Clients are researching, comparing, and forming opinions about your firm long before your team knows a pursuit is underway.
Relationships still win work in this industry, but where trust is formed for a new buyer has shifted. Clients still talk about the firms they like. A principal who knows the client still starts ahead. Strong delivery still brings that client back. But today, much of the trust decision happens during a research phase your firm never sees. By the time the RFQ arrives, that client may already have encountered your firm in a dozen places you cannot name.
What makes this buyer different
Buyers spend about 17% of the journey in direct contact with the firms they are considering. They make the other 83% of the decision without you, and 61% say they prefer it that way, according to Consensus’ 2026 B2B Buyer Behavior Report.
McKinsey’s 2026 Global B2B Pulse Survey reports that buyers move through an average of 10 channels on the way to a decision. Generative AI now sits among the top channels for supplier discovery and evaluation, alongside supplier websites, web search, videoconferencing, and in-person contact.
Your client asks an answer engine, “Which firms do this work?” and either your firm appears in the answer or your competitors do.
How many touches it takes
6sense estimates that buyers average 16 interactions per person with the firm that wins, and a typical purchase involves more than 10 people. Across a buying group of 10, that can mean roughly 160 interactions before the client awards the work.
Your CRM sees only a fraction of them. The rest happen through AI results, project pages, conference sessions, peer recommendations, and other channels your firm may never track. Yet each one can move your firm up or down the buyer’s list.
What this means for your firm
You measure win rate on submitted proposals, which covers only the visible end of the process. The invitations you never receive never enter that math.
A firm can post a respectable win rate for years while its position in the research phase erodes. Track shortlist invitations by client and sector alongside win rate. A falling invitation count may tell you something important before anything else on your dashboard moves.
A firm nobody recognizes during the research phase may end up arguing about fee at the interview.
Marketing and business development also need to adjust. Marketers now have to think about answer engines as well as search engines, because when a client asks which firms deliver a specific project type in a specific market, the engine returns a short list of names.
The 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report found that 64% of hidden decision-makers trust thought leadership over marketing materials when judging capability, and 79% say strong thought leadership makes them more likely to champion a firm’s proposal during an RFP process.
Those readers follow named experts with a point of view.
By the time the RFQ posts, BD may be entering a ranking that is already largely set.
What this means for your project teams
Asked why they leave a supplier, buyers in the McKinsey research name inconsistent information across teams first, and the inability to reach a knowledgeable person second. Neither failure happens in marketing. Both happen on active projects, in the gap between what the pursuit team promises and what the delivery team does on a Tuesday.
Your project managers, engineers, and superintendents generate more of those touches than your marketing department ever will.
The project you are delivering right now is the research phase for the next one.
Every client conversation on that project produces an impression and, potentially, a reference your firm never hears. The 2027 Emerging Trends in AEC Marketing and Business Development research from SMPS and Stambaugh Ness found that 74% of participants consider client experience a highly impactful competitive differentiator, while only 22% say their firms are highly ready to manage it deliberately.
Where to start
Do the math. Take your last significant win and count the touches your team can name: the meetings, calls, site visits, and interview. Most leadership teams will land far below the number of interactions that may actually have shaped the client’s decision.
Build a digital strategy to stay on the playing field. Your firm needs a plan for the channels clients use during that unseen portion of the buying journey. Track search, website and referral visibility, expertise content engagement, CRM and marketing data quality, attribution, and proposal conversion. Add a quarterly check of how often your firm appears when an answer engine is asked which firms deliver your project types in your markets.
Relationships still win work. The difference is that more of those relationships are being formed, reinforced, and tested before anyone at your firm realizes the pursuit has begun.
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Sarah Kinard is Head Bird of The Flamingo Project, a consultancy helping AEC firms grow through research-driven strategy and planning. Connect with her on LinkedIn. |
