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Conference call: Lisa Kay President, Alta Environmental (Best Firm #4 Environmental for 2018), a 50-person firm based in Long Beach, CA.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“I t’s said that people typically don’t leave companies, they leave bosses,” Kay says. “Making sure we cultivate great bosses who create great opportunities for employees
with, this has been a common issue for principals and PMs alike. Let’s all get trained in master negotiating and learn how to describe our values in terms that resonate with the client’s business. “One of our challenges as engineers, scientists, architects, is that we are not always great at holding tight to explaining the value of our work. We need to get better at that.” TZL: Do you tie compensation to performance for your top leaders? LK: We have created an incentive compensation program that is directly linked to exceeding our financial goals. The program is not only for our top leadership but there are in- centives for staff consultants who beat personal invoiced hour/dollar revenue targets each month which allow them to earn up to $1,000 in incentive on a monthly basis. We also incentivize sales successes that are directly tied to our
to grow and evolve is key.” A CONVERSATION WITH LISA KAY.
The Zweig Letter: With technology reducing the time it takes to complete design work, how do you get the AEC industry to start pricing on value instead of hours? Lisa Kay: This is a great question. As an industry we need to really work on raising the bar here. We all have stories of the client calling to complain about the $30,000 invoice when they are spending $300,000 in legal advice every month. One of our challenges as engineers, scientists, and architects is that we are not always great at holding tight to explaining the value of our work. We need to get better at that. I have learned that sometimes the client isn’t really looking for a discount or a reduced fee, they just need the justification to explain it to management. Many times when a client calls to question or negotiate the rates we fall right back into negotiating against ourselves rather than working harder on the justification. Over all the firms I’ve worked
THE ZWEIG LETTER Jan
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