy incumbents create an easy space for coaches like me to help teams “steal” the project through hard work, innovation, and creativity.

For my teams that are incumbents – watch out!  Always compete as if you didn’t have the relationship.  Never take the owner and his/her project for granted, especially in this challenging economy. Do more research, make more effort, prepare more for these interviews than for any other because, frankly, these are the ones that hurt the most to lose. You’ve invested time and resources in the relationship; make the concerted effort to maintain the value of that investment by giving interviews with your regular clients everything you’ve got. These truly are the “can’t afford to lose” interviews.

Partnering Leadership from the Public Sector

I have the honor of being on the communications team for the Asset Management group for a leading power provider in the Pacific Northwest. This group is rolling out a very innovative program designed to increase productivity, reduce risk, and provide safe, reliable power at a reasonable cost to customers across their service area. And, they have partnered with national and local specialists to help them achieve success.

Midway through the project, this Utility asked us to provide partnering services to the team to help members remain aligned to project goals and expectations as they ramped up towards the implementation phase of their very aggressive project. In a one day session, Utility leadership, project team members and their consultants worked together to document overall goals, design teamwork improvements, and plan the course for the challenging months ahead.  It was, to say the least, an exhausting day. At the end, everyone, the facilitators included, felt they had achieved real understanding across the team and had developed the start of a workable “way forward.”

Currently, the team is working through a very challenging aspect of the project and I’m impressed with how team leadership is using the partnering agreements as a guide.  During the partnering process, the team created a team charter as well as clear metrics to chart the success of teamwork.  During a meeting of team members from across the project team, one of the first agenda items was to tie the current work and difficult decisions with a renewed focus on the charter and project goals.  This refocus encourages team members to resolve issues and design strategies based on their commitment to a common goal.

A Partnering session is a common way to kick-off a project, particularly in the public sector.  Many teams recognize its importance as a time to talk about teamwork before the team moves quickly through project meetings and milestone dates. However, many times, that’s the last time a team focuses on partnering unless the team is having problems. As a result, at the conclusion of every partnering session my colleagues and I facilitate, I remind team members that the real work of partnering starts after the session is over. The success of partnering occurs when team members working through challenging issues refocus themselves on the project charter – the agreements they made at the start of the project to work together toward a common good.

It’s gratifying to see that one of the largest agencies in my region not only understands the value of partnering, but more importantly, for this project team to actively use the work they did in partnering to drive success at critical milestones. In recommitting themselves to keep the commitments they made in partnering, this team reaffirmed the importance of teamwork, while improving work processes and creating a common understanding of future deliverables. That’s the real value of partnering.