Firms lose pricing power when they sell services and qualifications instead of the outcomes clients actually care about.
Let me just say it plainly: most A/E firms are terrible at selling what they do. Not because their people aren’t smart, and not because they don’t do good work, but because they insist on selling the work itself instead of what the client actually cares about. They sell scope, resumes, “our process,” deliverables, schedules, project experience, technical expertise, QA processes, and all the other things that make architects and engineers feel comfortable while making clients tune out. Then they wonder why the client wants to talk about the fee.
Here’s the truth nobody wants to hear: clients don’t really buy your process, your qualifications, or your 12-page project approach section. Those things may help justify the decision, but they usually aren’t what makes someone want to hire you. Clients buy what they think their life or business will look like after you’re done, and that is a very different thing to sell.
Think about buying a house. Nobody falls in love with a house because of its R-40 wall insulation or its 400 amp electrical service. They fall in love because they can see themselves sitting on the porch, having their kids and grandkids over, cooking in that kitchen, or finally living somewhere they are proud to call home. The specifications matter, but they aren’t the reason they fell in love with the house.
It’s exactly the same with A/E services. A client doesn’t get up in the morning dreaming about hiring somebody to prepare a comprehensive master plan, design a wastewater plant, or provide construction administration for their airport runway project. They want those things because of what they believe will happen afterward: fewer problems, less risk, happier employees, a better business, a project they can be proud of, or maybe just the ability to sleep at night without worrying that they made a $20 million mistake. Those are emotional things, even though we don’t usually talk about them that way in our industry.
Instead, we walk into interviews and start talking about ourselves. “We’ve been in business for 47 years. We have 143 employees. Here is our organizational chart. Here are 27 projects like yours.” Then we wonder why the client’s eyes glaze over and they get up for a second bagel.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk about experience or qualifications. You absolutely should, because the client demands it and needs evidence that you can deliver what you’re promising. But those things should support the emotional case for hiring you, not become the entire case.
The client cares about their problem. They want to know that you understand it, that you’ve been through something similar, and that you can make their life better. More importantly, they want to feel that if they hire you, they can take a deep breath and quit worrying about whether they just made a terrible decision.
That is what you’re really selling.
So instead of saying, “We provide comprehensive planning, design, and construction administration services,” try something like, “When we’re finished, you’ll know you made the right long-term decision, and you won’t be sitting in a meeting two years from now explaining why nobody thought ahead.” The second statement isn’t more technically impressive, but it speaks directly to what the client is worried about.
The same thing applies to proposals. If yours starts with six pages about your firm, followed by resumes, followed by methodology, followed by another 14 pages explaining how you will do the work, you may have created a very impressive document that nobody actually wants to read. Worse, you may have created a document that looks almost exactly like the three other proposals sitting on the client’s desk. And when you look exactly like everybody else, what does the client have left to compare? Price becomes the easiest answer. We have essentially trained clients to commoditize us and then complain when they do it.
The best business developers I know don’t necessarily know the most about their firm’s services. They know the most about their client’s hopes, fears, frustrations, ambitions, and political problems. They know that the person sitting across the table may be much more worried about looking stupid at the next board meeting than they are about whether your fee is 6% higher than the competitor’s.
That is where emotional selling comes in. I’m not talking about manipulation or some cheesy sales technique where you stare deeply into the client’s eyes and tell them their project is going to change the world. I’m talking about understanding that people make decisions emotionally and then use facts and numbers to explain those decisions to themselves and everyone else. Give them the facts, by all means. Just don’t make the facts do a job they were never designed to do.
Make them see the finished project in their minds. Make them imagine how good it will feel when the problem is solved. Make them believe that hiring you will make their lives easier, their businesses better, and their careers a little safer. Once they feel that way, your experience, qualifications, fee, and scope have a much better chance of being viewed in the context of the value you’re creating rather than as a list of things they can price-shop.
That is the difference between selling services and selling value. One makes the client ask, “How much?” The other makes them ask, “When can you start?”
And we’d all agree that is a much better question for an A/E firm to hear.
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Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. |
