Introduction
Janet Brooks, Director of Business Development and a marketing manager at Clark Nexsen, joins Jack Ossa on The Power of Design Podcast to talk about how architecture, engineering and construction firms win projects. Clark Nexsen is a national architecture and engineering firm with about a century of history, and Janet has spent 34 years in marketing and business development.
The conversation covers credibility in the marketplace, understanding a client's business, why teams are selected on trust and personality, and the steps to grow into a business development professional.
About the Episode
Janet grew up in Charlotte and studied commercial design with a business minor at Appalachian State University. She remembers working with handset type before computers and seeing her first Apple computer arrive at her desk. After an internship at an ad agency, she worked for a grocery chain and then for about 15 years at a family-owned construction company, moving from design and a print shop into communications, marketing and business development. She found she preferred the strategy side: understanding the client's needs and how to meet them.
She explains how she works today, with two titles and one of four corporate marketing managers at a firm with ten offices and more than 400 employees. She says architects and engineers have different temperaments, that selling requires knowing what clients sell to their own customers, and that client decisions come down to relationships and confidence in the people.
Janet also covers the talent shortage in the industry, the real demands of business development, how construction costs and funding shape clients' worries, and how design is shifting toward safety, health and sustainability. She closes with what the work means personally after 34 years.
Key Takeaways
- Start early: set up the team and present it to the client as soon as you know their needs, and follow through.
- Build trust before the RFP: clients give large budgets to people they know, so be there before and after they have work.
- Understand their business: you cannot serve a client well without knowing what they are selling to their own customers.
- Sell the individuals: clients buy into a team for years, so the people who will do the work should be seen and heard.
- Learn the technical side: business development needs knowledge of how buildings and projects get built, and honesty about what you do not know.
- Ask for the next job: keeping a client costs far less than winning a new one, and everyone in the firm can ask.
- Stay involved: join groups for your profession, your discipline and the markets you serve.
Highlights from the Conversation
Would you give your money to a person you've never seen before?
Janet Brooks
I've never had two days the same in 34 years.
Janet Brooks
You have to ask for the next job.
Janet Brooks
Topics Discussed
- Credibility and early planning for large projects
- From design and print into marketing and business development
- Differences between architects and engineers in selling
- Selecting the team and the role of personality
- The talent shortage in architecture, engineering and construction
- What a business development career involves
- Rising construction costs and funding challenges for clients
- Design, safety, health and sustainability
Why This Conversation Matters
Janet's lessons apply to any firm that sells professional services: trust, a clear message and a team clients want to work with. They connect with the way we help firms express their identity through branding, such as the identity for MSW Engineers, and with the education and public work discussed in the episode, which relates to our architecture and interior architecture projects like Melmark Carolinas.
About the Guest
Janet Brooks is the Director of Business Development and a marketing manager at Clark Nexsen, a national architecture and engineering firm with offices across the country. A Charlotte native with a degree in commercial design and a minor in business administration from Appalachian State University, she has worked in marketing and business development for 34 years on both the construction and the architecture and engineering sides. Connect with Janet on LinkedIn.
