David Koren

Business Development in a Nutshell

I was talking to some of the marketing staff and business developers in one of our offices recently, and I thought of a gross simplification for the whole business development process, in terms of what the steps are, that I thought might be helpful, especially in this economy. Here it goes…

FIRST, YOU HAVE TO FIND OPPORTUNITIES. So, where do opportunities come from? Well, they can come from anywhere, but the best opportunities come from existing relationships that you have, because those are the ones you are most likely to close. Aside from that, they can come from referrals, or from public listings, or in the mail. Or you can even find opportunities by making a list of the 50 organizations you’d like to work for, and calling them all on the phone. But that not only is much less fun than emptying the cat’s litterbox, it’s also highly unlikely to be productive, in terms of finding opportunities. Calling on the phone is great for finding out information, and really bad for generating business. To generate business effectively, you really need a relationship.

SECOND, YOU HAVE TO DECIDE WHICH OPPORTUNITIES TO PURSUE. One of my favorite business articles ever is David Maister’s “Strategy Means Saying No.” The idea being, if you don’t say “no” to something, you don’t have a strategy, you’re totally adrift in a turbulent sea. Which invokes the famous Yogi Berra quote, “If you don’t know where you’re trying to go, you’ll probably end up someplace else.” Too many firms believe that all business is good business, and it simply isn’t true. You need to focus your efforts predominantly on work that you can win and that you want to do, and that you can do (and make money doing) if you win. It’s ok to throw a Hail Mary pass every so often, and to pursue something you have no business pursuing because you REALLY want it, but you can’t base a career, or run a firm, on this strategy.

THIRD, WHEN YOU’VE DECIDED TO GO, YOU HAVE TO NAIL IT TO THE WALL. Ok, so you want the project, you think you can win the project, and if you get it, you can do it (and make money doing it). So, why are you pursuing the project in a half-assed way? Give it everything you have! Pull out all the stops! Have early meetings! Stay up late! Convince the client how much you want to work with him or her, and how important the challenge they’re facing is to you. Show your passion. Be bold. And check your work.

Yes, it’s grossly simplistic, but having a list of three things you have to do to succeed is even better than having a list of ten things you have to do to succeed!

Webinar on "Strategies and Tactics for Architects in an Economic Downturn"

I was part of a webinar last week hosted by the AIA on "Strategies and Tactics for Architects in an Economic Downturn." I was one panelist of 4 who spoke on the program; I covered "10 Steps to Marketing in a Slowdown," and spoke for 15-20 minutes towards the end of the formal part of the program, right before Q&A. The webinar was free to AIA members to tune in, and we very quickly received registrations for the 1,200 sites that we were able to accommodate. So, it was the most people I've ever spoken to at one time (except for that one time I was on the radio in high school, but that was pre-recorded!). To see and hear the webinar, click here:

"Strategies and Tactics for Architects in an Economic Downturn"

Is Differentiation a Myth?

I just came across an article on RainToday called "The Myth of Differentiation" by Mike Schultz. The article basically posits that we shouldn't talk about our firms as "unique" or "different" because most people use these words incorrectly. Fair enough, but that doesn't mean that the process of identifying how your firm is different from the client is useless. (In fact, it's vitally important!)

So, I got up on my soap box, pressed the "respond to this article" button, and dashed off this response:

In the first part of his two-part “Myth of Differentiation” series, Mr. Schultz muddles the meanings of the words “unique” and “different” and narrowly defines differentiation as a communications process (“differentiating to the client”), ignoring the value of differentiation as a process of introspection—figuring out what makes you different from the competition so that you can better position yourself to your market or client.

First of all, the words “unique” and “different,” while synonyms, do not have identical meanings. In order to be “unique,” something must be different from every other thing in existence. Answering the question, “why are you unique?” is nearly impossible, because the comparison set is so huge—the entire universe. So I think that the word is usually used poorly in marketing, to describe a firm that isn’t really unique (or, at least, probably couldn’t tell you how it’s unique).

But the word “different” sets the bar lower, on a scale we can deal with. Something is different only in terms of how it compares with other things in the same limited category. In thinking of what makes a firm different, we consider the direct competition, and think about what makes us special. This is an absolutely necessary part of positioning your firm for a market or a specific client. Otherwise, you’re just talking about yourself, without a competitive context, and you have no way of anticipating how effective your words will be in reaching your client. Once you know how you’re different, you don’t necessarily need to say to the client “We’re different because…” but your understanding of how you’re different can inform ALL of your communications.

I agree with Mr. Schultz that calling yourself "different" or "unique" does not make you either one, but I do believe that an introspective process (informed by research, of course) about how you compare to your competition is invaluable in developing client-focused messages that differentiate your firm from the competition.

The real problem isn’t with the words, it’s with using them incorrectly to describe things that aren’t actually different or unique.

A More Democratic View of Marketing?

I'm a huge fan of Blink. I think it's the best quasi-business book I've ever read. I'd love to write a book like that someday. But I've never been able to get through The Tipping Point, and I've never quite been sure why. People LOVE that book. When it came out, it felt like everybody was recommending it to me. I bought it. I tried to read it. I got 80 or 10 pages in, and I put it down, never to pick it up again, without really a clear idea why.

I just came across an article in the February 2008 Fast Company called Is the Tipping Point Toast? by Clive Thompson, and I suddenly have some idea why I never connected with The Tipping Point. The Tipping Point posits that there are certain people that are really important, who make things happen, the influentials. This idea underlies the way a lot of marketing is done these days: get to the influentials, and you'll get to everybody. The article in Fast Company covers the research of Duncan Watts, who contends that reaching the tipping point doesn't have much of anything to do with reaching the so-called "influentials," that it's just about a good idea connecting with people, and that anyone can be a connector, anyone can be an influencer, anyone can make an idea tip over the edge.

This idea, as opposed to the common marketing idea that there are a limited number of "cool kids" who make trends happen, really resonates with me. One of the things I learned from working on FIGMENT last summer is that if you have a good idea, and that people believe in it, it will happen. Sure, the "cool kids" who have lots of friends and who won't stop talking about something help, but that's not the important thing... the important thing is having the right idea in the first place, so that EVERYBODY wants to spread the word, whether they're a cool kid or not. We are all participants here, no matter how "cool" we are.

Climbing the ladder in your firm: Changing your role by changing the way you think about it

This is a proposal for a workshop to take place at THE Marketing Event, put on by the SMPS New York Chapter in November, 2007...

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Many marketers struggle with their careers, asking questions such as: How can I get to the next level? How can I gain more influence and respect from my principals? How can I stay connected to my job, when all I feel like I’m doing is getting proposal after proposal out the door?

Marketing in our industry is a relatively new career, and as a result many of us do not have a sense of exactly what our career path is. But marketing is vitally important to our firms, and there must be a way for us to feel valued for what we do and to grow our careers continually. 

The key is to consider carefully the way we think about our jobs—what we do on a day to day basis—and how it fits into where our firms are going. Being in alignment with the vision and mission of your firm is the way to make sure you’re adding value to your firm, feeling satisfied with what you’re doing, and gaining influence and respect from your principals.

In this workshop, we’ll discuss perceptions of the marketing function in our firms, and create strategies for what we can do to reinforce positive perceptions and counter negative ones. Only by taking on the perception issue head-on can we change the way that marketing is perceived and take our careers to the highest levels.

Be the change you want to see in your firm

I just submitted this story for the "Did You Know?" column of the SMPS-NY chapter newsletter... 

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There’s an old story about three stonemasons, each of whom is working on a block of stone. A traveler comes along, and asks the first stonemason what he’s doing. The stonemason replies, “I am cutting stone.” The traveler asks the second, who replies, “I am shaping a cornerstone.” When the traveler asks the third stonemason what he’s doing, the stonemason answers, “I am building a cathedral, which will be an important place for the people of this community.” 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re on a treadmill at work, that all you do is the same thing over and over again (say, proposals or presentations or cold calls or whatever it is that you do), maybe you need to stop thinking about it as if you’re cutting stone, and start thinking about it as if you’re building a cathedral. What are you really trying to accomplish by what you’re doing? How does it really help your firm? Why are you essential to your firm’s business? You aren’t just writing proposals, for example, you’re building a practice. You aren’t just cranking out PowerPoints, you’re helping to communicate your firm’s message to your clients.

I once had the privilege to participate in a workshop put on by one of Tony Robbins’ affiliates. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about the “motivational” techniques that the speaker was using: getting us pumped up through music, physical activity, and rah-rah affirmation. But, towards the end of the day, the speaker told us that we going to close the workshop by breaking boards. That’s right, he had brought pieces of plywood, roughly 8” by 10” and 1/2” thick, for each of us, and he was going to teach us to break them with our bare hands. 

The speaker asked us to think of something to write on the board: a challenge that we were facing that, if we could break through, it would bring us to new levels of success. I thought about it for a moment, and one thing popped into my head, the idea that marketing was overhead, a support function. I knew that if I could break through that, if I could see that marketing is as important as design and technical expertise, I could take my career further. I wrote “marketing as secondary to design” on my board.

Then the speaker asked us to write on the back of the board what would happen if we could break through this challenge, what the reward would be to us. I wrote “increased influence,” meaning that if I could see marketing as equal in importance to design and technical functions, that I would have increased influence in my firm, in the industry, and in the world. The speaker demonstrated how to break the board, and all around me, other professionals with other challenges and goals used their hands to break their boards. Then I broke mine, and I’ve never looked back.

I believe that marketing is as critically important to as firm’s success as design ability, or technical expertise, or project delivery. And if we view what we do as critical, how can it possibly be just overhead or support? I believe that each of us has the opportunity to be a strategic leader in our firm. But first, we have to believe that we are vitally important, we have to believe that we are leaders, we have to believe that we are strategic. If we don’t believe it, how can we expect anyone else to? 

There’s a quote from Gandhi that I really like: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” What he means, of course, is that change starts with you. There’s no point complaining, there’s no point waiting for others to change. If you want to change the world, start by changing yourself. And that’s as true of your firm and your career as it is of the world around you. Be the change you want to see in your firm, and watch where it takes you!

 

 

Marketing Trends for 2007 and beyond

(just submitted to the IIDA-NY newsletter for their next issue)

It’s no secret that marketing architectural and interior design services has grown more sophisticated in recent years. The business climate and our own ambitions for our firms drive us to compete harder for work. Technology enables us (or should enable us) to do more with less, to stretch our time and resources and utilize them more efficiently. At the same time, the profession of design marketing continues to emerge, and specialists like me work with firms of all sizes (either as full-time employees or as consultants) to help them be more strategic in allocating their marketing resources and implementing their business strategies. Looking back at what it was like to market design services a few years ago or even last year, a few broad trends become apparent:

1. Graphic Sophistication

If a technology exists, it will be used. Desktop printing technology has evolved considerably over the last few years, both in terms of quality and speed. As we all struggle to present our firms and our work as clearly as possible, our documents will become more colorful and more graphically intensive. The downside here is that while it is cheaper and faster than ever to print a color brochure, it still takes as much time to plan and design it. The more work we do in color with complex layouts, the more resources will be spent on graphic design.

2. Faster and Faster

Time is money, and clients of every type recognize that the sooner they can complete their project, the sooner they can stop paying double rent, or begin to utilize their new space to make revenue. The pressure on design and construction professionals to move faster bleeds over into the marketing process. While technology enables us to create documents more quickly, it doesn’t enable us to think any more quickly. With some client types, a two-week turnaround for an RFP response used to be typical; two days is more the norm these days. This focus on speed, combined with the capability to produce documents easily in full color, creates a real quandary for our industry: given a limited amount of time to respond, what should you focus on, your graphics or your message?

3. Differentiation and Specialization

What are you known for? Though you might like your reputation to be about quality design and a high level of service, you’re probably known for the project types you specialize in. Like it or not, it’s easier for your clients to think of you as “the restaurant designer” than to think of you for your contemporary style or the other intangibles or barely tangibles that define your approach and your work. Not that this is entirely irrational: if I’m a client, and I’m designing a lab or a school or a fashion retail space, I want to work with somebody who knows what they’re doing. The benefit to specialization in your practice is that it is much easier to build a reputation by doing one thing very well than it is by doing many things well. The downside, of course, is that if you do something very well, you may be condemned to repeat it.

4. Got strategy?

With very little time to respond to opportunities, it is more important than ever to have an underlying strategy that guides you in making decisions about what opportunities to pursue and what level of resources to invest. In an article published online last year, business consultant David Maister makes the case that if you aren’t saying no to some opportunities, you don’t have a strategy. It’s vital that you make decisions about where you’re trying to take your business so that you can be prepared when opportunity knocks. Consider working with a marketing consultant (or in-house marketing staff) to develop a strategic marketing plan to guide you. As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

5. Integration of communications and project delivery

Marketing is obviously the front end of the design process—it’s where the work comes from. But there is a role for marketing and communications not just at the beginning of the project, but at every stage of the design process. As the design team works with a client to develop a project, there are opportunities to create communications tools to enhance your marketing efforts. How can you capitalize on the design you are doing today to win additional business tomorrow? How can you capture and document the design process to tell a story to a future client, or to the press? I think that this is really the next evolution of marketing and communications in design—how can we come to think of marketing not as something that happens first, but as an ongoing process that is integrated with our projects?

"The Biggest Mistake Marketers Make" - Published!

Happy new year! I've been busier than ever, it seems, over the past few months. It's been really tough to keep up with work, the SMPS, and having some kind of social life. I had almost forgotten how busy things were in 1999-2000, but it feels like the economy and the speed of transactions have returned to that pace... I'll try to keep up, and I'll try to keep posting!

The article I wrote a month or so ago, "The Biggest Mistake Marketers Make," has just been published in the SMPS-NY Chapter Newsletter:

The Biggest Mistake Marketers Make

Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure

This is the smartest article on marketing and branding I've read in quite a while... The link goes to the HBR site where you can buy the article...

Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure

The Biggest Mistake Marketers Make

(Hint: It’s  not misspelling the client’s name!)
by David Koren, Gensler Architecture Design & Planning Worldwide
SMPS-NY Chapter President, 2005-06

(Note: This article was written for the Winter 2005/2006 issue of the newsletter of the SMPS-NY Chapter)

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“I don’t want to work on proposals anymore.”

You’ve heard it said. You may have even said it yourself. Many marketers view proposals as the bane of their existence, a rote task, the thing that keeps them from becoming more “strategic.”

Personally, I think this attitude is damaging to your effectiveness as a marketer, your success in your current position, and the development of your career.

It’s easy to understand where the attitude comes from. There are a number of factors that make proposals, for many of us, a real drag. First of all, most firms are not adequately staffed in marketing—either the marketing staff numbers are two low, the skill sets aren’t right, or the marketers simply haven’t been around long enough to know how to do their jobs effectively. Then, to add to this, most firms aren’t particularly strategic about the work they go after—too many proposals, with too few wins, makes the job of preparing proposals feel like working on the assembly line in a sausage factory. Third, of course, is the priority that some principals place on proposals—evidenced by behaviors such as sitting on an RFP for days, waiting until 5pm to sit down to talk to the marketer about the proposal, and acting as if the proposal is much less important than everything else going on.

So, in response to all of this, many marketers decide that the development of their career must be in some other direction—either into a different industry, into public relations or graphic design, or into the vague cerebral regions of “strategy.”

There’s a classic Harvard Business Review article from 1960 called “Marketing Myopia” by Theodore Levitt (reprinted in his book The Marketing Imagination). In the article, Levitt makes the case that the railroads went bankrupt because they didn’t understand what business they were really in. They thought they were in the business of moving people and goods around by rail. If they had just understood that they were really in the business of moving people and goods from place to place (regardless of mode of transport), those same companies would probably own the airlines today. A simple redefinition of purpose could possibly have saved an entire industry.

I think you can apply this same rationle to thinking about your career as a marketer. What business are you really in? What is your role in your organization? What value do you bring? If you feel like your value is in cranking out proposals, maybe you just need to re-imagine your role and purpose.

The way I see it, marketers and the marketing function are vital parts of our organizations. Our mission is to partner with the principals of our firms to bring in work. Sometimes that involves proposals and presentations, and other forms of direct business development support. Other times, we need to work on more indirect marketing efforts—like direct mail, media relations, events, holiday cards, even rebranding efforts.

Strategy is everywhere. It’s in everything we do. Strategy is the essence of the value that we bring to our organizations as marketers. But, in my view, strategy disconnected from implementation is just talk. It’s easy to “wax strategic” and leave implementing the strategy to somebody else, and then blame that somebody else when something goes wrong. (Just look at our nation’s response to Hurricane Katrina for evidence of what can happen when a strategy is developed, but it’s not clear who’s job it is to implement it, or even how it should be implemented.) As a marketer, your job is to partner with your firm’s principals to develop a strategy, and then to see that strategy through. That may mean proposals, and that may mean a postcard. It could be anything. Whatever it is, it’s in support of your firm’s overall strategy.

When we are truly strategic, and thinking and working in alignment with our firm’s strategy for growth, we become indispensable. But strategy, and the implementation of strategy, cannot be outsourced or delegated. It’s our job. And it’s a great job to have.