With many A/E/C and environmental consulting firms experiencing layoffs, salary freezes/reductions, benefit cuts, and other cost-cutting measures, it's more important than ever that firms invest their precious marketing and business development (BD) overhead dollars wisely.

Getting more staff involved in BD (especially project personnel), in ways commensurate with their role, career juncture, and skills is a no-brainer when compared with the alternative of relying on a few key rainmakers. But this approach also requires a commitment to training, coaching, and mentoring — a commitment that is lacking in many firms in good times and bad.

Complicating the return-on-investment (ROI) equation is the inherent challenge of measuring marketing and BD ROI, as the overall sales process for a professional services firm is non-linear, serendipitous, and circuitous. It can be a "black box," with multiple strategies and touches contributing to a new client or new project. That said, there are a number of marketing and BD metrics that industry firms should measure. These metrics typically fall into four different "buckets":

• Sales volume (segmented by client type, existing versus new clients, and potentially other parameters)
• Proposal dollars outstanding (weighted according to a realistic probability of winning)
• Competitive proposal performance (i.e., those short-listed and won)
• PR and positioning achievements (e.g., articles published, talks and workshops presented, project awards)

• Treating the project delivery process as a BD opportunity by using open-ended questions to identify additional needs and other potential buyers and influencers within the client organization (and then cross-selling, if necessary).
       During a marketing/BD assessment I recently conducted, I learned of an instance in which the client lost a project to a competitor because the client did not know the firm offered the desired service. Unfortunately, based on my experience, this happens too often in our industry.
• Involving past and current clients in your marketing efforts (e.g., interviewing them for a newsletter article, co-presenting with them at a conference, and teaming on award submittals).

• The first priority should be to speak or serve on a panel discussion.
• The second priority should be to serve on a planning committee.
• The last priority should be to have a booth/attend, unless the firm is hosting a hospitality event in conjunction with the venue and has strategically invited key past, current, and/or target clients. I recognize that some firms view it as sacrilegious not to have a booth after doing so for 20 years in a row, but if your firm is experiencing desperate times, that calls for desperate measures.

• Limit the number of attendees at each venue. Attendance should be a privilege and a responsibility given to select individuals for the purposes of lead generation and/or professional development, not an expectation on the part of staff who are seeking an opportunity to get away, schmooze, and have fun.
• If someone in your firm is giving a talk and you've decided to have a booth, be sure to leverage the two by promoting the talk (and white papers and article placements) at your booth and encouraging workshop attendees to stop by your booth.
• Require attendees to prepare a debrief report on the venue. Such reports could contain:
• Market intelligence
• A listing of current and prospective clients with whom that person met
• Resulting leads
• Potential new hires
• Potential new teaming partners
• Ideas for future abstract submittals
• Recommendations for how your firm can maximize its ROI from that venue next year

• Conveys the value of your firm's services (and in particular, hiring your firm over a competitor), in the context of the issues that keep your clients up at night.
• Positions your firm as a subject matter expert and thought leader.
• Differentiates your firm from its competitors.

• Giving talks and workshops (assuming your content provides valuable information, tips, resources and/or case studies versus self-serving, boastful content). Some of the benefits include:
• Typically, audience members with needs and questions approach you after a talk, yielding qualified leads.
• The professional association helps promote your talk through their web site and direct marketing.
• If approached intelligently, there is tremendous "repackaging" value in a talk or workshop. You can convert it into:
• An article to be pitched to a trade journal.
• A newsletter article in which several clients and prospects are interviewed.
• An in-house lunchtime workshop for a client or prospect.
• A talk or workshop for another target professional association by tweaking the title and content a bit.
• They make you a better consultant. Giving talks forces you to codify your consulting message and hone your listening skills, an essential component of Q&A (which should be allowed throughout your talk, when possible). Further, talks provide an ideal opportunity to gather market intelligence that will make you more effective in the BD process.

• Issues keeping specific target audiences up at night.
• Strategies, tips, and resources for addressing these issues.
• Project case studies that illustrate how the company has tackled these issues for clients and what the take-aways are for other client organizations (versus writing about projects won and project milestones).

• Help pre-position your firm for a particular project.
• Increase the likelihood that editors of key target publications will pick up these story ideas (because they're more likely to connect with readers).
• Help develop a stable of content that can be repackaged into articles for other publications and into talks for various professional association/conference venues.

Friedman & Partners is a marketing and management consulting firm serving the U.S. and Canadian A/E/C and environmental consulting industries. Our niche is in crafting and implementing growth strategies through:

• Market research
• Strategic market planning
• Business development consulting and training
• Mergers and acquisitions assistance
• Organizational and leadership development consulting