Neither of these acceptances directly will bring in piles of cash (if any at all).  But both represent invitation to groups where not all who wish to enter can be invited.  We like to be liked.  We especially like to be liked or admitted into  exclusive groups reflecting our values and objectives.

There is a converse principle here which I’ve started applying in my marketing approaches.  When third-party organizations who might appear to be competitors approach me to promote their organizations or explore co-operative ideas, I watch my tendency to say “no”.  Instead, I now look for ways I can help, contribute, or support the initiative.  I say “yes”.

Sometimes, I sense, at the start this approach seems counter-intuitive and uncomfortable.  “Why should I help someone who might be my competitor?” is a natural question to ask.  But genuine selflessness and co-operation creates a positive karma.  Simply put, when we say “yes” to options which take us in new and interesting directions, our perspectives are enhanced and we see opportunities we might otherwise have missed.

There, after all, is some merit behind the story of the “Yes Man” movie.  Saying “yes” opens up possibilities, creates good-will and invites growth.  (Of course we don’t need to go nuts about this:  If the “yes’ requires me to spend lots of cash and/or time, I’ll evaluate it realistically.)

Next time, when you are preparing to “chase a bid” or start a set of cold calls, consider that you might get better results by offering support, assistance and resources and saying “yes” to others.  You might just end up receiving a few “yeses” in return.

I’ll also use this posting to give a “plug” for an upcoming event.  David Steinberg at Adpearance in Portland, Oregon is offering a free 45 minute Webinar on Thursday June 29 on internet marketing for the construction equipment and supply industry.  I haven’t attended yet so cannot provide an after-the-fact testimonial, but will still go if only to gain an insight into how he appears to be effectively using free Webinars to develop his business.

Yesterday, I spent hours listening to speeches, panel discussions and presentations on architectural, engineering and construction marketing at the SMPS Build Business National Conference in Boston.  I can’t say it turned out to be the most enjoyable day of my life.  I felt alone, and was, much of the time, even though there were (brief) opportunities to renew acquaintances, connect with some new people and meet in person some people the first time I knew only online.

Unlike my first visit to a SMPS conference two years ago in Denver, where I enjoyed a fair amount of “wow” sensations — and truly felt like I belonged — today, the ugly pain of my social skills limitations returned to the fore.  It proved to be a humbling experience.  (And the one picture I had someone take of me didn’t reveal a terribly flattering image.  It looks like I really need to watch my diet — the stomach is getting a little larger than it should be.)

There are several reasons for this disconnect.  One is that I have never been terribly comfortable in public social circumstances.  In rare cases, just the right mix of new and old allow me to feel comfortable and natural; capable of mingling and yet feeling close enough to belong.  Most of the time, even though I should belong, I feel “outside”.  These weaknesses are offset by my own family’s love and my (fortunate) writing skills.  I can communicate well.

Can I cure these problems?  Certainly, to some extent, I know the basics:  Be genuinely interested in the people around you (in networking events especially) and do all you can to help and assist rather than sell and take.  This attitude has always underlined my relationship within SMPS — I certainly don’t try to push any product, service or idea on others here.

But that positive doesn’t offset my awkwardness and humility.  I can (and should) do better.

I’ll cover specific topics from the various SMPS sessions in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I have another 2/3 day at the conference, before returning to the hotel to reconnect with Vivian and Eric, have a dinner out, and then (with Eric) head out to a Red Sox game.

I’m writing this posting in a dark hotel room early morning, so can’t review notes and other details.  This rather significant limitation is offset by my clear memories of the general trends of discussion:  The challenge of drawing out and developing worthy long-term relationships in areas of market priority, so when RFP and bidding opportunities arise, you are on the inside track to winning these bids.  Members generally acknowledge that you are wasting your time bidding in open competitions if you don’t already have a relationship with the decision-makers in the selection boards.  This relationship-success is extremely important, especially in the current highly competitive environment where dozens of purportedly qualified bidders can compete for even a single small job; and where (if price competition rules the day) you have a faint chance of making any kind of profit by winning a “low price wins the job” competition, especially if it is relatively small.

The next challenge is building and developing the relationships and seeing the opportunities under our noses.  This is especially apparent when practices have multiple disciplines and decision-makers, where cross-selling and information sharing opportunities “should” exist but for one reason or another, they aren’t developed.  Can current clients also tell us where to head in the future:  What if a current client wants or could use a service you don’t currently offer, but could develop on demand?

Finally, how do you measure success and evaluate progress in these initiatives, which involve sometimes extremely long sales cycles, diverse connections and changing personalities?  Worse, how do you implement effective strategies when in a downsizing environment, your resources are curtailed and you must do more with less, as panicked executives and ill-informed project managers push you to crank out multiple RFPs and proposals on the faint hope that they could succeed, even if your “go/no go” analysis suggests this is wasted effort.

Problems, problems, problems.  Is there hope in this chaos?  This is where groups like SMPS play such an important role.  Besides knowing you are not alone in dealing with these challenges, you can find support, guidance and (yes) practical relationships to help you succeed.  (The latter is especially the case when you are combining local connections with a specialized discipline, where a national or international player might work best with a qualified partner with appropriate local connections.)

Today is the conference’s main day.  Hours of speakers, presentations, and a formal awards dinner.  No free WIFI in the convention center, so I won’t be able to write and blog as freely as I’d like.  But I’ll still learn much and have stories to share in the weeks ahead.

If you are in Boston and wish to share a connection or two, you can email me at buckshon@cnrgp.com.

This morning, we’re heading on a road trip to Boston, MA for the annual Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Build Business conference. It’s about a six hour drive (without stops, at speed limit) to Boston from Ottawa.  Tomorrow (Wednesday), I’ll attend Certified Professional Services Marketer (CSPM) events before the full conference gets under-way on Thursday and Friday.  We will cap off the weekend with a visit to Fenway Park to take in a (bleacher seat) view of a game between the Red Sox and the Texas Rangers.

Over the years, SMPS has structured its annual conference with some standardized processes and protocols, mixing networking events, lectures, workshops and informal “connecting points” to create a worthwhile event.  The association holds its conferences in the summer unlike many other business associations — this can create steamy “opportunities” (I decided to take a pass on the conference last year in Las Vegas, Nevada) but also connects well with lighter conventional work loads and family vacation scheduling.

Of course, I’ll be reporting on the conference in this blog.  Depending on whether there is high speed wifi within the conference centre, you may see multiple postings each day as i absorb specific seminars and lectures and report on the observations in near real-time.

If you are in Boston and wish to connect with me one-on-one please feel free to email me at buckshon@cnrgp.com.

Liz Kupcha

But who said a business start-up is easy, especially in a recession environment.  So, she reports in her blog, she picked up the phone and sought some business.  I’m not sure if the calls she made were truly cold or were reconnections with existing clients, but the excuses for “not interested” still tell us a lot about the state of marketing in the AEC community.

• “We only work for the State.” Heellloooo…have you read a paper lately? The State doesn’t have any money.
• “We don’t do any marketing.” How do you get work?
• “We’re a small firm.” Yeah and…how do you pay your employees?
• “The economy is bad so we’re not doing much marketing.” Maybe I’m the victim of misinformation but I was taught that when things are slow, that’s the time to step up the marketing efforts.
• “The phone just rings for us.” What happens when it stops? What will you do then?

Kupcha writes:

I learned that companies have their respective thoughts (as misguided as I might find them) about the “necessity” for marketing or what constitutes “marketing.” I was trained that marketing consists of various activities that are conducive to a firm securing work. Some firms will openly embrace an assortment of items within a “marketing mix” while others will focus on one or two activities and be dismissive of the rest.

I’m not going to call folks out and say they’re wrong and I’m right but quite frankly, I fear for the futures of firms that keep all of their eggs in one basket.

I agree with Liz.  The paradox I’ve observed (and I’m sure she will also see) is that the people who need our marketing/consulting services the least are the ones most likely to be willing to pay for them.  In other words, they already “get it” and are looking for incremental rather than fundamental change in their approaches, and see our advice as worthwhile.

I also hope that Liz, in developing her business, is focusing her own marketing efforts close to home with respect for existing relationships and connections.  Going out in the wild cold world is tough especially in the AEC community’s relationship-focused world.

I’ve added her worthy blog to the Construction Blogs listings.  If you are in New York, you may also find value in attending her upcoming seminars/programs, referenced here.

In the Webinar, I’ll distill some of the fundamental concepts in my Construction Marketing Ideas book – how to make marketing both fun and effective for your business.

You can find more registration information here.

You can save significantly with early bird discounts by June 23 and, until June 30, I’ll provide a free copy of the book (value $39.95) with the Webinar, hopefully delivered in time for the event (I can’t 100 per cent promise the latter since free delivery is by USPS or Canada Post and this can sometimes take a while.)

If you aren’t already a member of the Design and Construction Network, you might wish to explore joining it.  There are no fees or dues and some local informal chapters have been formed.  It is based on a LinkedIn group but has extended beyond the purely online space to become an interdisciplinary, multi-city (and for that matter) multi-national organization.

I hope we’ll be able to connect on July 8!

Delve into Jaffa's story and you'll appreciate Gaza's complexity more. My brothers were there a few days ago.

You would have to be senseless (literally and figuratively) not to notice the main news stories in the U.S. and internationally right now.  Various groups are seeking to “break the blockade” of Gaza while oil pours out of a  man-made hole in the Gulf of Mexico.  Within the noise of the propaganda and public relations machinery, individuals and communities respond both predictability and within surprising frameworks.  People take their “preconceived notions” (a phrase I learned from bewildered white Rhodesians in 1978-80) to spin their stories both sincerely and cynically.  Most of us, either directly involved or distant from the actual issues, only have an inkling of what is going on, and even fewer seek to delve deeply and objectively enough into the underlying history and relationships to understand a semblance of the truth.

So goes the story for your own business and the people you hope will do business with you.  You need to crack many barriers to get deep enough into the process to reach the magic “click” of insight and understanding and even hope to change the perceptions of the marketplace towards your business, its relationships and its brand (how others — especially potential and current clients — perceive you and whether that perception matches your own understanding.)

Today, for example, my two brothers are about to discover the Old City of Jerusalem.  If you’ve ever been there, you can appreciate that this part of the universe is both an amazing tourist trap and wildly complex piece of geography and history as Muslims, Jews, Christians and Armenians all claim a portion of the land and all have their own special relationship with it.  More interestingly, things are designed to minimize unpleasant interfaces — Jews wishing to pray at the Wailing Wall should not need to encounter the Muslims heading to the Al As-qua mosque.  Occasionally, however things get tense when bulldozers or perhaps even tourists take a wrong turn.

I’m something of a narrow but deep thinker.  That is, within areas or topics that interest me, I can quickly become an expert.  Ive certainly read more books and had more first-hand experience about construction marketing and with geopolitical issues than most  When I have the fortune to meet with someone who actually knows more about these specialized topics than I do, I can tune my journalistic ear quickly and gain understandings that take me further than most.  (We can add an understanding of Internet fraud and crime to the list — including my latest fight which resulted in a wonderfully blunt yet invisible face-off with a U.S. war vet with a really warped perception of how to make money fast on the Web. I won.)

These skills and traits ultimately led to my career in construction industry publishing and marketing.  And they cause me sometimes to shake my head in frustration about industry practices and perceptions and the sloppy — often incompetent — approach that many architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers have towards media relations and marketing.

Unless you are building stuff in the Mid-East or provide construction products and services for the Gulf Coast, you probably aren’t directly affected by the major news stories today — and some motivational gurus suggest you should simply turn the “news” off to avoid distractions and unnecessary frustration.  But you can look at these issues as opportunities to understand how conflict and communication operate on the world stage and how you can determine where, if you dare, to reach beyond conventional expectations and take a media/marketing risk.  Or how your life (and the perceptions of others to you) can be changed by a few minutes of ill-thought conversation in front of a video camera.

You can learn more if you wish at my Webinar on Wednesday, June 9.

The last time around, the webinar video froze just as we were about to start, so I rescheduled in co-operation with the patient clients who hoped to attend the first webinar.

I won’t promote this event widely — it is mainly intended to deliver the services we had promised originally, but have set things up so you can request to attend if you are interested.  Admission is free for anyone who has advertised in any of our publications in the past year and half-price if you have purchased my book, Construction Marketing Ideas: Practical strategies and resources to attract and retain clients for your architectural, engineering or construction business.  If you invest the $79.00 registration fee, you will receive a free copy of the book.

The service includes one hour of free individual phone consulting after the webinar because, frankly, no one can devise truly effective public relations and media strategies without truly understanding your own business, market and priorities.