April 2014

COMMUNITIES: PRIVATE PRACTICE
Lost the Project? Find Out Why

BY RICH FRIEDMAN

Why did we lose this project? It can literally be the $1 million question. To learn more about why you lost, you attempt to gather feedback from your prospective client. And that’s where the wheels come off for the majority of AEC firms that don’t have a steady stream of sole-source work. Anyone who’s conducted a loss debrief knows how difficult and awkward they can be for you and for the prospective client if not done well.

I’d like to think that firms attempt to conduct loss debriefs at every opportunity. However, this is not the case. People don’t make time for a variety of reasons and often, folks aren’t held accountable. And often, when they do conduct debriefs, the responses can be some variation of, “It was a tough decision. There were many qualified firms, including yours. You came in a close second.”

Some firms routinely spend thousands of dollars in easily quantifiable costs (e.g., actual expenses incurred) and softer costs (e.g., the opportunity costs of tying up principals, project managers, and others on the interview team) on key pursuits. In addition to improving the payback on your investments, there are several reasons to conduct a loss debrief. Conducting a debrief sends a strong message to the prospect that you care. It communicates that you don’t take them for granted, and most importantly, you want to win the next one. If done correctly, debrief data can inform and improve several aspects of your marketing and business development processes, which includes gathering competitive intel and providing opportunity prepositioning.

Questions to Ask
Remember, if you don’t ask, you won’t get! At worst, the client contact chooses not to answer your questions. Be sure to ask open-ended questions that will get you the information you’re looking for. Be sure to prioritize questions in light of interviewee time constraints. Here are several that have proved effective:

• What were your most important criteria during the selection process?
• How could our RFP response have been improved? (Was it clear? Did it sufficiently address your questions and hot-button issues?)
• Why were we selected to the short-list of firms to be interviewed? What stood out about our firm that you liked? What concerns did you have, if any?
• How did we perform during the interview process? (Ask the interviewee to be as specific as possible regarding presenters and their content/style.) Was our presentation compelling or did it miss the mark? Why or why not do you believe our presentation team connected with the audience?
• Which firm did you select and why? How did the selected firm differentiate themselves from our firm and others you considered? What other factors played into your decision?
• How did our fee compare to our competitors?
• What advice do you have as we pursue future project opportunities with you?

Common Mistakes
There are four main mistakes that firms make when conducting loss debriefs. They may do the following:

1. Let too much time elapse before they debrief. Details on both sides begin to get fuzzy. In one case, a client asked me to conduct a third-party debrief eight months after the presentation. My interviewee had to revisit his notes, which wasted valuable time and inconvenienced the interviewee.
2. Have the wrong person conduct the debrief. If the person isn’t curious enough, takes negative feedback personally, or is too technical or project-focused to see the forest through the trees, you won’t get useful results.
3. Ask questions that are too general or not open-ended. There is not follow-up with a difficult, probing question.
4. Fail to act on the feedback in a timely manner or at all.

Given the challenges of conducting loss debriefs, some firms choose to outsource this critical task to an independent third party, especially when dealing with strategically important clients, prospects, and project opportunities. This makes sense when an investment is warranted given the amount of money spent on key pursuits and the potential value of applying the data to future pursuits with that client and to overall marketing and business development strategy.

Outsourcing the debrief also makes sense when you believe your clients will feel more comfortable providing constructive criticism to an independent third party who specializes in conducting research and is more apt to respond with difficult, probing follow-up questions. It also makes sense when the consultant has greater success in landing the interview.

How might your clients feel if you enlisted the help of a consultant? I’ve asked some interviewees. One former A/E consultant who joined an owner organization said, “It’s easier to be more honest when an independent party asks these questions, especially given how closely connected our industry is. It can be difficult and awkward to give someone you know critical or frank feedback.” A project decision-maker at an Ivy League institution said, “I want every firm to succeed because we may want to work with them in the future. I want to be very candid with firms.”

Rich Friedman is president of Friedman and Partners, a marketing and management consulting firm serving the AEC industry. He can be reached at [email protected].