Business and proposal development: Quantity, quality or both

One of the surest signs you are heading down the path of failure in construction industry marketing is when you are chasing and pursuing leads and project ideas you have a faint chance of winning.

This often happens when you start getting desperate: You can see your order and project backlog is drying up and you want to get work started, fast, to prevent the crunch of idle workers, expensive capital equipment and (if you are the marketing manager, rather than the boss), the threat of losing your job when you know few other employers will rush to hire you.

Trouble is, of course, you run into the all-to-common situation where the harder you try and "work", the poorer results you achieve. Hours spent on public bid proposals will do your company little good if the competition has already been wired in favor of an incumbent, or at least a much smaller short-list group; worse, is if you make the short list as an outsider through sheer effort, then pour your heart and soul into the final presentation, again, only to discover that the incumbent or special friend of the bidding authority has already really made its decision.

On another level, what good do you gain by attracting a group of 500 "first degree contacts" or 1,000 "followers" on Twitter, when you know nothing about the people in your contact list, and your followers are just following you because you've induced them to sign on, somehow.

So what should you do?

Here, you run into another irony. If you've been "relying" on referrals or repeat business, or (even worse) if you have put all your eggs into a very small number of client relationships, and these businesses either have failed, or your individual relationships no longer are influential or control the picture, what do you do? You are in deep and serous trouble.

The answer to these challenges of course is effective marketing, and systems for lead and relationship qualification and development. Setting numeric goals is important, and following guidelines and rules for relationship and business development can be helpful. Sometimes it is wise to work with large numbers.

For example, I cited the example that it is folly to blindly seek connections within the new electronic or social media groups. But since individual connections require little effort, and could in some way help your business, it isn't necessarily a bad sign to have a large online network. Your challenge is to communicate and give enough value to your group so that you can earn some "reciprocation" points -- at the right time, members will, knowing your business and its priorities, share valuable insights, leads or projects with you. (This is why you are best posting useful information rather than self-promotional notes when participating in online discussions and forums.)

When it comes to public RFPs and competitions, once again, you need to be pragmatic and selective. Rarely is it wise to go all the way in a public presentation exercise with the hope that you can perhaps win a future job; you need to find some way to find and develop your relationships away from the "stand em up and shoot them down" approach to business development.

But information about public proposals and projects may provide you with key insights into what is planned for the future, who the key players are, and where their network exists. You can decide if you want to invest time and energy in developing these relationships perhaps through selective association involvement, seeking relationships through your existing network, or the like.

If you need a short-term fix, your answer is either to connect with your existing clients and look for ways you can enhance or add on to their business (or simply in some cases, ask for a little work), or to figure out innovative adaptations to solve problems and present/communicate directly with your prospective clients, perhaps after building a knowledge base of referrals and connections.

In other words, if you know you can save money or provide value before the prospective client even is thinking of putting it out to public bid, you can develop your relationships and often gain an audience for an unsolicited proposal. This can be a lot of work, and you risk your efforts being "stolen" by someone already on the inside, but your chances are much better in succeeding than when you heed the cattle call and rush, like a lemming, to follow the crowd into preparing a submission to an open RFP where dozens have already applied.

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The construction marketing table

This blog posting has been moved to the new Construction Marketing Ideas blog site.

If you wish to go directly to the relevant page/posting, you can go here.

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Early rising

Yesterday, I had coffee with a successful sales representative, who has made the transition from the corporate world to a relatively small building supplies dealer.

He's always been actively connected in the community, and he knows the way to find business is to focus on the key elements in the decision-making and supply chain, while respecting and maintaining relationships.

He says he is amazed how representatives of building products manufacturers waste his time by "dropping in" on him at his office.

"I don't need to see these guys," he told me. "They could be much more helpful if they joined me or helped co-ordinate Lunch and Learns at local architects' offices."

Absolutely -- the vital thing in building products distribution (from the manufacturers) perspective, is to ensure your materials are in the project specifications; if you are fortunate and have a highly specific specification, you will get the business, no matter which general or sub-trade actually purchases the materials from the distributor or dealer.

So, when he isn't at architects' offices, how does he find business?

He gets up early, and heads to the construction offices with some Tim Hortons coffee or coffee gift cards. No one minds the "bribe" but everyone appreciates that he is on site at seven a.m.
And he writes up the orders -- often for emergency-needed materials. With these orders, he has new customers, and new business to serve.

I gave this successful representative a little "bribe" -- $50 in Tim Hortons coffee coupons. In return, he'll give me reports on the job sites he has visited, allowing me insights into whether they could be suitable for feature profiles in Ottawa Construction News. (His business also may receive another profile in a few months.)

"Let me know when you have a Lunch and Learn planned, where the architect and manufacturer wouldn't mind the publicity," I told him. "I'll come and write up a story which will give everyone even more publicity.

Then the sales representative reminded me: "If you are going on the sites in the morning, remember you need your safety gear, boots, hard hat and a safety vest?"

I said: "I know about the boots and hard hat -- I have them, but am not sure about the safety vest."

"No problem," he said. "I have some extra vests in my car, and I'll give you one." So now I have a bright green reflective safety vest in my collection of resources.

Meanwhile, we are both members of the local Construction Specifications Canada chapter Board of Directors and he is one of the first members of the Ottawa group of the Design and Construction Network.

Do you see how this type of relationship, connection, and community is a lot more effective than blind cold calls or "blast marketing"?

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The Art and Science of Publicity

This special report, The Art and Science of Publicity, explores how you can co-ordinate editorial publicity for your architectural, engineering and construction business without spending money on advertising.

You can request a copy by completing the form besides this posting. In return, you'll receive the PDF booklet, which you can also review with page turning software.

You can also request the booklet by email to publicity@cnrgp.com. An autoresponder will send the book to you.

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Testing 1234 -- Strengths, limitations and opportunities in market testing

When you read through this posting, you'll see a "Test 1234" where you can help out, individually, because the only way I can figure out why our emails aren't working so well is to find if there is a real problem here. Testing can be invasive, irritating, subtle, or (perhaps i will find out) useful in involving your community in your marketing and business challenges. Thanks for helping out. You can click on the image to send the test email or email buckshon@cnrgp.com, but remember to phone or comment to validate the results.

Is your bright marketing idea really so bright? Often, I have to admit, my "best ideas" bomb in the real world, have unintended negative consequences, or simply don't work quite the way I thought they would.

Then of course, there are the ideas that didn't seem to have much going for them in the first place, but for some reason seemed worthy of pursuing. This blog, for example.

Is testing a way around this challenge? Can we keep ourselves out of trouble by trying the idea on a small enough sample and/or short enough time that we can tell if our marketing ideas are good, bad or ugly -- and catch disasters before they happen?

The answer at first may seem to be an obvious "yes", and I'm pretty confident I've saved my skin from some bad idea implementation by trying things out with a simple test first.

In one case, for example, we were exploring starting a new leads service, providing really valuable data in co-operation with a major partner, using relatively low cost print-on-demand technology and providing genuine value and service to readers.

My sixth sense told me to be careful, so I asked a non-employee sales representative (who I know was good at the type of selling required) to work with me for a couple of days to see if the idea would fly. It bombed.

But here is the rub, and challenge, of testing. Maybe the test really wasn't valid. Possibly some variable within the testing process had thrown the numbers off, and with a slight rejigging of the concept, either within framework, market or focus, it would have worked wonderfully. We'll never know, of course.

Conversely, we know of awkward tests that cause real market problems; specifically the infamous "mike tests" where politicians and celebrities are caught with their pants down (or, to use another cliche, their foots in their mouths) when they say things that really aren't meant for broadcast in an AV test.

Finally, in the construction marketing community, we have to contend with the reality that many of our most interesting and important projects arise from long-term and interconnected relationships, which run counter to the principals of simple A/B testing and other measuring methodologies. If the process has a long lead time, how can we figure out when and what to test, and where are the boundaries of good metrics and simply wasting our time counting things that aren't really important?

Here are some thoughts and guidelines that can perhaps help out on our testing methodologies.

If it can be measured, it can be tested.
You will find test results are most meaningful and easy to implement if you have some simple metrics to assess your ideas and results. Online resources provide a wealth of measurement tools, including hits, conversion rates, and the like, and you can develop simple processes to tell if something is working or not. Once you have a baseline, for example, on responses to your emails, you can try different things with A/B samples, sending one message to half the list and another message (with the change you are trying to evaluate) to the other. You'll know which works right away.

Testing works best if is real time, not obtrusive, and doesn't seem to be a test.
The "Hawthorne Effect", where the fact that by letting people know you are testing changes behaviour, is a real risk if you are obvious in your evaluations. So you need to be discreet. Market surveys are often problematic -- many people hate surveys and won't respond (your most important sources of information), or you need to be intrusive with phone calls and personal contacts (thus alienating the person you are seeking to survey, or again, you achieve invalid results.)

You need to catch subtle clues as well as objective measurements in your testing (carefully).
Sometimes the real results are not the ones you think you were going to find; so you need to probe into the observations you obtain and listen carefully to subtle clues. Of course you may have it wrong, but you may also score major insights.

So, yes, test your assumptions, your ideas and your marketing strategies, especially if you are planning to commit major resources to the process. But be wary of the testing pitfalls.

And now for a real-time test (and a request for your assistance) because we are having some strange email problems. Some emails I and my team are sending are not going through; in other cases, people are sending emails to us, which we aren't receiving. The problem may be spam blocks; I don't know.

1. Please send an email marked "Test 1234" to me at buckshon@cnrgp.com.
2. At the same time, please post a comment to this blog (which operates on a different server) or phone me at 888-432-3555 ext 224. (If you wish to leave a comment and remain anonymous, just make reference to something in your email which won't disclose your identity.)

If you complete this test, I'll send you a copy of my new publication: The Art and Science of Publicity, but most importantly, a really big "Thank You".

The more responses the better -- the key measure will be the number of communications we receive through the blog comments and phone messages which fail to correlate with the number of emails we receive. But I'll learn other things, as well, which I'll share with you tomorrow.

Again, simply email a note to me at buckshon@cnrgp.com with a subject line: "Test 1234" and communicate offline, either by a blog comment or phone call to 888-432-3555 ext 224 to tell me you've sent the email. Thanks.

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When to stay below the radar

The latest issue of Ottawa Construction News. Is publicity always a good thing for your business?

We're in the publicity business -- showing businesses how to achieve positive recognition to enhance word-of-mouth and your reputation.

But is publicity always good, even if it is positive? Are there times when your marketing will be more successful if you stay (completely) below the radar? (In other words, are there times you shouldn't even consider doing business with us, even though we could do our work for you effectively and without significant cost?)

The answer, of course, is "yes" but you need to decide whether silence or stealth marketing, for want of a better phrase, is the best approach to take.

Here are conditions where keeping your business operations and initiatives quiet make the most sense.

When you are still evaluating things, and assessing the impact of the new business on your existing relationships and activities.
We are engaging in an exciting new project, and I floated my first "trial balloon" last Thursday to a closed circle of friends and colleagues. My sixth sense told me to keep quiet, and not push things too far, until I had received enough feedback to know where things are heading. Last night, I received some critical information which will result in significant modifications. Nothing lost of course; the insiders know I was evaluating things, and since no public marketing has occurred, there is no loss of credibility when we go public. In fact, it will be as "new" as it would have been otherwise.

When publicity will invite undesired competition.
Public "success" invites competitors to copy and emulate your model. This of course is not something most businesses really relish, though usually competition is not a threat if you conduct your business with creativity and effectiveness -- you retain first-to-market advantage.

Nevertheless, if your business model can be copied easily, and you can find your clients without publicity, it is best to operate under the radar.

You have a defined, specific market who you can reach quietly and with other non-public methods
If you know who you wish to serve, and don't need the public spotlight, it doesn't hurt to remain in the shadows. You can build your business other ways.

Frankly, I don't think these concerns are that great for most AEC businesses. Assuming your business requires specialized skill, knowledge and in some cases a fair bit of capital to operate, publicity itself won't spur negative competitive results and will add to your business credibility and brand-building trust (and cost a lot less than conventional advertising, if done right.)

Of course the other issue is where you achieve your publicity. If your market is school superintendents in the mid-western U.S., you don't need to be in the New York Times (but if you get there, in a positive light, you will probably find it easier to gain positive attention elsewhere.)

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Your clients: Cash cows or friends?

Are your clients "cash cows"? (Copyright image purchased from istockphoto.com)

Justin Sullivan provoked some comments and commendations when he suggested to contractortalk.com readers that they should treat their cows, er, customers, well.

Initially, his analogy went a little over my head -- I'm not sure how many of my clients would appreciate being called "cows". But his intent at humor underlies one of the most fundamental principals of marketing.

If you spend just a little more effort in (a) doing your work well and (b) treating your customers, or clients, with respect and even at a higher level, as true colleagues or friends, you will gain far more business success than you can through any other form of marketing.

Justin writes:

What are you doing to build bulletproof relationships with clients?

The biggest mistake I know of in business is to just see the sale. How much money am I going to make this time?

DO NO DO THAT!!!

Sure, this couple might be worth a 40k job right now, but what is the lifetime value of them worth? How much business can they bring in for me? How many referrals are they going to give me? How am I rewarding them for those referrals?

A Customer Database is the tool in your arsenal. Use it to its maximum potential.

Do not think about your cows as hamburger. Don't even think about them as business partners.

Think of them as friends and treat them as such. My cows know how valuable they are to me. Some of my cows are my most trusted business associates, and some really good friends.

The Wrap Up

Do not use your database to just shoot of marketing crap. Give value. Use it to keep in touch. Build bulletproof relationships. Let me make this promise to you right now: If you build real relationships with your customers, you won't ever be beaten on price again. Ever. In the history of Ever.

On the surface, this is common sense stuff. Virtually everyone in this business earns most of our revenue from repeat and referred clients and you won't far if your work and client relations are shoddy. But how much do you really think about the quality of your client experience and how you can improve it? Would spending just a little of the resources you allocate to advertising and marketing go much further if you spent it on rewarding, recognizing and connecting with your current and recent clients?

• Can you improve your procedures and processes to make your clients' lives easier?

• Simplify forms, offer additional means of communication (with rapid response), structure meetings and project planning sessions to satisfy client wishes, and so on;

• Can you keep your job site clean or maybe go beyond, with something "extra" for your clients to enjoy at the end of the work day?

• Can you suggest alternatives which improve your client's interests even though on the surface they may 'harm' yours. (Your short term loss offset by longer-term loyalty?)

So, yes, your current clients are perhaps "cash cows" -- if you treat them with respect and friendship.

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