Your employer’s reputation is based on what?  Its website?  A 2017 survey revealed that only 12.2% of AEC firms feel that its website has the most impact on business. As far as I am concerned, a website has very little impact on a firm’s business.  A website is simply the ante for playing the game.

So then, what has the greatest impact on the firm’s business?  The same survey reports that 29.9% of firms feel that speaking engagements are #1 and 21.9% feel that conferences and trade shows are #1.  So, what are we really talking about when we saying “speaking” and “trade shows”?

For both of these activities aren’t we talking about the firm’s employees?  And not all of them.  Just the ones speaking and attending these events?  These are the employees who are highly visible throughout the industry. This are the firm’s Visible Experts.

So, if we continue the logic this might also cause us to believe that these same persons are the magnets who attract all the business for the firm.  But in reality, this is not accurate. While they likely do generate a lot of business for the firm they have a much broader and deeper impact.

Visible Experts Generate a Halo Over the Entire Firm

Within your own firm can you think of employees who actively contribute to booking new business?  If they are not highly visible how do they do this?  They do this because the Visible Experts have imparted a Halo Effect on the firm.  Let’s examine how this happens.

It is likely your firm started with one to three principals, each of whom had positive industry reputations.  Business flowed to the firm because of who they were.  Those persons were known experts. Thus, we have the term Visible Experts.

So now the firm is 100, 500 or 10,000.  Who are the employees in the firm who are broadly known in a positive way in the industry?  Make a list and write one sentence to describe their fame.

Now, how about the firm’s reputation as a whole?  How closely does that reputation mirror those employees you just summarized?   I’ll bet the reputations are the same.  Those employees collectively contribute a “Halo Effect” on the company.  This makes it much easier for everyone in the firm to contribute to sales because of the aura cast on the firm by the Halo.

This also works in reverse.  Can you name several mediocre firms? How does your perception of the firm compare with their key personnel?  Probably the same too.

Those employees are like a tree with large thick branches. They cast a shade on the company’s reputation.  Those companies can sometimes endure, but their performance is never good.

We often think of employees’ contributions as they relate to their defined role without consideration for how they might contribute to the firm in other ways.  What if you created a program for each of your experts to turn them into Visible Experts?  It would likely be the least cost, highest impact program you every deployed.

How a Halo Factory Is Created

What might such a program look like?  Here is one approach I employed.  I gathered my team and lead a discussion about the benefits of being visible and the barriers that get in the way. One barrier was time.  The other was knowledge of how to create, re-purpose and distribute thought leader communications. My program eliminated both of these barriers.

I told everyone that a good way to be recognized by their peers, receive top bonus’s and enjoy admiration from their family, was to be visible. And, to help them achieve visibility I would retain a Digital Marketing Copywriter for anyone who identified a topic and would schedule an hour to be interviewed by the copywriter.

This worked like a charm.  From that point forward many from my team brought me ideas based on their projects or interests. The copywriter met with each, drafted their article, contacted editors for print publications, submitted abstracts for conferences, and created pieces for LinkedIn, Twitter and Blog posts. They also received assistance with presentation content and rehearsals.

This approach proved not only good for revenue and profitability, but for staff’s self confidence and energy. This was a win-win and it really didn’t cost the firm much.  In a flat economy, revenue grew over $3 million in the first year.  Profits quadrupled to 22%.

Build Your Own Halo Generator

The strategy I am laying out for you is one whose goal is to achieve the biggest and brightest halo.  The rate at which you generate visible experts will drive the halo’s intensity. The resulting “glow” will excite your staff and improve business through growth, more sole source business, higher margins, higher billing rates, and higher quality pursuit teaming.

Start your program by examining your internal experts and assessing their visibility. Then, work with a “Visibility Expert” who is usually a copywriter who understands both print and digital marketing methods.  Don’t stop here.  Make sure you provide a process and support for tracking leads, building relationships, and identifying new business opportunities.

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You created your business model back when your company was formed or when you took over as CEO. You have been implementing since and will continue to do so. Not so fast! In the ever-changing marketplaces full of newbies and innovation, you must revisit your business model on a regular basis. Why?

Click for Free Commodity-Value Tool

Your business model is focused on how you provide value to a defined client, such as hospitals, beverage producers or transportation agencies. If your clients’ business has evolved over the years, do you think that might alter the effectiveness of your model? Most definitely. Revisiting and updating your business model keeps you sharp, away from commodity services and seen as valuable to those clients.

I witnessed a firm transform their contamination assessment services into services that also included marketability analysis. This analysis helped developers to know to whom they could market the property and to prioritize the environmental clean-up costs for that market.

Clients then saw the firm as more valuable. Thus, the engineering firm moved this service away from commodity to become high value. They did this by having a complete understanding of the client’s business and being open and thorough to ideas on how to align to that market’s business drivers.

To create an effective model, some difficult questions to deeply explore include:

1. How well do you understand the drivers of your clients’ business?
2. How can your business deliver services leveraging that understanding?
3. How might your core skills be evolved or complimented to directly support your clients’ business goals?
4. How will you get the word out to find those who will value your services?

If done well, a strong business model guides your firm to differentiate yourself, create niches and deliver top-notch services.

Where are your services on the commodity-value curve?  Click for free Commodity-Value Tool and place an X on the curve where you think each of your services lie. Which service requires action?

Share with me your first assessment and I will respond with additional guidance of next steps.

P.S.  Are you following my blog? There are over 40 insights on managing your business. By following the blog you will be notified when new content is posted.  Its free and it is On-Demand.

Doug

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Then, client relationship management must be a top priority. This does not mean you “roll over” when pushed by a client. 

Of course, these are two obvious statements.  What is not obvious are the answers you need from your client to know how to accomplish this.  Obtaining accurate answers is part art and part science.  You don’t want just to know their overt needs, you want the one’s burning in their gut. The real and covert needs. 

I am going to share with you three critical questions that will reveal the answers you desire. These are not the only questions, but the most important.  And, you likely are not always asking these. But first, allow me to share a related story. 

“We Shred A & E Firms”

I had developed a policy for pursuing business. When I identified that a prospective client had a history of conflict with consulting firms I made an automatic No-Go. 

One day I received an RFP from a former client. I had worked with them earlier in my career as a project engineer while I was with a different firm. I had accompanied the Project Manager to Board of Public Works meetings and saw the board shred him over ridiculous issues. With that vivid memory, I made the requisite No-Go decision. 

I contacted the Superintendent and told him that we did not have time to prepare a good proposal, thus we would not be submitting. He and I got along exceptionally well and we remained friendly over the years. The next day, he called me back and said, “What if I get you more time? I really want to work with you again?”

My white lie did not work. My emotions got the better of me and I submitted. We were selected.

At the kickoff meeting the town manager said, “Doug, we have shredded many engineering and architectural firms. What can you do to avoid the typical outcome?” I said, “I will work with your board and manage expectations.”

At the kick-off meeting one of the board members said, “This design and construction project must not have change orders.” I said, “Change orders will occur to deliver a good product since they’re part of the design and construction process. Some changes are improvements and some are to fix the designer’s mistakes.”

There, I put mistakes on the table.  Earlier in my career I sat next to my Project Principal and listened to him agree with several clients to “no change orders” and he paid for design errors as if the firm was guilty of low quality.  I saw this not only hurt project financials, it hurt the reputation of the firm and the individuals who worked on the project. It was wrong. 

I vowed never to chicken out and to discuss the role of change orders and “standard duty of care” with each client as part of the Project Kick-off Meeting.  I learned that by having the discussion early, clients came to understand that some change orders are going to occur and are even necessary to produce a better project. 

After a tough discussion, the board, while still challenging, understood that errors and omissions were normal and not poor design. The firm did not “eat” a single change order. The project was completed reasonably within budget and the client continued to give us business.

The client really just wanted to feel they got a quality design for a reasonable cost. I knew that and spent the time helping them to accurately understand what that meant. I changed their criteria of what it meant to secure a quality project instead of caving in. 

Its All About Knowing, Then Delivering To It

Even clients who are difficult will appreciate your resolve. They just want to know they are getting a fair deal. I had dozens of similar discussions with clients and twenty years later I am still professional friends with many.

To be profitable and have a good reputation does not mean “roll over.” Provide all of your project managers with these tools and they can repeat this kind of conversation. And, be wildly successful.

The Three Questions

Start with the following simple yet not always obvious questions.  

1. What are the performance metrics upon which we will be judged?

2. What is the outcome you desire for yourself and what will that do for you?

3. What are your and your organization’s “warts”?

These questions set the tone for all of your future dealings. And, although bumps in the road are unavoidable, a strong start helps you deal with them with less stress.  

I invite you to share your personal experiences with me as I use this information to help others to whom I am advising. As a former A/E/Environmental engineer, manager and principal, I now partner with professional services firms to ensure their success.

Doug Reed, P.E., Business Consultant at FosterGrowth. dreed@fostergrowth.biz

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Treading water by doing the same ole’ thing will turn you into shark bait

If you tread water, living off what you learned earlier in your career,  there are sharks who will eat you whole and minnows that will nibble you to death. So, this is about staying alive.

This piece from Hinge Marketing, A 10 Step Brand Development Strategy for Your Professional Services Firm, breaks down marketing planning. The blogger, Lee Frederiksen, writes: “A professional services brand is best understood as your firm’s reputation and it’s visibility in the marketplace. The strength of your brand can be measured as Reputation times Visibility.”

These steps only work if you know where you are going.

When working with CEOs, I encourage them to understand the following before they embark on strategic changes:

• the market demand for the firm’s services
• how the market demand fits with the mission of the firm
• the capacity of staff to learn and adapt
• how the staff and firm are perceived in the marketplace

If you succeed once without strategic planning, you’re lucky. Congrats. For sustainable growth– the kind that ensures longevity and is lucrative for you, your board and staff, anticipate and prepare for what lies ahead. The rewards will be worth it.

Doug Reed, P.E., FosterGrowth.biz, dreed@fostergrowth.biz

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What do each of you have in common? Each of your livelihoods are impacted by your contribution to generating revenue. You are either billable or you have a role in bringing the dollars in the door.

Particularly for the junior roles, I suggest you can have a larger impact than you might think.

Life Without Fear

Allow me to share a story of my early engineering career.

I learned how to convert “knowing to doing” starting in my 20s as a project engineer with an A/E firm. One big reason I succeeded is at 25, like many of us, I had no fear! And I had no fear because there were no expectations that I generate revenue for the firm.

With a 98% billability goal, I knew I was not going to be able to woo new clients. I was on the client’s site often, being billable while working on projects.

So, I decided to have conversations with each of my clients while in or near their office. Getting a meeting was easy because they knew I was out and about working on their projects.

I found that I had an advantage by being young. Since my clients were often twice my age, they seemed to enjoy teaching me about their business.

I asked them about their goals, their infrastructure programs and their process for implementing them. They went out of their way to tell me. It felt like a father-son tour when they showed me their facilities to make their points.

I also discovered that my superiors encouraged me to have such conversations. They even sent me to some training about sales. It helped greatly to start off with some of the “knowing.”

When the conversation got going on a particular pursuit, I, of course, brought in a principal of the firm. Pretty soon, work was being booked that I had identified. Suddenly, I also got a lot more respect from the firm’s principals.

People Love Youth

As a business consultant, my clients frequently ask if they should allow junior staff to meet with a new client. They are worried that the junior staff won’t get respect. They suggest that instead they accompany the junior engineer, architect or scientist.

My answer is always, “Yes.” Encourage them to have conversations.  Don’t worry too much about mistakes they may make because their youth will receive more forgiveness.

Make sure you prepare the staffer, provide training, and do a debrief. Junior staff are in the field where they encounter the client far more often than most project managers and principals. So, take advantage of the opportunity for largely billable out-of-office client visits.

If you are a junior staffer, change the way you look at your impact. Explore how you can engage your clients and give it a try. The results may surprise you and you just might like it too.

Doug Reed

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When working with clients, I look for or I ask “What are the new and growing needs of your clients that can leverage some of your core skills?” Then, “How might you modify or augment those skills to be seen by clients as high value?” The question isn’t whether or not you want to take advantage of such opportunities but more likely, are you prepared to react when opportunity strikes– many times, at a moment’s notice. This requires pro-active strategic planning that includes a service/product life cycle analysis and an in-depth understanding of clients’ business drivers.

As Erik Sherman who writes for Forbes highlights in his article, 9 industries most likely to profit from California’s drought, “There will be businesses, new and old, who find that water shortages will produce profits.” Wouldn’t it be a shame to be one of the nine and not be able to meet the needs of the marketplace as quickly as your competitors? The profits are yours to lose. Not all Strategic Planning is the same. Contact Doug to discuss how you can stay positioned in high-margin, high-demand services.

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Small and medium engineering and architectural firms are having a tough time in the alternative delivery market. At a recent conference of engineering consultants, small firms (less than 50 employees) identified this as a top three area of concern. They identified that they feel compelled to participate in the market and to agree to terms in which they are not comfortable. This threatens their very existence. The good news is that there is now substantial history from which to learn and owners are outsourcing project planning services more than prior to the recession. So, there is a large opportunity for the educated and disciplined firms.

Understanding

Understanding services connected to the alternative delivery approach is critical for all professional services firms because the alternative delivery market is here to stay and is growing fast. ENR Magazine (June 9, 2014) reports that Design-Build revenue rose 4 years in a row to $60.9 billion in 2013. CM-at-Risk followed suit advancing to $77.8 billion. ENR concludes that, “More owners are turning away from Design-Bid-Build.”

Donovan-Hatem, a leading Boston and New York law firm, sponsored a roundtable on the topic and identified several areas of risk. Founder David Hatem, Esq. identified flow down (of blame), a heightened standard duty of care, liquidated damages exposure, exposure to quantity cost overruns, and withholding of payments as some of these risks that needed to be managed for a firm to successfully provide these services. Solutions he identified are to seek a limit of liability clause, adapt the standard duty of care definition to acknowledge there is limited ability to control the project’s outcome, and to seek a covenant not to sue. He also stated that persons involved in the delivery teams were learning how to change their behavior that was learned in the design-bid-build era. Persons must be collaborative, team focused, and have consistent interaction from the earliest stages to beyond the completion of the project, no matter what the role of the sub consultant.

Solution

FosterGrowth.biz’s experience and observations are that in addition to behavior changes during the project, it is critical to start with the right team. To do this, one can examine widely proven sales methods:

• know your strengths
• identify the qualities you desire in a prime engineering/architecture firm and contractor
• develop relationships with these entities
• screen for these qualities.

Then, only work with these screened firms. At that time, you will have a trusting relationship with persons in those firms, and you will know they have a good track record on alternative delivery projects. Discipline will be difficult but important so that you can manage risks and enhance, not damage your reputation.

If you are new to alternative delivery methods or are not happy with progress you seek, there are several steps one can take:

1. Examine your capacity to change. Put away your ego and seek knowledge and advice.
2. Identify your market place value, so that prime firms, and owners see why you are important to the team. This goes far beyond your technical skills. Everyone has technical skills so focus on what is unique about you.
3. Invest time developing trusting relationships with prime firms and even owners. If an owner has a preference for you, you are strongly differentiated from their other sub-consultant choices. This is the ideal place to be.

It is possible to compete and work with the giants. It takes education, commitment and adapting to a new way of business. FosterGrowth.biz and its business partners are available to assist you to be successful in this next generation of project delivery methods. Take action now and become part of this generation.

I look forward to seeing your comments. Let’s connect on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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For example, a CEO or Division Manager often sets the agenda for business progress meetings.  It is not hard to credibly explain that broad engagement in generating revenue is a good idea. But these meeting agendas are usually a barrier.  They have billability as the first item on the business meeting agenda. The first item on most agendas often ends up being what gets the most time and attention. Instead, the agenda needs to start with client relationship activities and the opportunities those relationships identify and, to measure the level of staff time spent on such client interactions.  The strategy to get the “ah-ha” reaction is to  measure progress towards sales in a language spoken by those who are most often opposed to anything that is not billable– operations and finance staff, and for junior staff, even project managers. If everyone can see value and understands its connection to job security, good benefits, and less pressure, then everyone will jump on board. Whether you are a marketing, sales professional or a CEO, try this approach and see what happens. Don’t over think it.  Sometimes a seemingly simple change like this can be a catalyst for change.

What are other barriers that must be overcome? What barriers have you observed where you have worked? What was the outcome? Comment here and connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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