2
BUSINESS NEWS SAGE RANCH PROJECT RECEIVES A 4-0 APPROVAL IN TEHACHAPI The Sage Ranch Project received unanimous approval from the Tehachapi City Planning and Zoning Commission. JZMK Partners has designed a master plan for a 138- acre development adjacent to Tehachapi High School. This development will have a total of 1,000 residential units, ranging from apartments, townhomes, and detached single-family homes,
from 1,000-2,600 square feet. Single-family lots will range from 3,200-5,500 square feet. The designs will encourage walkable and connected streets, strong streetscapes with porch front homes, and easy access to a hierarchy of parks, all while reducing garage impact and eliminating the need for walled communities. JZMK Partners provides architecture, planning and urban design services both domestically and worldwide.
The Principals Academy ZWEIG GROUP’S FLAGSHIP
TRAINING PROGRAM FOR FIRM LEADERS
MARK ZWEIG, from page 1
Elevate your ability to lead and grow your firm at this impactful two-day program designed to inspire and inform existing and emerging firm leaders in key areas such as: leadership, financial management, recruiting, marketing/business development, and project management.
What, then, does it take for an AEC firm to be profitable? Let’s take a look at some fundamentals here: 1)Have demand that exceeds supply. The best way to ensure profitability is to make sure demand exceeds supply. Cost cutters think the way to achieve that is to curtail supply. But that doesn’t work for long. A better, more positive approach is to increase demand. That takes an investment in marketing. And that flies in the face of cost cut- ting – especially overhead-related cost cutting where everyone tends to focus their ener- gies. I always call marketing an “off balance sheet investment” in the firm. Grow revenue versus reducing costs (and capabilities). 2)Raise prices. Do you know how many AEC firm owners we talk to who tell us that demand exceeds supply, yet who won’t raise prices in spite of that? It’s crazy. When demand is greater than you can meet, you have to raise prices to increase your margins and reduce demand. Your alternative is non-performance. Never a good one! 3)Differentiate. If you want to be able to raise prices, you have to be providing some- thing people can’t get anywhere else. That’s the problem a lot of businesses have today. Think about it. You want to buy a new leaf blower. If two dozen online suppliers can all supply you with the same Black and Decker leaf blower in a day or two, which one will you buy it from? Odds are, whichever one has the lowest price. AEC firms are much the same way. Their services, pricing, and capabilities are perceived (and this is a critical word, “perceived”) by their clients as being more or less the same. If that’s the case, why pay a premium? If you want a premium price, you cannot say and do and act the same as your competitors. You have to be different. 4)Specialize. The best way that I know of to differentiate the services of one AEC firm versus another is to specialize. Be really good at doing something specific or at serving a particular type of client – so good that it makes you the obvious choice. Our own firm, Zweig Group, is a good example of that. We are experts in one industry. It makes it easy for us to win a strategic planning consulting job, or merger and acquisition job, because it’s all we do and clients can’t find anyone with more experience than we have at doing these things. Price is less of a consideration when you specialize because clients know you aren’t learning how to do something at their expense. You’ll be more efficient, an- ticipate problems, and do a better job in the end than a non-specialist would. 5)Inspire. Getting everyone to care more and work harder always makes it easier to be profitable. You get more productive capacity out of less people. And work is done right the first time. The best way to accomplish that is through leaders who can inspire peo- ple. You have to “sell” your special Kool Aid. You need to stand for something. In short – you need to have a higher purpose than just making a profit, and you need to effectively communicate that to everyone in the organization to inspire them. Of course, if all else fails you can always fall back on the fundamental idea that making a profit requires revenues greater than costs. This seems so obvious yet it is often forgotten. I never understood how a company doing $20 million a year in revenue couldn’t be profitable when all that was required is revenues greater than costs. This does mean cost cutting. But my version of cost cutting and that of most firm owners isn’t the same. Cut from the top. Cut owner pay and benefits. Cut out dead weight and toxic people, not just low level workers, marketing expenses, healthcare, and free Cokes in the lunchroom. Those kinds of cuts won’t do much for long. MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
SEATTLE MINNEAPOLIS NYC
6.5–6.6 7.17–7.18 10.31–11.1
REGISTER TODAY
http://bit.ly/PrincipalsAcademy
1200 North College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703 Chad Clinehens | Publisher cclinehens@zweiggroup.com Richard Massey | Managing Editor rmassey@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor christinaz@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Senior Editor and Designer sparkman@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com
Tel: 800-466-6275 Fax: 800-842-1560
Email: info@zweiggroup.com Online: thezweigletter.com Twitter: twitter.com/zweigletter Facebook: facebook.com/thezweigletter Published continuously since 1992 by Zweig Group, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA. ISSN 1068-1310. Issued weekly (48 issues/year) $250 for one-year print subscription; free electronic subscription at thezweigletter.com/subscribe © Copyright 2019, Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
© Copyright 2019. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
THE ZWEIG LETTER May 27, 2019, ISSUE 1298
Made with FlippingBook Annual report