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O P I N I O N
A common misstep
I n the AEC industry, project work is where it’s at. Maximizing billable time for production staff is the main goal. And logically so. We are all in business to make a profit, right? A lot of AEC firms fall into the trap of neglecting their marketing departments because the work is not billable. Marketers need to fight back with consistent effort.
priority and everything else plays the part of ugly stepchild. After all, billable work is billable. However, the whole point of marketing is to develop future billable work, so doesn’t that make marketing as important to the health of your firm as today’s billable work? So how do we stay out of the trap? should be making progress toward reaching your marketing plan goals.” “A consistent application of marketing effort makes all the difference. Every day, your firm
But somehow, that project-time-as-all-consuming- time mentality has seeped into every corner of many firms. The smaller the firm, the more likely this is, as staff members are called on to serve multiple functions, especially if they are billable functions. This is especially true for marketers – who are often closest to a project in the beginning stages, due to the proposal process. At those initial stages, who else knows more about the project and what the firm is expected to deliver as the marketers who first reviewed the RFP and helped to bring the proposal submission to completion? It is very easy to fall into this trap, which is one of the biggest challenges for AEC marketers – when project work and proposals are your first
Jane Lawler Smith
See JANE LAWLER SMITH, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER June 3, 2019, ISSUE 1299
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