Tyler Suomala is a serial-learner obsessed with helping architects optimize all things business development, sales, marketing, and operations. Before transitioning into Business Development at Monograph, Tyler worked in large and small architecture offices and also ran his own architectural design studio for 2.5 years. He holds a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan and a M. Arch from Princeton University.
Tyler is currently creating a community of architects at TylerTactics.com, where he sends one quick & powerful tactic to help architects attract high-quality clients every Sunday morning.
About the podcast: Single Serves is a podcast where we interview experts on single issues of interest to architects and designers. The thought-provoking ideas shared here are intended to inspire our listeners to become well-rounded entrepreneurs who are the leaders of their field.
Credits: ©2022 Produced by Révélateur Studio & edited by Chris Rodd
Transcript below edited for clarity and brevity:
Arnaud Marthouret (RVLTR):
Thank you very much, Tyler, for being on the show. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Tyler Suomala (TS):
Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. I'm happy to chat.
RVLTR:
Tell us who you are and what you do in your own words, in three sentences or less.
TS:
Okay. Three sentences are less. Keeping it short. The ultimate business development goal, right? At Monograph, I work with firms to help them improve their business operations and project management processes. At Tyler Tactics, I help bring, let's say, outside tactics and other resources to the surface for architects to use and also improve their business development and sales processes.
RVLTR:
You're trained as an architect, as I just mentioned. What made you go away from their traditional practice of architecture and engage into more business development endeavors?
TS:
I felt a little bit, I don't have a ton of patience to be honest with trying things. I felt like I had tried a lot of different versions of professional practice and hadn't really found fulfillment through it. I had worked at a large firm. I had worked at a small firm. I had ran my own studio for a little bit, and just honestly wasn't, I just wasn't feeling fulfilled in the process. I started looking for other things that would still allow me to utilize my background in architecture, but just in a different way. That's where I was really thankful to come across Monograph.
RVLTR:
That makes sense. As I mentioned earlier, the topic for today is how to attract high quality clients. Why do you think that's important?
TS:
Well, it's already hard enough to be an architect, right? It's hard enough to find clients, but when you do, ideally, you want to work with ones that work well with you and that respect you and want to work with you and have the budget and the vision that you want as well.
You kind of want those shared values because as we've all experienced at some point or another, working with the opposite of that is, I'd say 10 times more exhausting and it can really have a negative impact on morale for you and as well as your team.
RVLTR:
Yeah, I think we've all been there. We know what that's like. You've already hinted at what a high quality client is, but do you want to define it a little more clearly for our audience?
TS:
Sure. Yeah. I think high quality clients are a few different things. They're clients that you just enjoy working with. They're not someone that you feel like you have to take a deep breath with every time you meet with them or before you see them. They're clients that pay on time. They're clients that understand budgets and costs and aren't going to grill you every time you send them an invoice. They're people that trust and respect you, and they're people that return to you for repeat work or at least advocate for you for others to work with you as well.
RVLTR:
All right. That's a very great and six in definition. I like it. Why would you say high quality clients is particularly relevant for people in the architecture and design industry?
TS:
I think I hit this a little bit at the beginning, but I mean, architecture's already hard enough. I think one of the biggest challenges that architects face is doing things that are unrelated to design, 95% of architects care most about design and business, client relations, business development, sales. That's kind of like, that's like the, let's mix that together in the last 5% at most, and maybe 1% for the average architect. You want-
RVLTR:
Yeah, for each bucket, they don't want to want to touch, right?
TS:
Right. It's the icky bucket they don't want to touch again. Again, most of the time architects aren't starting a firm, or leaders aren't in a firm because they love business. They're in it because they love design. They love architecture and things like that. I think it's important to have high quality clients so that you can still maintain as much of your focus on the things that you want as possible and not feel weighed down by the business side of things if you don't want to feel weighed down by those.
RVLTR:
Why do you think so many architecture firms are challenged with their business development efforts? I'm putting my own bias into that question because that's something I've seen over and over and over, and we've kind of touched on the idea that it's kind of too far removed from design if something most architects don't like. There's kind of that unfamiliarity and probably also lack of training, but is there anything else that you've seen specifically in what you do with Monograph and Tyler Tactics that maybe you want to speak to?
TS:
Yeah, I think there's this funny inverse relationship between architects and business, whereby an architect, the normal ladder of working at a firm, for example, you might be intern and then you're designer and then you're architect, then you're associate, then you're maybe partner or principal or something along those lines, owner. As you move up, you're given more and more business responsibilities, but you're not moving up because most of the time, at least, most of the time, you're not moving up because you're good at business. You're moving up because you're good at design or something, or maybe managing a team or something like that.
You're moving up because of something else that's unrelated to the new responsibilities that you're getting in that new position. I think that's one source of the issue. You're beginning to elevate people that are good at one thing and you're giving them responsibilities for something that they have absolutely zero interest or knowledge in or skills in. That's a problem that I think a lot of firms aren't tackling.
I think the other one is just not taking the necessary time to improve skills that are necessary for business. I mean, it takes some time outside. You have to take time outside of design. You have to take time outside of normal architecture. You have to explore other resources and other industries a little bit and allow yourself to learn from them in order to improve your business as well.
RVLTR:
Yeah, and it's interesting what you just said because you're 100% right, as you get promoted and progress in the hierarchy, you do it generally because of your talent in design or talent in managing projects or something related to the architecture itself, but the further up you move, the more removed you are from those responsibilities. I think that's an issue that a lot of people recognize, but as you said, not few people do anything about.
TS:
Mm-hmm.
RVLTR:
Have you seen any examples of firms that have managed their staff transitions into the higher levels of hierarchy well?
TS:
Not specific example. I think it's one of these things that are just, it's like just being realized and recognized. Usually, at least when I'm speaking to firms, they're not coming to me because things are hunky-dory. It's the opposite because they're facing struggles of some kind. I will say that I think there's firms that are taking steps in that direction to maybe make it easier to identify people that would be better in those positions.
For example, increasing transparency across the firm I think is one of those things that can make a big difference in that, because you're giving everyone in the firm the ability to understand how the business works. I think naturally, what's going to happen from that is the people that are interested in the business side of things or whatever those specific parts of the business are going to emerge.
Then, maybe you can also, that's where you can give them the responsibilities that are related to their interests and passions rather than forcing them upon other people.
RVLTR:
I'm going to name names because there's one great example that comes to mind, and I'm not going to say anything bad, but I did an internship at SOM years and years ago, and I was always impressed. To this day, I'm still impressed by how they managed the business aspect of architecture and the design almost separately, like working hand in hand, but they're completely separate people and responsibilities within the firm.
It's interesting that they're the ones doing that soil, because they've been around for almost 90 years now, and I believe that's one of the reasons why they've been so successful for so long throughout so many generations of leaders. I'm wondering what that model looks like in more of the 21st century firm and not so much with firms that have been around for a long time. That's kind of an interesting thought.
TS:
I mean, I think you just have to be, so I'd say that the 21st century architect firm is smaller, there's only a handful of those international firms that can compete with SOM. There's maybe 10 or 15. We ran the numbers early on at Monograph, and it's something like, don't quote me on this for sure, but it's something like 80% of architecture firms are 10 people or less. [inaudible 00:09:53].
RVLTR:
Yeah. I think the majority of that are single person firms.
TS:
Right. The majority of that are single person firms. In that sense, I think you really, if you're going to at least be on the leadership side of one of those smaller firms, you do have to be a generalist. Architects are already generalists in things that are related to architecture. We're good at design. We're good at technical things. We're good at...
RVLTR:
Problem solving. Yeah.
TS:
... problem solving, things like that, that I think also translate into the business side of things, but you do have to be able to manage design at the same time that you're managing your business. That's the same time that you're growing your pipeline and adding backlog to your projects. I think without that, it's not impossible. It's just going to be a lot more painful ride, in my opinion.
RVLTR:
Yeah, that makes sense. One of the things that I've noticed is a struggle for a lot of architecture and design firms is to understand the difference between marketing, sales, communications, and business development. I have my own idea all those are, but can you give us your own understanding and definition of those?
TS:
Yeah, this is one of these, I actually, I feel like I have this conversation once a week with someone about what these things are. I think everyone has a different definition, which is, I don't know if it's a problem or if it's just kind of a funny quirk of the industry. I would define in business development as any, it's any action taken to bring clients into your firm. By that, I would say that business development is the category and that marketing, sales and communication are all subcategories of that. They're all parts that work towards that. That's at least how I group it in my mind.
RVLTR:
Well, that's my understanding as well.
TS:
Yeah.
RVLTR:
I think there's something to it for sure.
TS:
Yeah.
RVLTR:
What about... What is the distinction to you between marketing, sales and comms?
TS:
I think marketing is about nurturing and educating your audience. Sales is about turning that audience into clients and customers. Communications is about how you're doing that. It's kind of the process and the tactics of enacting those transitions.
RVLTR:
Yeah, I've pretty much the same understanding. It looks like we're on the same page. One thing that I see a lot, and I'm sure you have as well, is that a lot of people consider proposal development, proposal management and development and submission as part of marketing. I don't think it is or should be. What's your take on that?
TS:
Yeah, I have seen that. That's such, it's part of a longer discussion about how you should be handling proposals in your firm. What department it's in. Marketing is obviously one thing. I think another thing is how you introduce that proposal, which the vast majority of firms are doing that usually through an email, which I don't think should ever happen. I mean, I think you should send it through an email after you've met with the client, either face to face or on a video call...
RVLTR:
Thank you.
TS:
... and walk them through that proposal.
RVLTR:
Thank you. Yes.
TS:
Don't like, if you're just sending proposals to your clients, I think that's one of the worst, lowest value things you can do, especially if you put a ton of time into that proposal, you should be walking them through that proposal, making, reiterating the fact that you understand their challenges and their pains and that you are the right solution for them before you ever hand that proposal over to them for them to read themselves.
RVLTR:
Yeah. I took on a hard policy of never sending a proposal without first reviewing with the clients. At the very least, what ends up happening is we review it together on Zoom, looking at the screen at the same time, and I send it by email, but you're right, I think just emailing it as one of the lowest value things because you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to handle objections, to answer questions, and frankly, to close the deal because you should be asking the question, are you ready to go ahead and once you're done presenting your proposal, and a lot of the time they'll say, "No, we need to think about it..."
TS:
Yes, we need to think about it.
RVLTR:
... which is a fair answer.
TS:
Yeah.
RVLTR:
At least, every time a client is ready to go, you're seizing that opportunity and if you just send an email, yeah, you're just I think that probability of getting their job just drastically drops down.
TS:
It drops down. I think it's also, there's a fear. There's a fear of not being able to handle objections that people don't want to do. I think there's also a misunderstanding that the clients are going to make whatever decision they're going to make, and we're just throwing your hat in and hoping that they choose us. I think there's this misunderstanding that there's a lack of influence that you can have on that client's decision from engaging with them more intentionally.
RVLTR:
That's why I think I'd love to see more people taking on sales training and becoming good at sales because that's where you're going to shine as an architect, because a lot of them really don't do it very well. It's a broad generalization, obviously, but I think there's a lot to it. You've talked to, from what you told me, more than 1,000 architect over the last years.
TS:
Yeah.
RVLTR:
First of all, I'm just so curious, you have to tell me what made that happen? Second, what are some of the things that you've learned out of that?
TS:
Yeah. Well, if you, I mean, as you know, in any sales or business development role, you're worth as much as the conversations that you're having. When you're in that role, I mean, that's my primary responsibility at Monograph is to have conversations with architects. That might be a cold call, that might be an inbound call based on a question that they had. It might be a discovery call. It could be a demo that I'm doing of the platform. That's usually the nature of those conversations. They're lasting anywhere from five minutes to an hour long about the challenges that they're having in their practice and things that are going on with us. That's the context of those conversations.
What I think I underestimated about that was the pulse and understanding of that would give me on the industry. I don't think I really thought through that when I was taking on this role that Monograph. It's been a really nice kind of cherry on top to this kind of new job and new career that I really love and enjoy, but just having a deeper understanding of the industry itself and the challenges that architects are facing, they're relatively universal. Most of these challenges are the same, but just from talking to a thousand architects, there's definitely a few things that stand out.
I mean, one is just a lack of organization and a lack of tracking or measuring that's happening on the business side. That could mean just challenges with tracking time, tracking budget, and also going back to understanding why someone spent more time on the project or why we ran over on this specific phase of the project so that you can then improve it. A lot of firms are in this reactive state rather than proactive state where things are happening, and then they have to catch up later on and try to do discovery to find out going on rather than being proactive about whatever these challenges are and what might come up.
I think the other challenge that we've already began talking about is that the majority of architects don't really want to focus on business. They don't really want to focus on money. It's like money is important, but it's not, which is, I think something that just hurts in the long run. It's hard to, you don't have to, money profit doesn't have to be your primary driver. I don't think it should be necessarily, but you need to think about it in some context. It needs to be considered in order for you to run a successful business and a sustainable business for yourself and for your employees.
RVLTR:
I mean, there's many ways to set up a business where profit is not the main motivator, as you said. There's legal structures that allow you to do that, but regardless, you do need to be a good manager, money and budgets and costs because you're going to have to deal with those things one way or another. You're going to have staff, or if you don't have staff, you're going to have contractors, you're going to have bills to pay, you're going to have to manage cash flow. It's absolutely and completely inevitable.
TS:
Yeah. The state of the majority of the firms that I talk to, and I don't blame them. I mean, I'm happy to chat with these firms because at least they're recognizing that there's an issue and they're trying to, they recognize that they need to change something, but the state of the majority of the firms that I'm speaking to are that they're generally looking at their bank balance at the end of the month and understanding, okay, good, we have more money than we spent, so that's good.
They're looking at their project budgets at usually once a month to understand how did we go over or did we go under budgets? They're finding that out at the end of the month as well. I think that's a really tough practice meant to maintain over the long run. It's really tough to scale that. It's really tough to grow and iterate and improve upon that.
RVLTR:
I think if you want to do that, you have to have the tools and a spreadsheet is probably no longer sufficient after a while.
TS:
Yeah, for certain size, it's gets harder.
RVLTR:
Speaking of money management, I've discovered this method a couple years ago called Profit First. It's an entrepreneur who created it and developed it. Even if it's not implemented as part of the business, I think it's a great method to understand how money works and how it should be managed. I've implemented it myself in my own business. It is a game changer because you basically put your money, it's the envelope method, you put your money in buckets, and then some of those buckets are reserved for certain things like taxes and payroll and sales tax and whatever else and then you don't touch those.
Then, there's expenses buckets, and there's also, it's called Profit First because one of the first things they have you do is to pay yourself. You're forced to, if you can't pay yourself or you don't make enough money, you pay yourself, then, you're forced to think in ways of, okay, so how do I make enough money so I can pay myself and still meet all my bills and costs? It's a very interesting exercise in general.
TS:
Yeah, that's a great one. I mean, it's also a really good personal finance model. When you get your paycheck, you should pay yourself first, meaning don't go and pay bills right away. Don't go and pay bills. Don't think about what you should buy. Go and put that money into an investment before you have a chance to spend it.
RVLTR:
You've been developing the Tyler Tactics in actively growing that on LinkedIn. What are some of the things that you've learned from that?
TS:
I just started that this past month. That's more of the culmination of being active on LinkedIn this past year, getting an understanding of the challenges that architects are having. I, myself, it didn't take me that long in my business development role at Monograph to realize, "Wow, I didn't really know a whole lot about business development when I was running my own little studio. I wonder if I'm the only one."
Then, having more and more conversations, being more focal about these challenges on LinkedIn, running polls, understanding what challenges my audience is facing. That's really how Tyler tactics came to be. That's just one newsletter that I'm posting each week that's really focused on short, actionable steps you can take towards a specific tactic that will help you improve your business development process, get you more of those high quality clients, help you talk to your clients better and just make actionable changes that will have a marked improvement on your firm.
RVLTR:
Speaking of actionable changes, what are some of those easy changes that firms could make to attract higher quality clients?
TS:
I think there's a few things that they can do. One is just tracking your pipeline. Are you tracking your pipeline in any way? Do you have anything? I think that's where it's okay if you're starting line here is a spreadsheet of some kind, but just understanding the different phases of your pipeline, the qualification process, the proposal process, the closing, the decision making process, understanding how many people or clients you have in each of those. Buckets is really important to understand at any given time. Also, just getting an understanding of what's your win rate for the amount of proposals that you're writing.
I'm a huge proponent of you have to measure something to improve it. If you're not measuring it, it's going to be really difficult to make changes to this. I think most firms are finding their selves in a state where they're not measuring some of these things, where if they did, it would just have a massive impact. It gives this them visibility and it has a massive impact on their firm. One is just measuring and tracking your pipeline.
The second one is diversifying that pipeline. Usually, we're waiting for inbound things to happen, meaning those are clients that are coming to you either based on your website or from a referral. Those are the easiest ones to win, and they're probably the highest amount of clients that you're getting, but they shouldn't be your only ones. You should diversify. You should definitely be doing outbound efforts. You should be reaching out to potential clients, going to events where
I've had potential clients will be cold calling potential clients, just trying to develop those new relationships on a consistent basis, whether that's weekly, spending time doing these things and forming new relationships. That's really important so that new projects can come from that.
The other one is just nurturing and educating those people that you're bringing in, whether that's through a newsletter or something like that, just to keep your firm and yourself top of mind to them. Those are things that can make a big difference.
The last one is just improve your communication skills. Improve your sales skills. There's small things you can do. I mean, read a book. Read a book that's focused on sales, not focused on architecture or something like that, focused on sales, focused on business development or marketing. I can tell you right now, after talking to, and I'm not talking to interns or middle people in firms, I'm talking to firm leaders and principals and owners.
I can tell you that if you are someone that is focusing on marketing, if you are someone that is focusing on sales, and if you are someone that is focusing on business development, in a leadership position in a firm, you are for sure among the top 5% of your firm and you have a huge, huge opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competition.
RVLTR:
What are some of maybe the top two or three sales and business development books that you've read in the last couple of years?
TS:
Oh, another, well, one good one is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. That's just really good for understanding how to negotiate and how to talk about money. I think that's a really important one. Another one that I really-
RVLTR:
That's the hostage negotiator, right?
TS:
Yeah. He's the hostage negotiator. There's really good and everything that you read, you're always kind of reformulating it to relate to how you do it. It's not like every book is going to, everything you read is going to be completely relatable to architecture, but it really does give you, I think, it's just adding tools to your toolkit. It's understanding how you can respond to specific situations and just improve the conversation. That's another one. Another one that I actually really is $100M Offer by Alex Hormozi. I don't know if you've ever read that. It's a really short book.
RVLTR:
No.
TS:
It's not long at all.
RVLTR:
You said $100M Offer?
TS:
$100M Offer, I think, that's what it's called. It's a short read, but it's so powerful and I think it's really relatable. He primarily works with SaaS companies and technology companies and helping them improve the offer that they're making, or even small businesses helping them improve the offer that they're making, using different types of tactics to really hone in on what that ideal client is, different things that you can do, not only to increase your value, increase your fee, but also make it so that you're the only one that's offering something that unique and that's that customized to your ideal client profile.
I think those are the things that you can do to increase your fees. You really have to, rather than racing to the bottom and trying to figure out how you can compete on your fee, you want to be moving in the opposite direction, going upstream and understanding what you need to do in order to just put yourself at a level that's completely different than what anyone else is doing.
RVLTR:
Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that because most architects think of the business as a race to the bottom. It's like, "Oh, I have to get this job and have to outcompete with lower fees, everybody else." The conversation around value, although, it's becoming a bit more prevalent now, is still to way too rare in my opinion. I'm going to ask you your opinion.
My opinion is that way too many people are focused on internal capabilities and their ability to design great projects, but they're never phrasing what they can do for their clients in terms of the value added to their clients. One example I use all the time, because it's very easy to understand. It's very telling. I have a friend who's a contractor, and he once suggested to a client to shore up the basement. Spend about $100,000 extra to shore up the basement and have, I think it was 12-foot ceilings in the basement and first floor that was at grade, meaning wheelchair accessible instead of the usual first two or three steps to go up to the main floor and then go down to the basement.
TS:
Right.
RVLTR:
The house, I believe, was assessed as being about $350,000 more valuable as a result of that $100,000 investments. To me, that's where the value resides. As a contractor, he understood the value of his work and he was able to make the right recommendation to the client. After that, you have to convince the client to spend more money, but if they can, they'll come out on the other side to benefit from it. I think too few architects understand that that's truly where their value reside.
I'm going to add to that, the fact that almost every one of them wants to be a generalist. They want to be able to do everything. I've been saying for years now, if you decided to be the architect who's the top coffee shop designer in the world, you will get clients paying you handover fist for your designs because you will have that level of expertise and you'll be able to focus on developing that one typology instead of being a generalist in designing house, a cafe, a restaurant, an office, a medical facility, and never be able to really drill down to what makes one typology what it is and be becoming the one expert at it. They're terrified of doing that, every one of them. They won't say it in public, but behind closed doors, they're like, "No. I can't do that."
TS:
They say it in public [inaudible 00:30:29].
RVLTR:
I can't do that because I'm going to lose all my business. They don't understand that's where the true value resides for them. What's your take on that?
TS:
Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of, I think fear that just results in a lack of understanding of how markets work around architects. I think I understand the resistance to want to niche down, because you want to be open, you want to take another projects.
In my opinion, I think even if you did niche down, let's say you transition to all of your marketing material, you're changing your website and promo any other promotional material is going to be focused around this specific niche, solving this specific problem, you're still going to get people that are coming to you for other things. You can choose whether or not you want to work on those projects. You're just going to get...
RVLTR:
Exactly.
TS:
... you're just going to get more focused on that specific niche that you wanted to but you're never going, it's just never going to happen where you're only ever going to get queries about that one type of work that you're doing.
RVLTR:
One tactic that I've learned from Blair Enns, who's the founder of Win Without Pitching, it's a great sales training company, is that you can niche down. You don't have to throw the baby with the bathwater. You can easily, and that literally costs you, it will cost you say a couple hundred bucks, you can print bunch of business cards, register a new domain name and start a sister company...
TS:
Landing pitch. Yeah.
RVLTR:
... and just say, "Okay, we're architects X, Y, Z on this side and we're generalist and we do everything we've been doing ever since we existed." Then, the new website is not related in any kind of overt way to the existing business. It's like, "Okay, we're testing the waters of designing the best coffee shops in the world, and our goal is to be hired by people who want the best of the best meaning all over the world," because the thing is, I think one thing that people don't understand is that when you niche down, you don't want to niche down too much in both geography and expertise.
You're either going to pick a very narrow geographical area, and you're going to be a more generalist practitioner in a very small area. In your town, you're going to be the top architect in your town for everything people want or you're going to be the top coffee shop designer in the world worldwide, meaning, that no one can touch you in that particular typology, but you'd never want to do both, because if you say, I'm only going to do coffee shop and you live in a hundred thousand people town, guess what? You're not going to have a lot of projects.
TS:
About three coffee shops. Yeah.
RVLTR:
Yeah. You're going to have a dozen or so. Then, after that, it's over and you're still going to compete with local architects. That's one distinction I think that has to be made, but yeah, it's very interesting to start to get into those details. I think we've talked about a few of those, but maybe if there's more you want to add to it, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see firm make making, in firms making in terms of business development?
TS:
One is, again, not tracking or measuring specific things, not tracking or measuring budget on a consistent basis, not tracking or measuring pipeline on a consistent basis, you need to measure it so that you can improve it. That's thing number one.
Thing number two that I see on the business development side is no defined sales flow, meaning they don't have a process in place when they're meeting with a new potential client. What does that look like? It's kind of flying by the seat of your pants a little bit each time. You don't know exactly how the conversation is going to go that first time. You don't know when or if you're going to write a proposal after that, or if you're going to have another meeting.
I think it's really important to just define, I'm going to have one discovery meeting with a client. It's going to be 30 minutes. I'm going to talk about these things, try to understand what the pains are. I'm going to go back to the office. I'm going to write a proposal. I'm going to set up a second meeting in conversation with them to walk them through that proposal and reiterate the fact that I understand their challenges.
You just need to define something so that you have some kind of repeatable process that you can then improve and iterate upon. That's just, again, just getting something into place so that you have a baseline of understanding. That's another one.
For communication, we've already talked about that enough. You have to improve those communication skills. You have to learn about how to talk about money, how to talk about budget, how to talk about investments. Those uncomfortable conversations that you're having with your client are, I think, usually uncomfortable on both sides. You can make them more comfortable just by understanding better ways of talking about them and discussing them with your client.
The last one, we already talked about too is just diversifying that pipeline, making sure that you, it's just like you do with your own investments. You want to diversify your investments. You don't want to put all of your eggs into one basket. You want to give your firm opportunities to grow in different ways just by opening up and having inbound, having referral business, having outbound business as well.
RVLTR:
I had a question that came to mind or a comment a while back, and you just brought that up again, a lot of small firms that I talk to solely rely on word of mouth to get projects, and by and large it works, but can you tell us why that might not be such a great idea?
TS:
Well, word of mouth is a two-way street. I think that's one of the reasons it's not such a good idea. You could be, we've all had a client that we didn't enjoy working with and that didn't enjoy working with us, and you just hope that that's not a vocal, you kind of just hope that that's not a vocal client.
Of course, you might have more, you might have a lot of, you want to have a good reputation around the town, but one, it's just a two-way street. You want to make sure that you're covering your bases on multiple levels just to make sure that you have, if that word of mouth dries up for whatever reason, you have different ways of bringing in business as well, rather than restarting and having that oh crap moment of, we don't have anything coming up in a few months.
RVLTR:
Awhile back, you mentioned cold calling, and I know that's probably the most terrifying prospect for most architects who have to do their own business development. Why do you think that's still a decent and effective tool in getting projects for work?
TS:
I think, cold calling is like, it has a bad reputation as being the kind of telemarketer spam calls that you get. I'm not talking about doing one of those. I'd actually more so call it kind of like a warm call. You're doing research. You're understanding, so maybe you do residential work in your general regional area. You're doing research to understand, "Hey, what are the builders in this area that are typically doing residential projects?" I might have a list of 10 of them.
Do I see that they've built projects that are similar to ones that I designed and that I would like to get built? I'm going to call up those 10 offices, or maybe those 10 people try to find, either I'm going to try to find that person on LinkedIn or I'm going to call up those 10 offices and just, you don't have to have a pitch ready or anything like that. It's really just introducing yourself. "Hey, this is Tyler Suomala. I saw that you do building in my area. I just started a firm down the road and I'm just curious if I could come in and have a conversation and learn about the type of work that you're doing."
Just something, it's just opening up the conversation and developing new relationships. I did that when I started at my little studio and made three or four relationships with builders in my area. It turns out none of them were happy with the architects that they were using. Depending on the area, that's something that can really help.
RVLTR:
That makes a lot of sense. I think that's the end of the interview. We've covered a lot of ground and I asked most of the questions I wanted to ask. Do you have any last words of wisdom for the audience, which is primarily architects and interior designers of any kind, really. Just something you want to add.
TS:
Yeah, I think my last words of wisdom would be to find and understand the things that the people around you don't enjoy doing or aren't good at and become an expert at those things. You'll immediately increase your own personal value to the firm, and you'll also increase the firm's value as well. [inaudible 00:39:28].
RVLTR:
That's incredible advice. Well, Tyler, I want to thank you very much for your time and your insights, and I think that was a very good conversation. Hopefully, it'll be as valuable to the audience as it is to me.
TS:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.