617: Winning clients without lowering your fees: how to make your firm stand out with Enoch Sears & Rion: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

617: Winning clients without lowering your fees: how to make your firm stand out with Enoch Sears & Rion

Enoch Sears49min

Enoch Sears

00:00

Differentiation is important. It's essential, and the more you understand about it, the more you'll be able to consciously use it as a tool to build the practice that helps you be the free architect.

Rion Willard

00:13

Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your co host today, Ryan Willard, and I'm joined here by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Mr. Enoch. Sears. Enoch, Howie

Enoch Sears

00:28

Ryan, doing great today. How are you today? I'm very

Rion Willard

00:31

well. Thank you. And we're going to continue the conversation that we started in the last episode about differentiation, and we were talking about, we were making the case for why. Well, we defined what differentiation was in terms of a marketing strategy to make our service stand out from its competitors, put simply, and we were talking about why differentiation is needed as we exist in a very mature market of architects, where we're all kind of imitating each other, trying to stand out, and it's very difficult, from a client's perspective, to be able to tell the difference between different architectural firms. And we were also lamenting some of the sort of false paradigms that might exist with other parts of the building industry, resistance, yes, the sorts of derogatory perceptions that people sometimes have about architects. So we won't focus too much more on those, those,

Enoch Sears

01:39

no, it's maybe it's just a couple tangents. This

Rion Willard

01:41

episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smartpractice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you. Please follow the link in the information we are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast, if you're ready to share your journey, lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed, we'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger scale.

Enoch Sears

02:56

Lorian, your intro did remind me of an experience I had about 12 years ago, when I was practicing as an architect and was asked by our local school board, our school district, to sit on a selection of architects for a big bond that had been passed. And I gotta, I gotta see this firsthand. It was so interesting how difficult it was for me, even being an architect, to differentiate the different firms, because we had to make choices about which firms would be shortlisted to do this work. And I remember the architects came in and they did their presentations like it just began to seem very similar, very monotonous, very like, well, that's more of the same. This is more the same. It's all kind of the same. Talking Points, the kind of the same, the designs, you know, weren't too radically different. You know, there were some differentiation. I remember there was two guys who came in and they were very elderly, and they smelled like an old folks home. And I was like, oh, that's one way to differ. I mean, literally, I don't know, I don't know what it is about an old folks home, but they, these guys, had this smell. I mean, they were, they felt like they were, they were beyond ancient. It was like, wow. So needless to say, they didn't end up getting the job. So don't have bad body odor. I guess is one thing, don't smell bad that smell

Rion Willard

04:19

like an old person, yeah? I don't

Enoch Sears

04:21

smell like an old person. I mean, just got to be careful how you smell in general, right? For sure. There was another guy who came in and he was very different. So there's so different could different can be bad, but this is why different can also be good, right? There's another guy who came in and he was, I mean, I liked his approach. He was very confident, and he just, he was very old school, so he just had, like, a three ring binder, I mean, you know, like, no PowerPoint, no presentation, just pulled out his three ring binder with his old 35 millimeter or 50 millimeter, you know, processed photos, some of which he'd taken himself. And he's like, kind of showing us through the different projects he'd worked on. Uh, but where he got it wrong in this case was he was showing us pictures of, like, he's, uh, here's a couple of churches I did. You know, do you see the symmetry here? And And then, here's a franchise. This is a Taco Bell we did over in the neighboring town. Now consider we're here for we're talking about schools. We're talking about a new middle school that's going to be built, a new a new building in a high school. So, like, these are educators. There's a, you know, there's teachers, there's a there's a couple, there's a principal on the committee, and yeah, that didn't go too well, but the others that were a couple of firms that ended up getting the job, their differentiation was, it was enough. Let's just put it, that was enough. But it was still difficult, as I sat there and listened to the these different pitches in the way that they presented their practices, it was difficult to figure out, man, which of these firms is going to be the best firm for the job. And really it came down to which ones seemed different enough. Really, the ones that ended up getting the job were actually the ones that were different enough in the right ways, not in the wrong ways.

Rion Willard

06:03

It's it's interesting. I know when I've been running my own firm and kind of you're in competition with other firms about winning a certain project, and I'd look at the other firms kind of portfolio or their website, and many occasion, I'd be like, they're really good. Like, you know, how on earth is the client going to tell, tell the difference here? Like, what's the what is, what is going to be the differentiator? And it, it's interesting, because things like, in that sort of scenario, and this is what we see a lot with kind of modern procurement is that it is quite superficial. And people have either been, you know, people have responded to some sort of request for information or whatever, or whatever it is, or they've been recommended by somebody to go in for for a project. And the the conversation that we have is usually tends to be quite a superficial conversation. And we show portfolio, and then the client kind of makes a decision that everybody, they all looks good to them, and then, well, what are they left to make the decision on? Well, the price,

Enoch Sears

07:19

perhaps, there you go. This is one of the main differentiators, is price. And they end up using, that's

Rion Willard

07:26

it. That's all they got. That's all they got to go on. They're like, Okay, I'm going to go for this person. Or perhaps the the, you know, the person they were recommended came from their brother, and they're they really trust that other person. Okay? So we leveraged the relationship through which the referral came through, and that's really what you know it was. It was the quality of the relationship of the referral partner, as opposed to anything on your part that actually differentiated yourself. You know, maybe sometimes you know the you might, you might really connect with a particular client, and, you know, you both went to the same school or something like that, and that might tip the scale in your favor. But again, it's so sort of tenuous that, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bank on it. And

Enoch Sears

08:19

you know, one thing I know a lot of firms get frustrated at is when they feel like the selection process is rigged or predetermined. So for instance, with a lot of, let's say, institutional projects where there's a formal RFP process, it can be very frustrating to try to break into those markets when you feel like there's a clear winner, you know this, this client has chosen this firm in the past, or if you are the clear winner, I mean, it's nice for you, but then it's, it's unpleasant when you get unseated from that.

Rion Willard

08:54

So is it even possible then for us to differentiate as architects? Is the question? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. All right. So thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,

Enoch Sears

09:03

good luck. I mean charging cheaper fees, right? Slasher fees, charge less, charge Less. Do More free work. Charge less, do more free work, yeah.

Rion Willard

09:13

And certainly a

Enoch Sears

09:14

lot of yeah, a lot of, that's what we default to. We say it kind of tongue in cheek here, but that's what untrained architects. When I say untrained, not in architecture, but architects who are not necessarily trained in the arts and skills of negotiation and business and differentiation, might resort to which is just dropping the fees, charging less, trying to be cheaper, discounting invoices, for instance, even during the midst of a project, instead of sending out what it really took your team to do the project, writing that down, and, you know, taking a loss or eating those extra fees as a practice owner. So. Yeah. I mean, lowering your fees is one of the most dangerous ways to differentiate. It is, strategically, the death knell of a practice to lower fees as a process of differentiation. It's only

Unknown Speaker

10:16

going to go one way,

Enoch Sears

10:18

and it's going to hurt your firm, because if you end up winning that project, not only do you set a precedent for what you can charge in the future, but you also handicap yourself in the way that you have funds available for your practice to be able to invest in training team members. I mean, let's face it, Ryan, how many practices do you know invest in their employees. Let's just start out with just technically. Invest in technical training for their employees to increase their ability as architects and their designers.

Rion Willard

10:52

They would those practices, unfortunately, would be in the minority, yeah.

Enoch Sears

10:58

And if we take those, how many then invest in their in their team members, in the soft skills part of business, which is can be even more important than architecture, leadership training, the soft skills of communication, persuasion.

Rion Willard

11:16

You can't train people that they're just born with it, aren't they either have it

Enoch Sears

11:22

high performing, yeah, high performing companies do trade that. That's exactly the point

Rion Willard

11:25

you can't that's exactly the point people just have it, or they don't have it, or you just, you just, you just come into the meeting with me and watch how I do it, and then you should be good to go.

Enoch Sears

11:34

That's, that's the typical way that training happens in architecture, for sure, right? So why does the more of that training not happen? Well, it's probably one of the last things to come up on the line item when you're planning out the budget. Because, let's face it, when money's scarce, or when money's tight, or when we're fighting for the fees we're getting with our clients, it's going to impact your ability to have funds left over, to be able to take a lot of money and to put it into training your team members, which is a shame, because a really good training program is something that can keep one of your team members around, help them feel like they have the place to go, make them more useful to you as a business, more valuable as A business owner, is

Rion Willard

12:22

that the train in the background, just like here, here. Let's start some where's that honking? Right? There's just people outside just honk the house. Just knew. Every time we No, they know. They wait for me to do podcasts. They wait for a podcast. It's beautifully quiet all day, and then as soon as they get recorded in the podcast, people, the fire engines come, people come, honking their horns.

Enoch Sears

12:44

No, but what other ways? So we've established that, yeah, reducing fees to differentiate is is terrible. It's one of the worst things you can do for your business. Yeah, discharge less. This

Rion Willard

12:56

is not a strategy that we would recommend, and I guess the other thing that we've started to point towards here is that the strategies for differentiation are they like marketing and positioning is deep. Like, it's really deep. It's a magnificent kind of art of communication, and it's fascinating. And, you know, certainly when we get into things like behavioral economics and behavioral psychology and the sort of novelty and the, you know, marketing is one of the best funded psychological experiments of the last 100 years, and people know what works, and companies invest huge amounts into marketing, it is the engine of of capitalism. And you know, the sales is, is part and parcel of that. And and I really, really want everyone listening to these podcasts to really start to fall in love and pursue marketing and sales with some seriousness, because we have to. It's not even a nice thing to have, like it's an essential component of running, running a firm and running a business. And if all we've got is the kind of pricing strategy, then it's a painful, painful existence, and the architectural, the architectural industry is a mature industry by all. It's not an emerging it's not an emerging industry, perhaps like it was even 100 years ago, certainly in terms of its commercial, you know, as a commercial entity, where I think we were talking about a podcast a few weeks back where we were saying, you know, perhaps in the 60s, you know, it was, it was a lot easier just to win work and put a little placard outside and say, architect for hire come and get your buildings done. And it would just bring in all sorts of of wonderful clients. For you now, that is not the case, and there are more and more architects being put out onto the market. There are more and more younger firms that are emerging. Firms can do more with less. So more people are kind of pursuing architecture as a kind of lifestyle vocation. In some cases, you know, the solopreneur, you can have a few clients, you can do a lot more with technology, etc. So the industry is not going anywhere. It's just getting more and more mature. So this art, which is well documented and there's a lot of resources of marketing, is more than just a pretty wrapper on your services to make you stand out. It's way more than that. That's how that's the kind of default that I want us to be of, to be cautious of, is that we approach marketing as being like, I'm just going to put this pretty wrapper on my services, or I'm going to give it a clever name, and the people will come. Or you hire an SEO expert, and he gets you to the top of Google, or or, or whatever it is, and, and what we end up seeing when people embark in marketing is that they can often, you know, they can often work with a digital marketing company or something like this, and it can be A very expensive tragedy that then puts people off working with marketers ever again, so they end up spending money on something that they didn't really understand what it was, and they'd been led down a particular rabbit hole, and then you're spending two, three grand a month on this digital marketer, and there's no results, no results, no results. And then you give up, and then you're like, now it doesn't work. Now we're worse, because now we believe it, the marketing doesn't work. And it's all, it's all just some sort of pseudo scientific nonsense, or, you know, I, or we just kind of get recommitted to, I shouldn't have to market. I'm an architect for, god damn it. Work should just be coming to us. So the first of all, just the deep level my my kind of heartfelt plead with the architecture industry is to, is to open our hearts up to the mastery and interest of marketing, because it's such a big, deep, deep topic that's very psychological, and our mastery at it and finding our own voice in it is absolutely essential just to the survival of our of our businesses.

Enoch Sears

17:35

Yeah, well said. Well said, I think that's a great point. Ryan, that marketing is it goes much deeper. It's a lot about psychology, as much as it is about like you say, how your firm is present to the outside, like there's so much psychology, the knowledge of the human mind and and what's, you know, I've had to learn very hard lesson over many years is that what we logically think is the way that people would act is not the way they actually act. Right? There was a story that Robert Cialdini told in his book influenced the science of persuasion, which is one of the top marketing books, if yet, if you're going to start anywhere, start anywhere, start with that one. But he talks about how there was this shop owner in New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and she was selling these little turquoise, kind of handmade Native American jewelry, like really beautiful silver inlaid turquoise stones and gemstones and things like that. And she was heading out of town so hastily, she scribbled a note on a piece of paper, and she put it on top of the jewelry in a particular section of the cabinet, and she headed out to the airport right, and when she came back, she was shocked to see that that entire section was like, empty. She's like, wow. What happened? You know, what she'd scribbled on was like, I said it was a discount, 25% off, 50% off, something like that. She just wanted to move it right. And so she was asking, So, wow, it looks like that. Stuff sold really well. And and then the employee who was there, who was the manager, she's like, Yeah, you know, who would have guessed that if you put that it was twice as much, that it would sell so much more quickly? So the employee had had misread the instructions, and instead of being like 50% I thought it was like 50% more that it was actually marked up. So then people, when they saw that that was more expensive, they actually ended up buying it. And so he, you know, Cialdini, kind of starts off his book talk, giving this example that oftentimes we think that, Oh, if something's more expensive, less people are going to buy it. That just seems logically to make sense, right? In this particular anecdote, only one thing changed, and it was the price. The price went up and it just go. It didn't go up slightly. Went up significantly, and these items sold at a velocity they're much higher because they'd been sitting there for a long time. And so again, this is like this counterintuitive psychology that happens when we look at buying behavior, when we look at why human beings make decisions about how they're going to spend their money, it's very non rational, and part of the fun is deciphering and figuring out, wow, if it's not rational, what is it? And how can I start to align the way that I operate, the way that I present my services, with the way that people really buy, not with the way I think they buy, but with the way they really make decisions.

Rion Willard

20:38

It's very interesting, like considering here that you know that your pricing is a strategy that falls under marketing, right? And it's a positioning strategy. And so when we, when we go cheap with the price, then we kind of attract more of the kind of clients that we don't want to have, and we also it communicates something about the service. That's what it does. It communicates something, I mean, there's, it's interesting. Nowadays, sometimes I'm, you know, purchasing something, or I'm looking at, what was I looking at? Recently, I was looking at a watch or something, and I really liked it, and I saw the price of it, and I was like, oh, that's cheap, cheap piece of tat. See, I just moved away from it. And I've had many experiences like that. There are certain things where you want to spend a lot of money into it and and the kind of the notion that it's going to be, it's it's cheap, indicate it's communicating something about is, well, it can't be that good if it's cheap. Yeah, so we can, and we've got to be responsible for that. When we're selling cheap architectural services and we're doing it as a profession, that we're subconsciously communicating something about the value of the service, if we're if we're selling it and letting it go at that kind of the sorts of prices that are very difficult to run a business from. And

Enoch Sears

22:09

I guarantee that there are architects listening, or designers or landscape architects listening to this episode right now who are saying, I've learned that lesson the hard way. I've seen in my practice that we used to charge this, and we got these kind of clients, and now, when we start charging this, we won't go back to that way before, because we know and we can see the benefit and the value when we charge this, and when we let clients know that this is our value and this is what we charge. I guarantee there are people listening to this right now. They're being like doing a little here here, I know that from experience, it

Rion Willard

22:45

amazes me the some of our clients here at boa certainly some of the ones that work with the ultra high net worth individuals, you know, not only are they, are they dealing with the biggest project budgets, but also the percentages on those construction projects, if they're doing a kind of percentage, are high. They're very high. They're much higher than you'd see in smaller projects saying we're talking 15, 16% in some cases, you know, on a on a five to 10 million project, is a decent, amazing fees coming out. It's expensive, and there's that particular kind of clientele. They're putting a lot of trust into an architect, and the fee needs to communicate the trust. It's not a and, you know, and again, it's not just about presenting the fee and raising the fee, but the fee is part and parcel of a psychological perception of your service. And then there's your skill as an as a negotiator and a sales person, and the rest of your kind of marketing collateral and positioning as a, as a as not a sort of generalist architect, but as someone who's super specialized in a particular niche, and you understand very particular sorts of pains and problems of the of this particular demographic. And perhaps, you know, certainly, if we use the world of the high end residential that you're super skilled at creating a unique experience for a client, I think that's that that's in that's a missing trick is actually just for many architects, if you just spent some time focusing on creating a unique experience for the client, then you'd be surprised at what a differentiator that is. And I mean basic shit, like every Friday spend, you know, every Friday email the client, here's what, here's where your progress has happened on the project. Or you just develop a communication structure for when they can communicate with you. Or you send them a little welcome pack when, when they sign up with the project. And you know, congratulations, you're now part of of this architectural experience and journey. Here's a little Project Map of. Different things that we're going to be expecting. And here's a gift for you, or whatever you know, come you know, turning it, trying to treat it like a hospitality sort of experience, or just basics in terms of communication, like, what's this? What is the soft skills or the conversational quality, like the sort of thing that a hotel, for example, might spend a lot of time training people who are front of house on how to talk with the guests like that sort of caliber of attention that can be that's that's a that's a inexpensive way of differentiating your kind of architectural experience, and you can start bringing in elements of novelty and interest here, which again, have become a slightly different differentiators to what we might normally do as architects, where we're kind of trying to focus on on The awards and the kind of caliber of our education and all that kind of stuff, yeah.

Enoch Sears

26:05

I mean, some of these ways that you can differentiate your practice are so simple. They don't require tons of money, yeah, they just require forethought. And you know, Ryan refers to Ryan references, he says, our clients here at boa right? So what Brian is referring to is that Business of Architecture is much more than just a podcast, right? This podcast is a small little sliver of our business, what our business does and what our business helps, small practitioners, architectural practices, people with teams of up to 20 to 25 people do is to implement the smart practice method, right? Be able to take these things and actually put them into practice. And I'm going to give you an example. So years and years and years ago, early on, I was consulting with a practice that was, you know, they wanted to improve their practice, and they found that sometimes they were getting a bad rap in the market. They didn't understand why they were they weren't wanting more projects.

Unknown Speaker

27:10

And

Enoch Sears

27:13

on a whim, I called the office up when they were not expecting my call. Okay? And mystery shopper. One of the easiest things you can do to differentiate your practice is, what is the experience when someone calls your office, right? Because this particular office, it was answered by like, typically, let's face it, in a lot of small practices, the person who answers the phone is the lowest draftsman on the totem pole, because everyone else is busy working right. A lot of times when you have these smaller practices, five to six people, sometimes that's and that principles out. The phone just rings. Someone's got to pick it up. And so there was this, this, this young man answered the phone. He was, I don't know, he might have been a designer or something. English was not his first language, and he was definitely like an introvert, I could tell, because there was silence, and then he said hello and and the Hello wasn't even, it wasn't even, I wasn't quite sure that he said hello. I was because of his accent. I was like, and so, anyways, long story short, you know, who's answering the phone in your practice, what's the experience that people are getting? You know, have have your team members been trained in simple phone etiquette? Do they know how to make feel someone? Make someone feel great when they answer the phone? And typically, not right? Typically, you know? So, so you'd be, let's, let's, let's go back to my scenario. Let's say that this, this young man answers the phone, and I ask him, Well, hey, yeah, this is Enoch Sears. I'm calling in about the project that we're doing with you guys, and I was just wondering if I could get an update on that. And he might say something like, Huh, okay, what? What project

Rion Willard

29:01

you're miscellaneous foreign president,

Enoch Sears

29:04

yeah, I don't know. I can't even Yeah. I'm yeah. Anyways, that's the point, right? And are you training people, giving them first firm etiquette? You know, making it because first impressions matter how the phone is answers match. So that's a small, very, very small. It's, yeah, it's potentially overlooked. It's

Rion Willard

29:24

a it's a small one. But I've seen firms do this really well, just they've just taken some real care about the client experience, the caliber of communication, and they've kind of put a focus on, we want to make anybody who interacts with our firm feels special. And I mean, there was the guys in New Jersey last year I interviewed on the podcast plan architecture, and they had hired, they'd actually hired a hospitality consultant who usually works with the Ritz Carlton and the four. Seasons to come in and train all of their team members on how to create a luxury experience through email communication and through phone etiquette. Wonderful.

Enoch Sears

30:13

I love it. That's so brilliant, so so simple, simple,

Rion Willard

30:18

but a real sort of nice kind of differentiator in Well, here's

Enoch Sears

30:23

the other thing, too, Ryan, like, if we're talking about a lot of times we talk about working on the business or investing in your business, like this is what we're talking about. That's what it looks like to invest in your business. You're not investing in upgrading people's skill level when it comes to waterproofing details. You're not, you know, investing in Revit training or helping them get up to speed with vector works or ArchiCAD all those. All those are definitely necessary, but you're investing in your people and training them, hospitality, training them etiquette, how to deal with clients, soft skills to provide a great experience for clients, because it's a service based business. Yeah,

Rion Willard

30:59

and you can have some fun with this, right? They can, if we, you know, I'm a I like some of the marketing exploits of someone like Elon Musk, right? Oh, my goodness. Just, he's brilliant in terms of the element of novelty that he brings to his products to make them stand out. So, for example, the cyber truck. I mean, I'm not even going to talk about the sort of the design of it, necessarily, but let's just look at something like the bulletproof glass.

Enoch Sears

31:35

Like I didn't realize that, right? It has bulletproof glass,

Rion Willard

31:38

I believe. So, yeah, brilliant, okay, bulletproof windshield, a completely pointless. You don't need a bullet. You don't need bulletproof glass,

Enoch Sears

31:47

but it's cool. You don't, right? You don't,

Rion Willard

31:53

not yet, not yet, not yet, but it's, but that's, one of those things. Rather than talking about, say, the specifications of the engine and the wheel tread and all these kinds of technical details which might be in this kind of talking about architecture firms that might be akin to, you know, all of our additional qualifications and expertise that we have in in LEED certification and, you know, sustainability, and, you know, various types of, I know, whatever other sorts of engineering capabilities that we might have, like, you know, energy performance, etc, the idea that you're, you could walk away with a car that's got bulletproof glass. It's an it's a very novel thing that has people talking about it, the buzz. It's a buzz. It's just, it's cool buzz. It's like, it's it's interesting. Or again, the same thing with the with the other Teslas, is the idea that the Teslas have this kind of dance mode. You know, there's things that you can press, and the car does its wings raise up, the doors raise up, and it kind of flashes lights, and it goes into a little it does a little dance, again, pointless, but novel and an easy win that, in terms of kind of marketing, is quite you know, it's fun. It gets people. It gets people talking. I know I had Rory Sutherland, yeah, Roy Sullivan, on the podcast years ago. And by

Enoch Sears

33:21

the way, big wig, big wig, explain people, oh, we landed Roy Sutherland here on the Business of Architecture podcast. So let's skip over this, Ryan. Let's

Rion Willard

33:31

so Rory is the he at the time, I think he was the vice president or the president of Ogilvy, the advertising company, and very sort of fiercely intelligent guy, and just a wealth of extraordinary knowledge to do with all of the counter intuitive ideas around marketing and kind of the human psychology that kind of of why these things might work. And, you know, he was talking about the difference between a train journey. Okay, so you've got a train journey that's three hours long, and people are complaining about the time and how long it takes, and one strategy would be for a train company to, well, invest a lot of money improving the carriages and improving the engines on the trains, and widen the tracks and, you know, get faster trains out there, a very expensive endeavor. Or, I think his suggestion was, you know, have young, scantily clad ladies and men serving you drinks and food on the on the on the journey. And everybody wants an experience. Everybody wants to sit around for another for another half hour, or, you know, in that, in that scenario, like, you know, things like Wi Fi and that kind of stuff become part of, like, the kind of experience of the journey, which which shifts.

Enoch Sears

34:59

And I. Think that's a great that's a great example. Ran it, bringing it back to like differentiation of if we consider that architectural practice might not be too different, metaphorically, from a train, something that's highly sophisticated, something that's been around for a very long time, something that may be difficult to differentiate because it gets you from point A to point B. But I love that you brought in that example from Rory Sutherland about like, okay, you know, a firm could spend a lot of money, a lot of energy, a lot of resources trying to really fine tune their product management system right to get the products done a little bit more quickly with a little bit less change orders, right? Maybe really up level a caliber of people that they hire spend a lot more on training them, spend a lot more on QA and all those things could be very valuable. But if we're just looking at differentiation, right, if we're just looking at how to bring more money into the practice so we can fund these type of improvements, if we're looking at, how can we win more products, how can we get better, get a better. Word out about the work that we do, more positive publicity, investing in something like experience is, it's the low hanging fruit. It's one of the low hanging fruit. Yeah, the actual experience someone has, like they're on the train. Yeah,

Rion Willard

36:17

absolutely. And I like this because, again, this isn't, this is an easy entry point into the kind of broader, bigger world of of of arc of marketing, and, you know, just kind of starting to think about, what is the experience that the client has working with you outside of your main service, Like we have to as architects, just, okay, look, we're all producing brilliant architecture. Okay, great. Okay, let's What, what's the things that are often missing in architecture businesses is the client experience and the client care, and it's an easy win and an easy differentiator. And that's where I would that's where I would start. We can talk. I mean, this is probably scope for another episode. But you know, the pyramid that we often cite of the difference within the kind of perception of value, where, at the bottom run of the pyramid, we've got being perceived as a salesperson. Okay, we don't want to be perceived as a sales salesperson. People's defenses go up. It's not good. Then above that, we've got the generalist architect. Okay, so it's very difficult for a consumer to be able to see what is that you do? They jump onto your website, they see hotels, they see backyard extensions, they see random but beautiful little objects that you've designed for your for your home. That's quite a common one with architects, is that we'll jump on a website and we'll see, you know, just random architectural projects which are very beautiful, but they make no sense to to a consumer, and you're not felt. You're not left with any kind of confidence in this service. So you just look at it, and you're like, Okay, well, it's generalist above the generalist. We've got the specialist. Okay, great. We've got an architect who specializes in beachfront property in Costa Mesa, for example, or in heritage buildings in Seven Oaks outside of outside of London, and they've got a kind of, okay, all right, so now we're starting to build up some expertise around being a specialist, and above that specialist, we've got the notion of the expert. So perhaps now you're starting to really dig into your expertise, and there's and you're being public about it. You've got these symbols of status, of expertise. Perhaps you've published a book on, you know, the the refurbishments of Tudor homes for modern renovations in Seven Oaks, for example, or whatever else kind of specialism you can think of. You're the one who's written the book, or you've been on 100 podcasts, or you've got your own podcast, for example, or, you know, being published and being visible. So you're starting to, you're starting to be seen as the expert. And then top of that kind of pyramid or triangle, is this idea of the celebrity, which is kind of superstar, fame and notoriety. And in our culture, our Western culture, it's quite interesting, because you can have celebrity in and of itself, can be used to sell a product which has nothing to do with what you're famous for. And we see this across the board with advertising of you know, actors selling perfume, or Michael Jackson being used by Pepsi to sell Pepsi. There is no man, I'm still, I'm still. I'm still traumatized. Man from like, you know, seeing Michael Jordan promote the weedy Searle. Have you ever eaten weedies, Ryan? Do they have those in the UK? And when I was a kid, I was like, those got to be. The best cereal ever, man, I want to get myself some Wheaties. It's got Andre augustes on the front of them. There's Michael Jordan.

Enoch Sears

40:08

Nothing to do with basketball, nothing to do with tennis. Rather terrible tasting cereal. But

Rion Willard

40:14

you know, it's interesting that it kind of makes sense. You can see the reason you know Michael Jordan being associated with trainers, there's a very clear link with they were the trainers he was wearing, etc, etc. But then the fact that it still works for him to be selling cereal, or Michael Jackson is selling Pepsi, is because people have this very strong emotional connection with the individual, and then that just being associated with your product kind of instantly transforms your experience of that product, like it happens kind of quite quickly and subconsciously. And there's a lot of psychology that's happening, that's that's happening there, but again, that that kind of that sort of hierarchy of differentiation, I think is quite important for us to sort of consider, when we're looking we're looking at this, and also to start being a bit courageous in terms of, you know, why not try designing a website which is really totally client focused? And, you know, maybe you have a different way of communicating with the people in your office. You have your own kind of beautiful portfolio book which is for the office, and you look through it, and, and, and you have that, or maybe you have these kind of marketing funnels which are specifically designed for a particular type of of client, and you're using their language you understand about their pains and problems. And again, this, you know this idea of differentiation in terms of being able to understand and speak the language of your demographic, of your target client, again, super, super important. And we've spoken a lot here on the podcast in the past about kind of the sophistication that we see some you know, kind of very successful architects approaching their clients. They've got a good understanding of, say, the business world that their commercial clients are operating in. They understand how a developer is organizing debt and finance for a project which gives that architect the capacity to be able to have a conversation about it and position their services in relation to the pains that come from that particular financial mechanism that the developer is is dealing with that that just being able to speak the language of Business being a good business person, I think, is probably the best differentiator, and that we can ask of architects, get interested in business talk like a business person with your clients, be they residential or commercial, and you don't sound like another architect,

Enoch Sears

43:00

clients will absolutely appreciate it, right? They will appreciate it, especially if you are in a business to business scenario where you're serving non residential clients, you're working with businesses, if you're with institutions, yeah, just understanding, understanding business and be able to talk that language like Ryan, you know, I went over a couple weeks ago, I was in Phoenix, and I was talking with my, my my friend, Chris Walton, and he's a developer, you know, smaller so on the small side, you know, they're trying to close a project right now, I think it's like, it's like, I don't know, it's a $90 million apartment complex they're trying to close. But as he was talking with me, you know, it's just like he was talking about, you know, just how challenging it is to, like, put together these deals and, you know, getting these products under contract, rounding up the funding for these projects. Does he go to institutional funding? Does he go to family and friends? Is he using hard money? What does he come up with the package to put together to actually acquire this project? Can he do it the right amount of time? Do they have to extend the contract to actually get the funds together? What are going to be the returns that he's promised to his investors and people are investing in these projects, and like as an architect, if you can come in there and be and have that conversation to understand what your clients are going through and what they have to deal with and the stresses that they're dealing with, it's just going to be so much easier for them to trust you, for them to see you as a valued business partner, a valued asset, to help them achieve their goals.

Rion Willard

44:35

Yeah, I think this is a really, you know, again, it's a really simple win is understanding what the goals of the client are outside of just the architectural goals. Okay, because those sometimes the architectural goals, they end up putting us in a box of what we're actually doing. But if you're approaching it as you know you're helping this business make more money, you're helping this business grow and expand. And and you can have a conversation like that, and also that you see yourself as an advocate or an ally to your client and to their industry and their business. Great. You can have a very different conversation with somebody, and it opens up a lot more, a lot more kind of avenues, and it can position yourself higher up the food chain, if you like. I interviewed an architect a few years ago here in New York, and his marketing strategy was very simple. He went to the trade shows of I believe it was a lot of he was working with a particular kind of retail developer. And he used to go to the trade shows of these developers every year and spend a little bit money on on some of their conferences, not necessarily to speak at, but just to gain intelligence, to gain Intel. And he was like, I always spend some time just understanding as much as we can about this, their industry, what they're dealing with, what their pains are, what their problems are, what the fluctuations are, what the changes are, what the challenges are. And I can always start a conversation with somebody about that before we get anywhere near talking about architecture? And it was a great, a great differentiator.

Enoch Sears

46:25

There's and this. So there we go. I mean, this conversation about differentiation, we could carry it on for the next hour, two hours. But what we want you to take away from this episode and the previous episode is look into differentiation, right as you're looking at ways in which you can capture higher fees, which will ultimately bring more abundance into your practice, which will empower you, which will give you agency. Differentiation is important. It's essential, and the more you understand about it, the more you'll be able to consciously use it as a tool to build the practice that helps you be the free architect. Hey, Enoch Sears here and I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of, to bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here, my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit, but more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at businessof architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wish they would have known 20 years ago.

Rion Willard

48:37

Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support@businessofarchitecture.com the views expressed on this show by my guest do not represent those of the host and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. Do.

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