Company Strategy
No, Everyone's Not A Marketer!
Who is most qualified to make marketing decisions?
No, Everyone’s Not a Marketer!
“Everyone’s a marketer.” “Everyone’s a salesperson.”
We hear these phrases uttered regularly around the A/E/C industry to signify the important role that all staff members play when it comes to finding and landing new business. Professional marketers and business developers have made these statements time and again. I’ve often said or written these mantras.
But here’s the rub: I didn’t really mean it. I bet that most of my sales and marketing colleagues didn’t mean it, either.
What I’ve really meant is that everyone needs to be a brand ambassador – a spokesperson for our company who understands and can articulate our value message. I’ve meant that everyone is a bird dog – someone who understands that project opportunities are everywhere, and can help sniff them out. Everyone has a role to play in marketing.
But I need to stop saying that “everyone’s a marketer,” because it is simply not true. Just as my engineering colleagues will tell you that I’m not an engineer, I can honestly say that they’re not marketers. Nor should they be: we each have our positions to play.
If there is one theme I continually hear from marketing professionals in the A/E/C industry, it's that far too many technical professionals “think” they know better than the marketing professionals that work for their firms. It’s a variant of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, whereby people with limited abilities believe they know far more than they really do.
Being able to write a sentence doesn't make one a great writer. Being able to have a conversation doesn't make one a great public speaker. Many executives, project managers, and other technical professionals in this industry tend to understand certain limitations. Ask them to write a blog or an article, and they'll respond, "But I'm not a very good writer." Ask them to give a presentation in front of 50 or 100 people, and they'll respond, "I don't feel comfortable doing that."
But yet ask them to make an informed go-no go decision, show them a draft marketing plan for a new service launch, review the design for a new website, determine content for a PowerPoint, or decide what needs to go in a brochure, and suddenly they're experts.
It's like they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Don't get me wrong, their input is absolutely critical to creating a successful marketing product. But too often they think that their opinion -- and "opinion" is the operative word here as they've never had any formal or even informal training in marketing strategy, content creation, graphic design, presentation development, etc. -- should trump that of the trained marketers on their staff.
This issue seems pretty widespread in the A/E/C industry. Here's some recent examples shared by some of my colleagues:
- A construction executive asked the firm’s marketing partner for "a pretty book with lots of pages." When queried what, exactly, he meant by “book,” the executive simply stated that he wanted a really thick brochure with all their experience to make them look "impressive." Never mind that they didn't even know the prospect's specific needs yet, much less the fact that most of the potential credentials were in other market segments -- totally unrelated to the prospect's potential project.
- A department manager wanted a new brochure for his division. When his well-seasoned marketing director tried to determine the specific messaging, relevant visuals, and overall value messages, the department manager instead provided six pages of hyperbole and said "Make this all fit on an 11"x17" brochure -- we don't need any visuals." Like another human being would take the time to read that incessant self-promoting drivel!
- An engineer told a CMO that blogs were useless because he would never read the company blogs if he was looking for information to help him do his job better. Never mind the fact that the engineer wasn't even the target audience for the blog, and he further had absolutely no understanding of the value of blogs for things like Search Engine Optimization.
- A company held a strategy meeting to look at trends, target markets, potential disrupters, brand messaging, and more. Their senior marketing professional was not invited to attend, even though that individual knew more about all these things than the rest of the attendees combined!
- A marketing professional looked at a proposal opportunity, and filtered it through her firm's go/no-go project evaluation process. It was a definite "no go" because it did not meet the minimum criteria for a proposal pursuit, which had been previously established by the firm. She was overruled by a project manager who insisted that the firm pursue it because "he felt good about their chances." The marketing team spent 60 hours on the pursuit, and the firm didn't even get shortlisted, perhaps because they had never even made contact with the client, and furthermore didn’t have much relevant project experience.
- A marketing/business development professional was hired by a construction firm to make inroads in two new market sectors. It was immediately clear that in addition to having no credentials in these marketers, the firm employed no technical staff with relevant experience in these markets. As the company looked to hire new positions, the marketing professional pleaded that they hire staff with experience in these new market segments. The firm didn't. When they lost projects and got a debriefing, they heard time and again that the client didn't feel comfortable hiring a firm with no experience – corporate or personal -- in their industry. After several years the business development position was eliminated for failing to have success in penetrating these new markets.
- A marketing director with 20 years of experience was hired to build a communications and marketing program for a mid-sized general contractor. She ended up wearing multiple hats – including one as administrative assistant to the firm’s executives. This not only diminished her value to the firm, but also added a touch of sexism, since most likely a male in that position would not have been asked to do the administrative tasks.
This is a tiny list, and these examples play out hundreds of times a day in A/E/C firms. We ask estimators to prepare construction estimates -- and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask mechanical engineers to design HVAC systems -- and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask IT professionals to increase network speed and create virtual offices -- and trust they know what they're doing.
And then we ask marketing professionals to _____ (fill in the blank), and then tell them why they are doing it wrong.
What makes this more troubling is that when you speak with marketing professionals at all levels of their careers, you hear similar stories.
Marketing is the Rodney Dangerfield of A/E/C firms - it "gets no respect."
(In fairness, I’ve heard the same types of complaints from A/E/C human resources professionals – only their issues can be markedly worse when firm leaders decide that things like employment laws don’t apply to their companies!)
Perhaps it is time for firms to trust their marketing professionals!
Principals, project managers, project executives, and department managers play an important role in this process. In fact, they are critical to it. But most people in these positions have little understanding of marketing messaging, value proposition development, brochure and website design, public relations, market research, and the many other disciplines of marketing. Their value is the technical knowledge required to make marketing effective. Without the technical knowledge, marketing will fail. But that doesn't mean that non-marketers should get to drive the bus.
A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually in opportunity costs -- wasted time that could be spent in better endeavors. When marketers are forced to spend countless hours on proposals with little-to-no chance of success, other marketing functions suffer: branding, direct marketing, research, higher-probability pursuits, etc.
A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually because non-marketers make horrible decisions about brochure content and presentation design. They insist upon collateral materials that are about them and how great their firm is -- which in turn pushes clients and prospects away. Who wants to work with an egomaniac who doesn't understand the client or their industry?
Marketers know best when it comes to these things.
So trust them. Empower them. Make it clear to technical staff that the professional marketers have authority when it comes to marketing decisions. Invite them to strategy meetings -- or better yet, ask them to lead strategy meetings!
Your firm hired an expert for a reason.
At the end of the day, this really isn't about your marketing professionals. This is about your company. Do you want to increase profitability or lose money? Do you want to elevate your win rate or be mired below industry norms? Do you want the company to be well-known to clients and potential clients, or do you prefer anonymity? Do you want talent to long to work for your firm, or do you want to run useless "help wanted" ads that get no qualified respondents?
If things like profitability, win rate, reputation/brand, and recruitment are important to you, step aside and let your marketing professionals do what they were trained to do.
But if these really don't matter to you, just keep doing what you are doing.
No, Everyone’s Not a Marketer!
“Everyone’s a marketer.” “Everyone’s a salesperson.”
We hear these phrases uttered regularly around the A/E/C industry to signify the important role that all staff members play when it comes to finding and landing new business. Professional marketers and business developers have made these statements time and again. I’ve often said or written these mantras.
But here’s the rub: I didn’t really mean it. I bet that most of my sales and marketing colleagues didn’t mean it, either.
What I’ve really meant is that everyone needs to be a brand ambassador – a spokesperson for our company who understands and can articulate our value message. I’ve meant that everyone is a bird dog – someone who understands that project opportunities are everywhere, and can help sniff them out. Everyone has a role to play in marketing.
But I need to stop saying that “everyone’s a marketer,” because it is simply not true. Just as my engineering colleagues will tell you that I’m not an engineer, I can honestly say that they’re not marketers. Nor should they be: we each have our positions to play.
If there is one theme I continually hear from marketing professionals in the A/E/C industry, it's that far too many technical professionals “think” they know better than the marketing professionals that work for their firms. It’s a variant of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, whereby people with limited abilities believe they know far more than they really do.
Being able to write a sentence doesn't make one a great writer. Being able to have a conversation doesn't make one a great public speaker. Many executives, project managers, and other technical professionals in this industry tend to understand certain limitations. Ask them to write a blog or an article, and they'll respond, "But I'm not a very good writer." Ask them to give a presentation in front of 50 or 100 people, and they'll respond, "I don't feel comfortable doing that."
But yet ask them to make an informed go-no go decision, show them a draft marketing plan for a new service launch, review the design for a new website, determine content for a PowerPoint, or decide what needs to go in a brochure, and suddenly they're experts.
It's like they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Don't get me wrong, their input is absolutely critical to creating a successful marketing product. But too often they think that their opinion -- and "opinion" is the operative word here as they've never had any formal or even informal training in marketing strategy, content creation, graphic design, presentation development, etc. -- should trump that of the trained marketers on their staff.
This issue seems pretty widespread in the A/E/C industry. Here's some recent examples shared by some of my colleagues:
- A construction executive asked the firm’s marketing partner for "a pretty book with lots of pages." When queried what, exactly, he meant by “book,” the executive simply stated that he wanted a really thick brochure with all their experience to make them look "impressive." Never mind that they didn't even know the prospect's specific needs yet, much less the fact that most of the potential credentials were in other market segments -- totally unrelated to the prospect's potential project.
- A department manager wanted a new brochure for his division. When his well-seasoned marketing director tried to determine the specific messaging, relevant visuals, and overall value messages, the department manager instead provided six pages of hyperbole and said "Make this all fit on an 11"x17" brochure -- we don't need any visuals." Like another human being would take the time to read that incessant self-promoting drivel!
- An engineer told a CMO that blogs were useless because he would never read the company blogs if he was looking for information to help him do his job better. Never mind the fact that the engineer wasn't even the target audience for the blog, and he further had absolutely no understanding of the value of blogs for things like Search Engine Optimization.
- A company held a strategy meeting to look at trends, target markets, potential disrupters, brand messaging, and more. Their senior marketing professional was not invited to attend, even though that individual knew more about all these things than the rest of the attendees combined!
- A marketing professional looked at a proposal opportunity, and filtered it through her firm's go/no-go project evaluation process. It was a definite "no go" because it did not meet the minimum criteria for a proposal pursuit, which had been previously established by the firm. She was overruled by a project manager who insisted that the firm pursue it because "he felt good about their chances." The marketing team spent 60 hours on the pursuit, and the firm didn't even get shortlisted, perhaps because they had never even made contact with the client, and furthermore didn’t have much relevant project experience.
- A marketing/business development professional was hired by a construction firm to make inroads in two new market sectors. It was immediately clear that in addition to having no credentials in these marketers, the firm employed no technical staff with relevant experience in these markets. As the company looked to hire new positions, the marketing professional pleaded that they hire staff with experience in these new market segments. The firm didn't. When they lost projects and got a debriefing, they heard time and again that the client didn't feel comfortable hiring a firm with no experience – corporate or personal -- in their industry. After several years the business development position was eliminated for failing to have success in penetrating these new markets.
- A marketing director with 20 years of experience was hired to build a communications and marketing program for a mid-sized general contractor. She ended up wearing multiple hats – including one as administrative assistant to the firm’s executives. This not only diminished her value to the firm, but also added a touch of sexism, since most likely a male in that position would not have been asked to do the administrative tasks.
This is a tiny list, and these examples play out hundreds of times a day in A/E/C firms. We ask estimators to prepare construction estimates -- and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask mechanical engineers to design HVAC systems -- and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask IT professionals to increase network speed and create virtual offices -- and trust they know what they're doing.
And then we ask marketing professionals to _____ (fill in the blank), and then tell them why they are doing it wrong.
What makes this more troubling is that when you speak with marketing professionals at all levels of their careers, you hear similar stories.
Marketing is the Rodney Dangerfield of A/E/C firms - it "gets no respect."
(In fairness, I’ve heard the same types of complaints from A/E/C human resources professionals – only their issues can be markedly worse when firm leaders decide that things like employment laws don’t apply to their companies!)
Perhaps it is time for firms to trust their marketing professionals!
Principals, project managers, project executives, and department managers play an important role in this process. In fact, they are critical to it. But most people in these positions have little understanding of marketing messaging, value proposition development, brochure and website design, public relations, market research, and the many other disciplines of marketing. Their value is the technical knowledge required to make marketing effective. Without the technical knowledge, marketing will fail. But that doesn't mean that non-marketers should get to drive the bus.
A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually in opportunity costs -- wasted time that could be spent in better endeavors. When marketers are forced to spend countless hours on proposals with little-to-no chance of success, other marketing functions suffer: branding, direct marketing, research, higher-probability pursuits, etc.
A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually because non-marketers make horrible decisions about brochure content and presentation design. They insist upon collateral materials that are about them and how great their firm is -- which in turn pushes clients and prospects away. Who wants to work with an egomaniac who doesn't understand the client or their industry?
Marketers know best when it comes to these things.
So trust them. Empower them. Make it clear to technical staff that the professional marketers have authority when it comes to marketing decisions. Invite them to strategy meetings -- or better yet, ask them to lead strategy meetings!
Your firm hired an expert for a reason.
At the end of the day, this really isn't about your marketing professionals. This is about your company. Do you want to increase profitability or lose money? Do you want to elevate your win rate or be mired below industry norms? Do you want the company to be well-known to clients and potential clients, or do you prefer anonymity? Do you want talent to long to work for your firm, or do you want to run useless "help wanted" ads that get no qualified respondents?
If things like profitability, win rate, reputation/brand, and recruitment are important to you, step aside and let your marketing professionals do what they were trained to do.
But if these really don't matter to you, just keep doing what you are doing.
“Everyone’s a marketer.” “Everyone’s a salesperson.”
We hear these phrases uttered regularly around the A/E/C industry to signify the important role that all staff members play when it comes to finding and landing new business. Professional marketers and business developers have made these statements time and again. I’ve often said or written these mantras.
But here’s the rub: I didn’t really mean it. I bet that most of my sales and marketing colleagues didn’t mean it, either.
What I’ve really meant is that everyone needs to be a brand ambassador – a spokesperson for our company who understands and can articulate our value message. I’ve meant that everyone is a bird dog – someone who understands that project opportunities are everywhere, and can help sniff them out. Everyone has a role to play in marketing.
But I need to stop saying that “everyone’s a marketer,” because it is simply not true. Just as my engineering colleagues will tell you that I’m not an engineer, I can honestly say that they’re not marketers. Nor should they be: we each have our positions to play.
Unfortunately, if there is one theme I continually hear from marketing professionals in the A/E/C industry, it's that far too many technical professionals “think” they know better than the marketing professionals that work for their firms. It’s a variant of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, whereby people with limited abilities believe they know far more than they really do.
Being able to write a sentence doesn't make one a great writer. Being able to have a conversation doesn't make one a great public speaker. Many executives, project managers, and other technical professionals in this industry tend to understand certain limitations. Ask them to write a blog or an article, and they'll respond, "But I'm not a very good writer." Ask them to give a presentation in front of 50 or 100 people, and they'll respond, "I don't feel comfortable doing that."
But yet ask them to make an informed go-no go decision, show them a draft marketing plan for a new service launch, review the design for a new website, determine content for a PowerPoint, or decide what needs to go in a brochure, and suddenly they're experts.
It's like they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Don't get me wrong, their input is absolutely critical to creating a successful marketing product. But too often they think that their opinion – and "opinion" is the operative word here as they've never had any formal or even informal training in marketing strategy, content creation, graphic design, presentation development, etc. – should trump that of the trained marketers on their staff.
This issue seems pretty widespread in the A/E/C industry. Here's some recent examples shared by some of my colleagues:
- A construction executive asked the firm’s marketing partner for "a pretty book with lots of pages." When queried what, exactly, he meant by “book,” the executive simply stated that he wanted a really thick brochure with all the firm's experience to make them look "impressive." Never mind that they didn't even know the prospect's specific needs yet, much less the fact that most of the potential credentials were in other market segments – totally unrelated to the prospect's potential project.
- A department manager wanted a new brochure for his division. When his well-seasoned marketing director tried to determine the specific messaging, relevant visuals, and overall value messages, the department manager instead provided six pages of hyperbole and said "Make this all fit on an 11"x17" brochure – we don't need any visuals." Like another human being would take the time to read that incessant self-promoting drivel!
- An engineer told a CMO that blogs were useless because he would never read the company blogs if he was looking for information to help him do his job better. Never mind the fact that the engineer wasn't even the target audience for the blog, and he further had absolutely no understanding of the value of blogs for things like Search Engine Optimization.
- A company held a strategy meeting to look at trends, target markets, potential disrupters, brand messaging, and more. Their senior marketing professional was not invited to attend, even though that individual knew more about all these things than the rest of the attendees combined!
- A marketing professional looked at a proposal opportunity, and filtered it through her firm's go/no-go project evaluation process. It was a definite "no go" because it did not meet the minimum criteria for a proposal pursuit, which had been previously established by the firm. She was overruled by a project manager who insisted that the firm pursue it because "he felt good about their chances." The marketing team spent 60 hours on the pursuit, and the firm didn't even get shortlisted, perhaps because they had never even made contact with the client, and furthermore didn’t have much relevant project experience.
- A marketing/business development professional was hired by a construction firm to make inroads in two new market sectors. It was immediately clear that in addition to having no credentials in these markets, the firm employed no technical staff with relevant experience in these markets. As the company looked to hire new positions, the marketing professional pleaded that they hire staff with experience in these new market segments. The firm didn't. When they lost projects and got a debriefing, they heard time and again that the client didn't feel comfortable hiring a firm with no experience – corporate or personal – in their industry. After several years the business development position was eliminated for failing to have success in penetrating these new markets.
- A marketing director with 20 years of experience was hired to build a communications and marketing program for a mid-sized general contractor. She ended up wearing multiple hats – including one as administrative assistant to the firm’s executives. This not only diminished her value to the firm, but also added a touch of sexism, since most likely a male in that position would not have been asked to do the administrative tasks.
This is a tiny list, and these examples play out hundreds of times a day in A/E/C firms. We ask estimators to prepare construction estimates – and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask mechanical engineers to design HVAC systems – and trust that they know what they are doing. We ask IT professionals to increase network speed and create virtual offices – and trust they know what they're doing.
And then we ask marketing professionals to _____ (fill in the blank), and then tell them why they are doing it wrong.
What makes this more troubling is that when you speak with marketing professionals at all levels of their careers, you hear similar stories.
Marketing is the Rodney Dangerfield of A/E/C firms - it "gets no respect."
(In fairness, I’ve heard the same types of complaints from A/E/C human resources professionals – only their issues can be markedly worse when firm leaders decide that little things like employment laws don’t apply to their companies!)
Perhaps it is time for firms to trust their marketing professionals!
Principals, project managers, project executives, and department managers play an important role in this process. In fact, they are critical to it. But many people in these positions have a limited understanding of marketing messaging, value proposition development, brochure and website design, public relations, market research, and the many other disciplines of marketing. Their value is the technical knowledge required to make marketing effective. Without the technical knowledge, marketing will fail.
However, A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually in opportunity costs – wasted time that could be spent in better endeavors. When marketers are forced to spend countless hours on proposals with little-to-no chance of success, other marketing functions suffer: branding, direct marketing, research, higher-probability pursuits, etc.
A/E/C firms lose millions of dollars annually because non-marketers make horrible decisions about brochure content and presentation design. They insist upon collateral materials that are about them and how great their firm is – which in turn pushes clients and prospects away. Who wants to work with an egomaniac who doesn't understand the client or their industry?
Marketers know best when it comes to these things.
So trust them. Empower them. Make it clear to technical staff that the professional marketers have authority when it comes to marketing decisions. Invite them to strategy meetings – or better yet, ask them to lead strategy meetings!
Your firm hired an expert for a reason.
At the end of the day, this really isn't about your marketing professionals. This is about your company. Ask yourself:
- Do you want to increase profitability or lose money?
- Do you want to elevate your win rate or be mired below industry norms?
- Do you want the company to be well-known to clients and potential clients, or do you prefer anonymity?
- Do you want talent to long to work for your firm, or do you want to run useless "help wanted" ads that get no qualified respondents?
If things like profitability, win rate, reputation/brand, and recruitment are important to you, step aside and let your marketing professionals do what they were trained to do.
But if these really don't matter to you, just keep doing what you are doing.
Yes indeed
July 20, 2016
It takes a lot of patience, self-confidence and persuasive ability to work as a marketing person for AEC practice professionals. Respect is a two-way street. Here's hoping you've helped firm leaders understand this so that they can back rather than marginalize their marketing folks. To do anything else is to squander their investment in marketing talent.
July 20, 2016
Very relevant to me today. A PM decided to redesign the firm's logo/business cards, without my knowledge or input even as I am getting ready to launch our new website - after 8 months of work and research involving many. Rebranding isn't an afterthought, and the new design bears no resemblance and doesn't reflect the website style. I'd like to bang my head against a wall.
No Respect, Indeed
July 20, 2016
Scott: Thanks for shining the light on this issue. Company executives and department managers need to that professional marketers are as expert in marketing and business development domains as the technical and management staff is in architecture, engineering, and construction management. As you pointed out, they are paying the price for ignoring this truth.
Bravo!
July 26, 2016
What a great article, and so incredibly relevant in our industry. I'm sure you are speaking on behalf of many firms, as every single bullet point covered has been a point of contention in some way at our firm.
Everyone's Not A Marketer
July 26, 2016
I've been in the A/E industry for 28 years; I can give you about a 1000 more bullets. EXCELLENT article...THANK YOU!
The pain and humiliation marketing managers/coordinators go through is only equaled by our frustration caused by subjugation and in most cases, outright gender discrimination. Case in point:
A senior marketer went to the president of the firm. She articulated her strengths, her experience, her past successful history in getting the firm short-listed and preparing outstanding presentations resulting in a very high win ratio and the president vigorously nodded his head and absolutely agreed with her that she was the best editor/marketer in the country, bar none.
She then proceeded to ask for support as many of the Project Managers were starting to push their own agenda in terms of format, layout, etc., resulting in a very antiquated looking/reading submittal. The marketer wanted authority over presentation of the submittal. Nothing to do with the technical, just the final editing/aesthetics. The president looked at her and stated, "You better get one thing straight. In this firm, the PM's are gods and you are here to serve them!" Even if they are wrong about the marketing aspect of it, she asked? "Yes. Whatever they want in that proposal is what you will give them."
I can tell you that that marketer's spirit is crushed. Her zeal is dead. Her respect for her president is non-existent.
What a waste of time to spend in this industry. Which is why more and more qualified marketing managers/senior coordinators are leaving - there is no respect - NONE - from the engineers that we work with.
It's not just A/E/C
July 27, 2016
Scott, great article, but take heart that these issues are not just taking place in the A/E/C world -- I've worked in tech, healthcare, B2B services, and retail, and everyone thinks they are a marketer, regardless of industry. These are the same people who want to be involved in every aspect of marketing -- choosing the colors, the wording, product names (!) -- but don't give a second thought to brand consistency, messaging, relevance to the specific audience or...worst of all...what the results will be. We marketers stand with you!
Yes!!! Someone had to say it.
July 29, 2016
Thank you for saying it! It was as if you were reading my mind when you wrote this article.
Too true...
January 4, 2017
Nice piece, Scott! Even as an engineer-turned-BD-professional, I have the same issues - often with my own partners! We have to keep pushing to elevate the professions of marketing and business development in the AEC industry or, I'm afraid, things won't change. Thanks for the reminder.
