Training, Coaching and Keynote Topics in AE Marketing, Sales and Business Development blüstone Marketing can provide your technical, marketing and business development team or Association membership with the skills and the confidence they need to find and land the new business that will fuel your growth. The listed programs are intended as suggestions. We d be happy to discuss your specific training needs and develop a customized training program to suit your requirements and schedule. All programs can be formatted in half- or full-day sessions, depending on the depth to which you want the topic explored. Longer programs can incorporate more hands-on, now-you-try-it opportunities for participants to practice the skills being taught. Any of the topics can also be formatted as a keynote address or short, 90-minute workshop appropriate for concurrent sessions at a conference. How Marketing Works The logic behind the tactics The AE world is full of misconceptions about marketing. This myth-busting program gets everyone on the same page with a full understanding of the objectives, methods and tools of a comprehensive marketing program. With a high-level perspective on how marketing works and the logic behind the tactics that we use, this session covers the territory from strategic planning through branding-building, sales, business development and customer service. It clearly explains the distinct objectives and methods for each stage of marketing and the relationship and interactivity between them. Following this session you ll see your marketing strategy and efforts in a new light and be able to get far more return for your efforts and investment. Building Your Strong Brand The vital marketing strategy for growthoriented AEC firms While strong relationships are the backbone of the AE world, they don t give business-minded design and construction professionals enough control over their firms' rate of growth or the inevitable economic peaks and valleys. By proactively creating and nurturing brandname recognition for your firm you can "jump-start" strong relationships with larger numbers of qualified prospects that will lead to sales opportunities and reliable growth rates. This program will show you how to adapt branding strategies specifically for design and construction companies and how to create and build a strong brand image for your firm.
You re Paid Too Little! Using Value Pricing to get paid what you re worth The engineering profession has only itself to blame for the low value clients place on our services. But there is a way for you to pull your firm out of the quicksand of fee competition and commodity pricing. In this provocative session, AE marketing guru David Stone will show you how we got ourselves into this mess and what you can do starting today to get yourself onto the high road of value pricing. A Valuable Collection of Friends Building and maintaining quality relationships for a steady supply of profitable work Do you want to significantly reduce price as a selection criteria, raise your volume of sole-source, negotiated work, cut your marketing costs and influence the client selection process? Then your team needs to master the art of strong, trust-based relationships with your clients. Starting with a look at the services we sell and the nature of the sales process, this program conducts an in-depth analysis of the client decision-making process and shows why and how close personal relationships dramatically increase your win rate and your volume of repeat work. You ll learn valuable networking techniques, how to launch and nurture relationships and a guaranteed way to ensure clients want to spend time with you. The Negotiation Waltz How to stand up for what s rightfully yours and preserve the client relationship In formal contract negotiations and in everyday project management, you are constantly negotiating. While very few design and construction professionals have had any training in the art and techniques of bargaining, most of your clients are skilled professionals so you get the short end of the deal. With a goal of win-win outcomes, this eye-opening program will teach you the principles of negotiating, preparation techniques, parameters of what is and what is not negotiable and then show you the actual, toe-to-toe methods that let you stand up for what s rightfully yours. Getting Everyone Involved In Business Development How to overcome social reluctance with Personal Business Development Plans Every firm wants to involve as many people as possible in business development but the personality traits that tend to make a great engineer also tend to make that person reluctant in business development. Since personality traits impact success in business development this unique approach gives an active and meaningful role to everyone in the BD process. This totally outside-the-box approach will match the strengths of every individual in your firm to business development tasks they will readily take on, enjoy and successfully accomplish. The strong relationships that result will reduce the high cost of competitive proposals and increase your negotiated and sole-source work.
Pssst! Your Presentation is Putting Them to Sleep! Creating and delivering amazing (and winning!) presentations Are you trying to bore your clients into hiring you? Standard operating procedure is to use PowerPoint as you communicate with prospects, clients, public groups and others. But if you use PowerPoint like most people, your presentations aren t better, they re WORSE! The objective of a presentation is to make an emotional and memorable connection with your audience. This program will teach you how to leave them on the edge of their seats instead of asleep in them. Want to put more zing in your presentations? Want to avoid Death by PowerPoint? Want to increase interaction with your audience? This is your program. Raising the WOW! Factor How to create proposals that communicate value and truly set you apart from the rest The goal of a proposal is to first, convince your client that your firm is fully qualified to do the work and second, to show that client that you ll be bringing something to the table that they won t get from anyone else. Most proposals somewhat accomplish the first and fail miserably on the second. This decidedly-outside-the-fence program will introduce you to some very unusual techniques designed to develop a winning strategy, create a stunning first impression, communicate your qualifications and value persuasively and get you to the top of the short list. Smile! Breathe! Overcoming butterflies, nausea and cold sweats and give an engaging and memorable presentation Very few people are natural public speakers and many would rather go for a root canal than speak in front of a group. But the ability to make an engaging and memorable presentation is a vital business skill that can make an enormous difference to your career and the success of your organization. This is a highly interactive workshop in which participants are video taped delivering their own presentations. They then review the tape with the coach to identify opportunities for improvement. The improvements are tangible. The confidence and capability is priceless. How Can You Exceed My Expectations If You Don t Know What They Are? How to get honest, useful and sometimes painful feedback from your clients The idea of seeking out regular, reliable and candid feedback from clients is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. It feels great to get the attaboys and the glowing testimonials when things go well, but what kind of feedback do you want or get when you screw up? How often do you actively seek your clients opinions about what you do well and what you do poorly? More importantly, what do you do with those opinions when they re given? This important program will teach you how to ask for feedback from your clients and what to do with it when you get it.
Wired: How to crawl inside your client s head for success in business development Everyone in the world has the same favorite subject: themselves. So when you re trying to sell your services, clients are less interested in hearing about who you are and what you ve done and more interested in hearing what s in it for them. This immensely important program shows you how to analyze your client, their world and their priorities and re-cast your proposals, presentations and business development efforts into communications that are client-centric. It s more challenging than it may seem, but by putting your client at the center of the universe and focusing your sales efforts on their world and their issues, you dramatically increase the odds that you will emerge on top. Does Anyone Know Where We re Going? Using the strategic planning process to set direction and get everyone pulling together Running a business is like digging a ditch. Most of the time you re down in the bottom of the ditch covered with dirt and sweat, trying to get the work done. But once in a while it s important to climb out of the ditch to ask two questions: Do they still need the ditch? and, Am I digging in the right direction? Neither of these can be answered from the bottom of the ditch. Strategic planning is where we climb out of the ditch to take stock of the company s internal health and external environment and make the adjustments More Bang for Your Buck Improving your Marketing ROI and making sure your marketing dollars are well spent You spend a great deal of time and money chasing a steady supply of profitable work. Are you absolutely certain that you re getting your money s worth from those efforts? Your firm may have world-class technical experts and superlative project management. But without a cost-effective marketing, business development and sales program these resources will sit idle, waiting for work. This program will show you how much you should be spending on marketing, what you can expect a marketing program to do for you, what should be in your marketing plan, how to set up an effective marketing department whether in-house or outsourced and how to measure results. The Entrepreneurial Project Manager Raising the bar on Project Manager contribution Success in project management equals success in business and successful project managers do far more than simply drag their projects across the finish line by meeting schedule and budget. This program goes beyond schedules and budgets and into the realm of the project manager as small business entrepreneur. By treating your projects, your team, your customers, and your suppliers as you would in an independent business you automatically cover all the required bases of advanced project management. We will talk about the ingredients of a great project
that will extend its life and let it be healthier than ever. This important program will show you how to conduct an efficient yet comprehensive strategy planning process to give your company a clear and compelling direction. manager, the project manager as a business leader, and the project manager as a business partner. Then, we will talk about how the entrepreneurial project manager finds customers and keeps them coming back. The Art of Persuasion Your firm was fully qualified for the project, your fee was in line and everything seemed aligned. And yet you still came second. What happened? In the face of stiff competition, there is more to convincing a client to hire you than simply laying out your qualifications and experience. There is an art to persuasion and this session will give you powerful and practical tools to vault your proposals and presentations past those rest and significantly increase your success rate.