The competitive challenge

Las Vegas architect Craig Galati in his The Heart of Business Blog reports how intense competition has become recently in the U.S.

My firm recently responded to a request for qualifications to provide architectural design services for a library addition and renovation project in a small rural town. The project is approximately 10,000 s.f., a small project by most standards. The library district received thirty-five submittals for the project. Thirty-five submittals for this small project!

In my subsequent discussion with District staff, I was told that the District had hoped to receive 5-10 submittals. As if I needed more evidence, this is clear proof of current economic conditions — the competition is heating up.

How do you battle and win in this enviornment: You need to build relationships, he says, and you need to play by the rules. And you need to be creative, different, and be prepared to take some risks.

I have found that during slower economic times, there are always great innovative breakthroughs. Perhaps by looking critically at what your firm is doing, you can find an innovative strategy. Many firms get complacent during good times. Perhaps increased competition will get them to start thinking creatively again and take some risks. A friend of mine told me about a recent interview in which Tom Peters states that most people waste their money coming to see him: that in an audience of 500, “there are (only) four who are on the verge of doing something really interesting, whether inside or outside the company.” What are you doing that would be of interest to your potential clients?

This is solid advice. Still, I'm thankful that my U.S. relationships (and market) are in the Washington, D.C. metro area rather than Las Vegas, these days. If I'm going to go overboard in puns, if I wish to place a bet, it would be on the Government -- at least until the economic cycle rebounds.

Isomorphous

Craig Galati in his Heart of Business Blog describes a problem he noticed when judging the Society for Marketing Professional Services’ (SMPS) 2008 Marketing Communication Awards."I was one of four people who judged the Firm Brochure category," Galati writes. "There were more than 40 submittals from firms of all sizes and locations."

While the quality of the submittals was high, one of the things that stood out was how similar the brochures were. Some of the submittals had better graphics and copy than others, but the essential messages were identical. The construction firms’ submittals looked similar, the engineering firms’ submittals looked similar and the architectural firms’ submittals looked alike. I imagined that all the firms’ owners dressed the same, talked the same and led in the same manner.

Galati has some fun using a big word -- isomorphous -- to describe this phenomena. It is the opposite of differentiation -- the key element of successful marketing practice: In other words, defining your business in a unique manner to stand out from the crowd.

So why is this happening -- and is it necessarily wrong?

Probably not, if you consider that most AEC professional firms derive 80 per cent or more of their business from existing clients or direct relationships and referrals. In other words, people who are really happy doing business with the company the way it is, and return for more or recommend others to do the same.

But there are always outsiders nipping at the bud, and occasionally, someone scores a home run. For example, a general contractor, active in the environmental movement, sees the trend before everyone else, obtains LEED certification (the first in the area) and committee leadership within the relevant environmental organizations. He achieves truly great recognition as an environmentally sensitive contractor -- and suddenly the universe unfolds and everyone is interested in environmental issues.

He has an undoubted advantage -- but what about everyone else? They can choose to ignore the trend, or adapt/copy it to avoid losing ground. The issue is less finding new clients (or differentiating) than to lose their existing clients because they fail to respond to the trend; the crowd; the new norm.

So, not surprisingly, much of what passes for marketing is actually safe and sound, riskless, and standard -- reflecting the external environment, camouflaging, you might say, the differences.
The challenge is to strategically find and define your differentiation -- and that, of course, is easier said than done.

A Man in Transition -- and the Unsolicited Offer

Las Vegas architect/consultant Craig Galati, a principal at the consulting firm Lucchesi Galati, writes a great blog -- and has self-published two simple but meaningful books (they are also inexpensive) with insightful gems. I doubt his books could be profitably published by a conventional publisher -- but this is the era of the "long tail" and now individuals and micro-markets can find expression previously considered impossible. Craig graciously sent me a review copy and I think blog readers will find it worthwhile to purchase the book. (the link below takes you to Amazon.ca, where I will earn about 40 cents on the transaction; if you are in the U.S. you can find the title at Amazon.com.)

Here is an excerpt from one chapter, The Unsolicited Offer. I mentally associate this with the "cold call" but of course that is not exactly what Galati is discussing.

Every day we receive unsolicited offers from people selling services and products. Do you pay attention to them?

The essence of a successful unsolicited offer is offering something of value to someone who also sees it to be of value.

An unsolicited offer shouldn't need to be sold, just offered.

So how does this happen? first of all, I do not believe the shotgun approach works. Trying to sell something you think is valuable to the masses is difficult -- or it takes a ton of money to accomplish.

I've found that to make an unsolicited offer to work, you must be good at two things.

• Clarity-- understanding what you have to offer, to whom it would
  be valuable, and why it would be valuable;
• Timing -- the ability to sense within the marketplace when what you have becomes valuable to someone else.

The first one is relatively easy. You can determine what you have to offer, and though research you can develop a sense of who may value your offer. You just need to be careful that your passion for the offer doesn't taint your objectivity.

Getting the timing right takes patience, thought and practice. It also requires that you get out from behind your desk and meet people and it requires that you keep up with current trends and issues within your marketplace.

If you can get really good at these two points, then the unsolicited offer, targeted successfully, can open doors for you that you only previously imagined.

I still very much recall one time where I put the "unsolicited offer" concept advocated by Galati into practice. When we were establishing the GTA Construction Report in 1999, the then Toronto Construction Association chair essentially invited me to leave town. (It didn't help that he was also the then the publisher of the Daily Commercial News and Construction Record -- a competing publication.) He also said he wouldn't mind if another competitor, McGraw-Hill, also went away.

After leaving the belligerent meeting, I told my newly hired editor who was waiting outside the room that beginning with the first issue, we would do our best to publish a positive story about the TCA in each issue regardless of their feelings towards us. And I picked up the phone and made a cold call to McGraw-Hill's Toronto office.

A month later, we had entered into an informal relationship that continues to this day (now with MERX in Canada.) In exchange for copyright permission to reproduce construction business leads data, we provide them with useful promotional considerations. It is a cost effective and useful alliance that has continued for almost two decades.

I think this is an example where, as Galati suggests, timing and clarity coincide for a truly effective unsolicited offer.

Admit it!

Craig Galati is a principal of Lucchesi Galati, a LasVegas consulting firm practicing in the areas of architecture, sociology and sustainability.

Yesterday's mail included more books (by now you probably can tell I read a lot), including Architect Craig Galati's little gem: Admit It!: 21 Things You Already Know But Apparently Have Forgotten Regarding Client Service.

His self-published booklet-- at 43 pages it is too small to be regarded as a commercial book -- is a useful resource and reminder of the basics that we easily forget: Return your calls, keep your promises, accept responsibility, and be flexible, among others.

Here are the 21 'things' reflecting the book's chapters:

1. Treat clients the way they want to be treated
   
2. Make repeat business and referrals your goal
   
3. If the client looks good, you look good
   
4. Get to know who the 'real' client is
   
5. Make it easy for your clients to describe you as excellent
   
6. Never say 'no'
   
7. Go out of your way, all the time
   
8. Never forget that all of your actions contribute to the customer experience
   
9. Don't return calls during lunchtime
   
10. Make your clients feel at home
    
11. Give more than clients expect
    
12. Customer service is not an act or time of day; it's a lifestyle
    
13. Return the routine phone calls promptly; return the difficult ones sooner
    
14. Keep your promises
    
15. Thoroughly understand what value means to your clients
    
16. Tackle the tough issues face-to-face
    
17. Tell the truth always; own up to your own mistakes
    
18. Don't blame someone else
    
19. It's not aboout who's right or wrong; its about resolving the issue at hand
    
20. Be flexible. Each client's needs and projects are different
    
21. Don't lose touch after the job is done.

These, indeed, are common-sense basics of client service, brand harmony, and solid business relationships.

Craig's The Heart of Business blog is worthy of bookmarking.

The Heart of Business: Craig Galati

Las Vegas architect Craig Galati (Principal, Lucchesi Galati) 's blog, The Heart of Business, is worthy of your attention and certainly qualifies for a permalink here.