How to strike a balance between being involved in important community work and pursuing opportunities in new geographic areas.
About 10-15 years ago, business development relied heavily on cultivating local relationships, meeting face-to-face, sharing stories, and shaking hands in person. As a smaller AEC firm established in Montana with many of our offices in the state, this approach worked well for us for quite some time.
However, this approach didn’t necessarily support the growth and expansion into other geographic markets that we ultimately wanted to achieve, nor did it take into consideration the opportunities becoming more and more prevalent through online connections and relationship building.
As our firm opened additional offices, expanding into multiple states and broadening our services, we realized we weren’t experiencing the cross-office collaboration we’d hoped for, which is necessary for growth and the ability to take on larger, multidisciplinary projects.
So, in 2013, we made a big leap, switching from a location-based sales approach to becoming more geographically agnostic with a structure organized around our markets at the time – commercial, education, government, healthcare, residential, and retail. Our markets (called vertical markets internally) became profit and loss centers, and design teams – as well as business development and marketing strategies – were built around those markets. For more than 10 years, this was our primary approach to selling our work.
During this time, we evolved in other ways, too. Like many companies over the past decade, we came to realize that business development can happen just about anywhere and can be done by anyone who is knowledgeable and passionate about the work we do and the solutions we bring to our clients.
Every person at our firm has a role to play – not only by helping our clients realize exceptional projects, but also by celebrating those projects and helping tell the story of who we are as a firm: our mission, vision, and values. Initiatives such as empowering team members with business development guidelines and talking points; conducting social media training and teaching about the benefits of platforms such as LinkedIn to create impactful professional networks; and overall, equipping team members to talk about what we do, in a variety of circles, have strengthened our brand tenfold.
Now, we come to 2023 and yet another shift in our approach to business development – reinstating local business development leads to support local/regional office leaders. Why? No matter how much you grow, you should never forget about the opportunities in your own backyard where you can have a big impact. We have team members who intimately know the lay of the land in the many regions in which we live and work – people who’ve spent their lives developing relationships in these places. But we also have the drive to build knowledgeable teams in new geographic areas, and we’re working to do just that.
Location and local connections will always be important: as they say, “Don’t forget about your roots.” After 10 years of being “geographically agnostic,” we realized we were sometimes missing those vital relationship-building opportunities that happen in person, among our friends and neighbors, so we added more old-fashioned hand-shaking back into the mix.
Today, we’re leveraging what we think might be the best combination, yet – region-specific business development leads who work in partnership with office/region leads as well as marketing leads who specialize in those vertical markets I mentioned before. For us, it’s all about achieving a balance of being involved in important work that benefits our communities and stretching our limits to see just where and how we can have an impact in other places our adventurous spirit may take us.
Chris Aageson is a director of business development and associate principal at Cushing Terrell. Find him on LinkedIn.