We're kicking off 2022 with a series of three podcasts, each to help you organize your marketing efforts for the new year! In Part 1, Wendy Simmons and Allison Tivnon discuss a key first step: the Check-up Checklist. Use this process to assess the current state of your marketing department. Where are you succeeding? Where can you improve? The checklist offers a high-level view of your teams' skills, capabilities, and needs, while also serving up action items you can tackle once you're caught up on proposal work.
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Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist, and Happy New Year.
We are starting off 2022 with a bang over here at The Shortlist.
We have recorded three awesome episodes.
Today, we have Allison Tivnon joining us again, back again for a great conversation.
And Allison thought it'd be really helpful if we started the new year off talking about building and implementing an annual marketing calendar.
Of course, I totally agree, and we've hit on this subject in small ways in other episodes, but now we're going to take a pretty deep dive into it.
And actually, we have three topics to hit on.
We're going to issue these podcasts kind of sequentially so that you can get that information right when you need it at the beginning of the year and hopefully be able to pull some little tidbits into your own annual marketing calendar planning.
So to start off with, first of all, hello, Allison.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Wendy.
It's good to be back.
I'm thrilled to get to hear your advice on how to build an annual marketing calendar.
And I know a lot of what you're going to share today is actually goes into even greater detail in your book, Marketing at Low Tide.
So I'm just going to be a student and absorb a lot of what you have to share.
Our first topic today is the Checkup Checklist.
Can you just give an overview of what that is, what that looks like, and then we'll get into some questions?
We've talked a little bit before about the book that I wrote called Marketing at Low Tide, How to Recession Proof Your Marketing Department.
And this Checkup Checklist appeared in that.
And prior to that, it appeared in a presentation that I was giving to folks who were wondering when the next recession was going to hit.
And as part of that, it was, well, if a recession hits, that typically means that your workload and future work becomes uncertain.
And you're going to have to have a backup plan for how you're going to use your time if it's not so completely overrun with proposals.
And a lot of folks, when they get to that moment in time where they actually do have time and ability to work on other things, they are completely blocked and they have no idea where to start.
So the Checkup Checklist is both a place that you can go back and look at things that you can work on, but it's also really the first step in getting everyone on your marketing team on the same page as to what you should be working on.
Fantastic.
So really kind of providing some clarity on what you did before and where to put those resources.
Do you need to expand your resources?
Gives you a full picture of what to be working on.
That's really timely.
So especially since we've been in this state of uncertainty.
I hate saying that, but it just keeps going on and on now for nearly two years here, but on so many levels, right?
There's marketers have been dealing with these very interesting puzzles like how do you work from home?
How do you coach virtual interviews?
What is crisis communications and even just regular PR look like when you can't be out on the site all the time?
There's just a little bit of distance between everybody at this point.
Supply chain disruptions, how do you share what your team is doing different with these?
I mean, all the variety of circumstances that they're dealing with in their work.
There's just so many things to be able to communicate and to share your firm's expertise on.
So anyways, you talk a lot about the importance of change proofing marketing departments.
Can you go into some detail about what you mean by that and actually how it relates to our current situation with the pandemic and work from home?
We certainly have been through a lot in the last two years.
And I think in the midst of all of those things that you mentioned, there's also increased anxiety amongst our leadership at our firms.
You know, we had what economists were calling recession in the middle of last year, and now we're technically not in one, but it still feels like there's just some unknowns in front of us.
And how is that going to affect our future workloads?
And whenever you get into a place of uncertainty like that, it can make your firm leaders do some really wily and concerning things, like say hiring freezes or, God forbid, layoffs, or starting to think of their marketing departments as not being as busy because there aren't as many RFPs to go after.
I'd like to just give a caveat that I know for a lot of people listening out there, you're like, what do you mean there's not a lot of RFPs to go after?
I'm drowning in them right now.
And I do acknowledge that, but there's also a lot of marketers out there that aren't.
Depending on which initial you fall into in AEC, you might be experiencing a different volume of work opportunities, which we can talk about at some other point, which I think is really fascinating, how the different types of industries within the AEC industry are affected and the timeline for what that looks like when we do enter into economic downturns.
But when I talk about change proofing, what I'm really talking about is basically protecting your department from your firm decision makers when it comes time for them to think about ways that they can save money.
As we saw in the 2008-2010 recession, the marketing departments within the AEC industry got hit really hard.
There was mergers and acquisitions that combined marketing departments.
That meant a lot of folks were not going to be there once they merged.
There were marketing directors and marketing managers being laid off all over the place because they happened to be the most expensive on staff.
And we're seen as like, well, strategy and business development are just kind of not as hot right now.
So maybe we can cut from the top and just keep our lower level staff, keeping the lights on until the economy comes back.
Just really odd decisions that were made.
And in the final rinse of things, the folks that didn't disinvest in their marketing departments ended up in a way better position when the market did rebound, and those that didn't had a lot of catching up to do.
We don't want to see that play out again.
I do think the IQ from our firm leadership in terms of the value of marketing has increased and is much better than it was back then, but we still need to be able to prove to them in real substantive ways that we are just as busy when there are not as many RFPs as when there are.
And what does that busy look like?
So, you know, when you say change proofing, it's the fact that there are going to be cycles in the market.
There's going to be up turns and down turns.
There's going to be times of a lot of RFPs.
There's going to be times when there aren't a lot, but what are the other components of marketing that don't get as much attention when times are really busy that you can then turn and focus on to make your team way stronger when the good times come roaring back?
I'm certain that almost every marketer listening to this can relate to the time.
When you're in an intense proposal season, when they're just coming at you, they're so fast, and also they all seem like a go.
It feels like you really have time for nothing else on your marketing list or special initiatives or other types of brand awareness campaigns or elements that you're implementing.
And that can be really frustrating for a marketing team.
Proposals are incredibly important.
I mean, arguably the top most important or second most important thing that we do in a lot of cases.
But when it becomes all you do, it feels like you can't make real lasting progress on other items that really kind of help improve your brand, your firm's brand.
So that's a tough position to be in.
And then you're so right when you say, then when that proposal load actually goes to a more reasonable pace, marketing teams jump for joy because they actually have time to put the energy and focus on bigger initiatives and clean up the, I don't know, the minefield that is the rest of the proposal and marketing drive and organization to make sure that everything, all those details and the data is getting captured and what we're playing is up to date.
So by looking at or using a checklist to kind of confirm what your team is doing and how many hours it's taking, you're able to, what you're saying here is like, provide some proof that this is what the team is doing and how they're being really productive and this is what they could do with more time.
So let's not get too hasty and cut from there because then you'll just be losing that opportunity to do the real strong foundational brand stuff.
Yeah, and I think that the, hey, here's some proof that we're busy is a nice byproduct of it.
But the real point is, I think of it as like, if proposal coordination were flying a plane, then the proposal checklist is what you do when you land it and you're looking for stress fractures.
You're checking the engines.
You're making sure that it is sound to take up in the air again.
And it's like, I think about these commercial airlines that some of the planes that we fly on a daily basis are in the air like 50,000 miles, 100,000 miles before they are really looked over for stress fractures and other things that just happen over the time of wear and tear that they experience while they're in the air.
And it's kind of the same way with marketing.
We are so reactive when we're working on proposals.
We're just trying to find that project description.
We're just trying to find that headshot.
We ask our sub-consultants for their logo over and over and over again.
When it exists somewhere on our server, we just don't even really have the time to remember where we put it last.
There's all these little things along the way that are like stumbling blocks.
Knowing that a project description or a resume was edited on a past proposal, and that edited version didn't make its way back into the headquarters or the asset folder to be used in the future.
And then you have a very frustrated staffer who has to do those same edits again or rewrite it again.
And all of these things are just little tiny hiccups that accumulate and create a lot of frustrations for our technical staff and for ourselves.
And so I look at the checklist as a way to say, let's pop the hood, let's see how the engine is working and where we need to fix it.
For those that are listening, I created a checklist as a really good jumping off point.
You can always tailor it to really suit your needs at your particular firm.
But we're going to make sure that that's available for download along with this podcast on the website.
So go and check that out because it's a really good place to start.
Yeah.
So we'll upload the check up checklist to middleofsix.com/theshortlist, and you can find it there and download your own copy and modify it to fit your team's needs.
And that will probably be a really helpful resource.
Allison, do you mind just going through the checklist with us right now in a little more detail so that when people download their copy, they'll just get a better understanding of what you're thinking and why you probably have those categories and that information on the list?
Yeah.
I think that the way I look at it, there's three different ways that you can view your marketing department.
There's a whole series of questions about, do you have this?
Do you offer this?
There's also the, can everyone on your team do...?
And then there's a whole list of the, we'll get around to it types of items, like unfiled boilerplate piling up and whatnot.
But to go to the top, I'm not going to get exhaustive in it, but there's several in here that I love because they can't happen overnight.
They all need plans in place for how you're going to go about executing on them.
But once you've got them, they're really, really valuable.
One of the things that I think is really helpful is to ask yourselves, do you have dedicated time codes for all the different types of marketing that you do, broken down by task?
This is really helpful.
And if you can start doing this at the top of the year, by the time you get to the end of next year, you'll be able to pull reports for every single person on your team and really understand where their time went.
And that is gold.
And it's something that we don't typically spend a lot of time really thinking about or trying to make happen.
Another one would be, do you have a complete dossier on each one of your main competitors?
Do you know the types of project work that they've won in the last couple of years?
Have you sought out copies of their proposals when you lose to them on projects?
Do you know who the counterpart is at each one of your competitors?
That is the PM that your PM is going to be going up against.
And basically, do you have enough information about your competitors to know how to beat them?
Competitor dossiers?
Oh, the dossier, that sounds so fancy.
Kind of like a spy.
Exactly.
And depending on the markets that you're in or the public agencies you're pursuing work with, I could see a lot of value in having one go-to place where you start to build out information on the selection committee.
I mean, I'm going beyond just the competitors, but what you would have there at your fingertips, what were the past pursuits?
What's that hit rate with that particular agency or against those competitors?
When you go up against them, what are you learning?
What are you learning about your fee?
What are you learning about the questions that they asked in the interview?
And having a small record that you can go to and grab that, you will reduce your workload when you get into the pursuit mode.
There's so many little things that you can think about as a team that are these documented processes or assets that you can be accumulating that can improve the quality of the proposals that you submit.
Yeah, on that note, I facilitate an SNPS roundtable, and we were just talking the other day within our group about having dedicated time codes for the marketing and business development activities that actually would be accessible to anyone, your project executives or principles too, as they are working on those pursuits, so that you get a really clear picture of the effort for even a small pursuit may cost your team internally $10,000 and that's not the time that they could be, the opportunity cost that they could be billing to a project or working on something else.
That just could be their flat salary and benefits rate there.
Across that group that I was speaking with, about half of them had access to that, and we think everyone who does have that level of reporting available encouraged and said, you should talk to your accounting team.
I actually haven't met an accounting team who wasn't thrilled to dice up the numbers into another level of detail so that they could provide even more feedback and data to the owners.
So you might find some people who are willing to make that happen so that you can run these reports and understand where the hours are going.
And as a side benefit, that really supports the go-no-go decision because say you need to submit a proposal, everyone says we're not going to win, but we need to do this or whatever, some of those kind of squishy things that happen out there.
And you may be able to provide some information like, well, the last time we did that, it was about this many hours or this many dollars.
Is that how we want to spend that time and money?
And with more information, people can make informed decisions.
Yeah.
And it also, back to your point about go-no-gos, it can help maybe determine when you don't go after something.
If you're like, hey, they already won the, you know, phase one of this project, or they have such a good relationship with this client and we don't have one at all yet, is this the project that we want to go after to start establishing that?
You know, it leads to more educated conversations around the intentions behind going after a project.
And if we can get our staff away from simply going after work, hoping that they win it, and instead go after work that they're truly well positioned to win, then we're just better utilizing our time and very, very likely increasing our hit rate.
Hell yeah.
I mean, not to say that we're always like trying to no-go things.
I do think there's a theme in this podcast where we're saying like, hey, this is how you can get your team to no-go it.
But it's about making a really, you know, thoughtful decision.
Knowing, not just optimistically, yeah, we should do this or, you know, I mean, be able to look at all of the factors in play.
And I'm guilty of this.
Sometimes I have, you know, rose colored glasses and I think my team is the best.
How could they possibly not win?
I just get into that, that lovey mode.
And we need to have a little bit of reality in there too.
Yeah.
Magical thinking.
Yeah.
We're the best.
We need to win this.
We need to win this.
I think that's one of the driving factors for a lot of the goes is we need to win this.
I know we talk a lot about no going things, which is kind of funny because our whole job is about pursuing things.
Okay, well, Allison, we want to keep these three episodes pretty bite-sized so that people can, you know, listen to each of them and get everything that they need to start building that marketing calendar and that plan for 2022.
But I think this is a good opportunity to still answer one of our listener questions.
And obviously, this isn't specific to the check up checklist, but I think it fits in really nicely here.
So the question is, I'm looking forward to working with my team to identify areas where we need to improve internally.
How do we have that conversation without individuals feeling singled out?
Oh, yeah.
That's that term getting thrown under the bus is one that I think all of us feel that when you start to talk about areas of quote unquote weakness in your department, and it's really easy to feel singled out.
And that's one of the reasons why I think a checklist is really, really helpful to have.
To plug that again, please go to the website and download it, because there's so many things on it, we didn't even get a chance to talk about today that are so helpful to think about and work on.
But having a checklist that is there in front of you, that you each fill out together, allows you to have it be about the thing and not about the people.
So the way that this one is set up is, do you have this thing?
And you have three potential answers.
One is yes, one is no, and the other is inconsistent or incomplete, which means that you kind of have it, but it could be working better or be more well developed.
When you get down to the things like, does everyone on your team know how to use InDesign?
Can everyone build a PowerPoint?
Can every single person recite your firm's strategic plan by heart?
You know, these are questions that we should be honestly asking ourselves and doing so without posturing.
And going into this with a lot of trust in each other, that the point of filling this thing out is not to point to anyone and areas that they need to improve, but ways that you all can get stronger as a team together.
And just to wrap up the thought on that, so if someone really isn't good at InDesign and they kind of think they are and they're not, that's a hard conversation sometimes to have.
But if it's more about, you know what?
I don't think we all are very consistent in how we build tables in InDesign or how we set up master pages or how we use master pages.
You can set up little bite-sized training sessions that hit on those things and maybe even create some process documentation just to create that consistency.
And maybe you're not hitting it so hard on the nose with your staff, but you're also at the same time accomplishing exactly what you need to, which is to build up everyone's consistency to the same level on all of these different types of tasks that we universally have to kind of pass batons back and forth on.
Yeah, if you've hired right or your team is built with good people with their hearts in the right place and really passionate about AEC and what your firm can bring, I think sometimes weaknesses or underdeveloped skills.
I mean, those are just opportunities to build up the team.
Maybe it means you can provide and allocate resources towards training so someone can really grow in their career, or maybe shift a little bit.
Okay, we thought you would be focused on this, but really where your skills and talents lie is just slightly over here to the right.
Let's have you focus on that.
And adjust the team a little bit.
Wendy, this could be a great topic for a future podcast is when you do have to give a not fun critique to one of your marketing members, and this is really for the marketing managers and directors out there, how do you do that in a way that builds them up and doesn't break them down?
I think that could be an entire conversation on how to give that kind of feedback in a way that really promotes growth and development and not a feeling of being judged or attacked, which is with the wrong boss, that's exactly what it feels like.
So hopefully we can talk about that at some point down the road.
All right.
Well, we're going to wrap things up on this episode of the Checkup Checklist.
And once you've completed that, downloaded it, updated it for your own team and your firm's needs, you are primed to talk about and think about the next element, which is finding your proposal peaks.
So we're going to go into that detail in our next episode.
It's already in your feed, so just go and listen to it.
So Allison, let's move over to that conversation.
Thanks so much.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Talk to you in just a second.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, principal marketing strategist.
Kyle Davis is our producer with Graphic Design and Digital Marketing by Allison Rose.
If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.
If you missed anything or want more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.
And follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at middleofsix.
Thanks so much for listening.
We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about the show and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.
Until next time, keep on hustling.
Bye.
See you in part two.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.