Overcoming fear in the sale

When we buy stuff, be it services or products, we are looking to fulfill an increasingly aspirational hierarchy of needs, from "I don't want to lose my job" to "I want to leave a legacy for the future". We are basically trying to ensure that our basic needs are met before we can move on to our desire to change the world.

When we're selling stuff, it's the same but in reverse. Whether consciously or not, we have to assuage our prospects' worst fears before we can sell them on purpose-driven goals that will make their company grow and prosper or their life easier. Before that, we have to convince them that they will be able to keep their job, look and help the company succeed, in that order.

A lot of us tend to overlook this, at least consciously, even though these might be aspect of the sale that are intuitively understood and taken care of.

What about you? Do you openly address your clients fear and aspirations when closing the sale? How does that affect your business?

 

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The hero's journey

Tamarisk Saunders-Davies recently gave a presentation at IDS20 about how storytelling applies to media relations. Using Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" as the framework for how to tell stories, I thought that the lecture was very well put together and made mincemeat of an often complex problem: how to get your projects published. She vanquished once and for all the notion that to make a project interesting to journalists, all one has to do is to talk about its concept, materiality and other such archi-nonsense.

Ultimately, building stories are about people and how architecture is but the set in front of which life unfolds. Campbell's framework can really help you think of your projects and their attendant stories as an arc through which you want to take your audience, with the required set-up, call to action, adventures, victories, defeat and eventual triumph.

Of course, you don't need to be so dramatic, but you get the point.

Check out the chart below to learn more, courtesy of Tamarisk, Marketing and Communications Director, Associate at Gensler Toronto.

Storytelling one pager.JPG
 

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The techification of buildings

Cars are a very interesting type of asset. In 99.9% of cases they lose most of their value in their first couple of years, that's because they have become pieces of technology that are increasingly more expensive to keep in an operational state, the older they get.

That is unless we're talking about cars that are either very rare (and therefore valuable, think Ferrari) or have unique attributes that are in high demand in the marketplace.

Conversely, buildings are not considered to be an asset class that typically loses value over time, and most of the time they don't, but because their value is heavily based on their location, they can lose value in locales that have become less desirable over time (e.g. detroit).

The question is: as buildings become more and more embedded with all kinds of tech, will they become more like cars and depreciate faster, as they become more and more expensive to maintain over time? Or will we get to the point where tech is as robust as bricks? Old buildings are robust because they are comparatively simple.

Are we headed towards the constant obsolescence of everything all the time? If that's the case, what will we invest in in the future? What do you think?

 

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Standing with and for one another...

Something that I've been pondering a lot lately, is how to do my part in this crisis that we are all, without exception, deeply affected by. Social distancing is the new normal and is, frankly, the bare minimum at this point that we can do and if you know someone who's not doing their part, you're perfectly within your right to call them out. I'm looking at you toilet paper hoarders.

This pandemic is a tremendous opportunity to build and reinforce the communities that we are a part of, despite our inability to do so in person. Now is the time, more than ever, to not cancel these meetings, coffee dates and other gatherings, but instead to move them into the virtual world. There are many digital tools to do so.

Since I have fewer things to worry about than the average person (good health, no family, no mortgage and a business without full-time employees) so I want to offer my help to anyone who needs it. You can book an hour-long virtual meeting with me to discuss your marketing, BD and photography efforts, but I'm also happy to dedicate some of my time to just be there for those who just need someone to listen to them, without judgement or opinion, or just a person to bounce ideas off of. I'm told I'm good at that and will do so in absolute confidentiality, you can think of my as your "unlicensed archi-shrink" (book a time here).

Also, my buddy Bryon McCartney of Archmark fame is hosting a free webinar this friday for AEC firm owners, I highly recommend it.

Hat tip to Seth Godin who was the inspiration behind this (see here and here).

Keep your head up, we will get through this.

——-

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Empathy in real life

A colleague of mine was recently looking for a job. Invariably, she has to provide references, of which I was one. Two companies contacted me to get my opinion on her.

One was very polite, deferent and acutely aware that giving references is a demand on people's time. I was contacted first by email, a phone call was arranged and after a very brief, yet pleasant conversation my job was done. The recruiter displayed the utmost level professionalism, care and empathy.

The second, sent me an impersonal, generic email (even though they had my name) that essentially requested I replied "ASAP" (yes, in all caps) by filling out an attached form. When I asked for more accommodation, I was told "It is the way it is because that's what our client requires".

Needless to say that I happily responded to the first request and not the second one. People justifying their antisocial behaviour by saying "It's always been done that way", demonstrate a lack of critical and creative thinking and/or care about the way their duties are performed. While I get that this person has a hierarchy to answer to, there are many little things that are within his control to make the experience more pleasant, but the lack of care is what made this experience unbearable.

A better experience would get him the answer he needs, would not aggravate me and help his company deliver better value to their client. Now they have to do more work to get references, my day is ruined because of the aggravation and stress (I jest, but barely) and my friend may not get the reference she needs. On top of that, you have to read a blog post about it.

A possible solution to that is developing the ability to empathize with the people we deal with. By putting ourselves in someone else's shoes, we can act in a way that appeals to them, as opposed to making things difficult.

What's your experience been? Share some stories in the comments.

 

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IKEA betting against the house

IKEA plans to open a new kind of store in Vienna next year. In direct opposition to its typical suburban model surrounded by a sea of parking, they aim to build a store in an urban setting with zero parking, to be only served by public transit.

While I have to give them mad props for going against their own proven model, it will be interesting to see how the store fares in comparison to more traditional ones. It's easy to get excited about the novelty of such a project, but being a for-profit corporation, they also have a mandate to ensure they remain profitable, but if that proved to be a horrible failure, they probably have the financial mettle to weather that storm. Brandon Donnelly reminded us of that fact recently.

Ultimately, if it works, I hope to see it replicated elsewhere (Bloor St, anyone?) especially as it's designed with prefabricated elements, which has been an obsession of mine lately. If the renderings are any indication of the finished result, it also shatters the misconception that prefabricated buildings are necessarily boring and uncreative, yet open the door to a new kind of architecture that is built faster, more precise and more sustainable.

 

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Underestimating one's knowledge

Chris Graham is the Fred Rogers of public speaking. Empathetic, charming and one of the most engaging public speakers I've ever seen. I've attended several of his talks over the years, including most recently his "No one knows how toilets work" seminar at IDS in Toronto.

The talk is aimed at explaining why we have the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our own knowledge and provides an actionable toolkit to help us understand and overcome these barriers, even when we face people who wouldn't change their opinions in the face of undeniable evidence.

To illustrate his point, he uses the widely publicized (and still ongoing) story of Theranos as a cautionary tale of what can happen when people are too close to the subject matter to remove their blinders. To make a long story short, there were multiple instances in the sad story of this firm where people rang the alarm bell on things they witnessed that smelled bad, but upon reporting to their bosses, they were dismissed without a second thought.

Apparently Elizabeth Holmes was a master saleswoman and extremely effective at getting people on board. The lesson is: when people ring the alarm bell, don't dismiss them out of hand because you could be suffering from cognitive bias.

On the other hand, the good news is that if you're being dismissed when being the bearer of bad news (or trying to convince people of anything for that matter), Chris has very effective tools that can help break biases. All you gotta do is find out where his next seminar will be.

 

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A machine for living

While I shamelessly borrow one of the Le Corbusier's most famous aphorisms, I mean it in the literal sense. I've never made sense of present-day architecture need to have a very fine control over the way our living and working environments feel, abiding by the recommended and constant 21 degrees celsius and 70% relative humidity. I understand there is an imperative in a high-rise to manage the air quality and control environmental factors, as without the MEP engineering that we're all used to, these places would be hell.

However, I have trouble relating to the need to make residential architecture so tightly controlled and sterile. Yes, we need proper insulation in a cold climate like toronto, but there is six months out of the year where we don't really need any form of environmental control, be it heating, air conditioning or mechanical ventilation. After all, aside from relatively cold winters, southern Ontario has a pretty mild climate.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a house where there was none of the above, and as inhabitants of this house, we had to learn how to operate it and do so optimally, so that living conditions would always be bearable. It was extremely rare that the house got so uncomfortable that it became unlivable and we only got better at operating it with time, which created a deeper appreciation for the building.

In some sense, the high degree of automation and its attendant loss of control over the functioning of a building makes us feel like we have no control over our environment and I would argue separates us further from it, which can have adverse effects on well-being.

I've noticed of late that there are more and more people who bring holistic health principles to the way buildings are designed and built (most notably WELL). I'm particularly interested in some approaches where the focus is on how we interact with the built environment with the five senses. That seems to show a lot of promise.

 

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Getting out of the way

Committing to a narrow, specialized positioning for your business is an inherently scary proposition. But what's the alternative, being a jack of all trades whose offering is undifferentiated from anyone else? I recently had a meeting with a client contemplating taking a leap of faith to go from their self-admitted fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to business development to a refined, clearly defined positioning in the marketplace and its attendant strategy and tactics.

This rare kind of client had enough self-awareness to realize that the only barrier to making the switch was themselves. All that is required on their part is a commitment to the daily discipline of doing the deep introspective work that will take them to new heights.

It doesn't mean they have to abandon what currently works for them in the way they get work and execute it. They can keep on doing business as usual while they build the confidence to start publicly promoting their business in novel ways, try new things and see what sticks.

Committing to change does not equate throwing the baby with the bathwater, but doing nothing means that the competition will likely drown the figurative baby in its own bathwater.

 

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What can we learn from low-tech?

Our default assumption, since the advent of the industrial revolution has been to think that we can solve our challenges with more and more technological advances. While technology has a pretty good track record of improving our lives, it does not inherently guarantee progress. Technology is neither inherently positive or negative, but it does have the capacity to bring about powerful change.

When considering new technologies, we should approach them with a healthy dose of skepticism and always weigh the pros and the cons before enthusiastically jumping in with both feet.

A good example is that of the technological changes that have transformed the way we design and build architecture. While the energetic performance of newer buildings is through the roof, it comes at the expense of other things, like holistic health and wellness of a building's occupants.

I grew up in a house that was arguably terrible from an energetic point of view, but functioned like a machine that one had to learn to operate for optimal living conditions. We opened windows to ventilate, closed the shades to prevent solar gain, along with a multitude of other strategies to operate it.

If the same house were designed today, most windows would be fixed, we'd have annoying, noisy mechanical ventilation and the air would feel stale. How do we marry the two without sacrificing the benefits of either? How do we keep a house breathable without needlessly burning energy?

Not only design paradigms have to change, but I think we also have to operate from a different set of assumptions. Instead of thinking that everything can be automagically controlled and operated, we should consider how we -humans- physically interact with architecture as a way to bring about positive changes.

 

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Getting out of the procurement hellhole

When I speak to architects about their marketing efforts, it is very common that I'm told that their marketing person's sole responsibility is to handle proposals. While this an important, albeit small part of marketing, it is very dangerous to rely solely on these to keep your firm healthy.

Marketing is the discipline that consists of a set of activities, often outward-facing (i.e. initiating from the marketer to the prospects), aimed at turning prospects (people potentially interested in buying what you're offering) into leads (people intent on buying). Nothing more, nothing less. Once they become leads, then it's the sales' job to convert them.

Proposals are a different animal, as you're now playing someone else's game who has zero incentive to not waste your time and ask you to do a bunch of free work, in exchange for a tiny probability that you'll be hired.

With marketing, you have control over the message. With proposals, you're just jumping through hoops.

In order to stack the odds in your favour, here's what you can do:

  • If you don't already have one, create a proper marketing department with a proper strategy.

  • If you must continue to do proposals, read this book and learn to derail the RFP process.

  • Redefine your sales department role and turn them into closing machines, surfing on the expertise that's been established by your marketing.

When an RFP comes through, it should be looked at with a suspicious eye at best, and as a huge time waster in the worst of cases. Remember, procurement people are not your friends.

If you build a solid business development process (sales + marketing), you have a shot at getting out of the proposal hellhole.

 

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Google permission marketing

These days, when we hear the word newsletter, it conjures up images of yucky, salesy emails of people who are, rather transparently, trying to sell us crap we don't need. Or if it's quite not that yucky it's droves of uninspired emails telling stories about the last industry party or award won, which frankly, no one cares about.

But it doesn't have to be that way. There are examples out there of companies and individuals who send relevant, informative or simply hilarious emails that bring something of value to our lives, even if it's just for a minute. I had to laugh hard at a recent William Painter newsletter that had "Jonah Hill had to be hospitalized because he snorted so much fake blow" as a subject line, relating to this story. I don't really want to buy their sunglasses, but their emails are so funny that I cannot bring myself to unsubscribe.

Email marketing is probably the single most underrated tool in the marketer's arsenal, but now that everybody has moved on to social media and those platforms are completely oversaturated, not to mention the privacy issues and the menace they pose to society on many, many levels, there is a huge opportunity for the people who want to put in the work to revive email marketing. Yes, it will take time and effort, but by being smart you can build a pretty decent list and keep people engaged by providing them with amazingly valuable content. The more creative you get with this the better.

PS - If you're using Gmail or Gsuite and you want to continue receiving email updates from people who make good use of permission marketing, check out Seth Godin's recent update on the matter.

 

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The shelf-life of information

News occasionally becomes a potent source of anxiety. While the doomsday scenarios have been part of the news cycle for a long time, it is after all, what sells best in the news business. The string of bad news that we've seen of late (Iran-US relations, Coronavirus, etc.) has been affecting me more than usual because my monkey brain is always tempted to follow them and cooks up anxiogenic fictional scenarios as a result. The reality is that I have no control over it and other than making me nervous, the news isn't doing anything to help with this.

So I decided to go back to books and resume blatantly ignoring the news, in order to maintain a healthier mind. If you really think about it, 95% of news items today, will literally not matter tomorrow, so what I lose in terms of knowledge about what's happening in the world, I gain in peace of mind. Things that really matter, like books, by and large, have a much longer shelf life than the news in terms of the validity of their knowledge.

I'm happy to report that ignoring the news deliberately really is working. I have little to no idea of what's going on in the world and I'm better for it.

 

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The social media diet challenge

I've been thinking a lot lately about the implications of internet usage on our lives, work and the struggle to find a balance between our intense desire to socialize, belong and the nefarious effect of connected devices abuse. Social media platforms are designed to trick our brains in wanting to always come back for more, to get our dopamine fix. I was a bit overwhelmed by all this without knowing where to start, until Deep Work by Cal Newport magically uploaded as an audiobook on my phone, thanks to my local public library's awesome digital collection.

The books deal with the onslaught of attention-grabbing tools that the internet age has spawned which leave us unprepared to deal with it, like a deer in the headlights, our default pattern being to accept them at face value because everybody else is doing it.

Social media tools can be incredible at helping us build connections with family, friends or an audience if used appropriately, but they shouldn't be accepted without questioning their validity for each and every one of their possibles uses.

Newport recommends a simple test: quit social media for a month, without fanfare or public announcement. See if you miss after thirty days or if anyone noticed that you were gone. If the answer is no, that's a good reason to permanently leave. You can always come back later if it becomes relevant to you again.

 

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Bridges and tunnels

Brandon Donnelly recently wrote a piece about tunnels as a possible solution to congestion. An aspect of the debate that is often overlooked and affects greatly well being is to enable the population to live closer where they work, so they can walk or bike easily. Less commute time = less stress = better quality of life.

Not to say that this is feasible or even desirable for everyone but it's definitely something to think about. I've been consciously driving less and less and replacing my car trips with alternatives (motorcycle, transit, bicycle and walking) and I find life a lot less stressful that way even though I have to spend a little more time planning moving around. The friction that a personal vehicle removes (time saved) comes at the expense of other things.

I think the debate should not be car versus transit or even sprawl versus dense urban cores, but really about how to build cities that offer a variety of lifestyle options and mobility options. Diversity of choice is what makes cities attractive to a large swath of the population and creates a draw.

Toronto has very few lifestyle options and outside of the core even fewer efficient mobility options. It makes living in it quite challenging at times. I've just spent a week in NYC and the number of viable mobility and lifestyle options is staggering, all within a relatively small territory. Not to suggest that it's perfect but the variety is tremendous.

Redundancy makes a system robust.

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