How To Manage Sales Operations As A Small Architecture Firm

HubSpot, I think you know In terms of all the CRMs that I've worked with, I think HubSpot is probably the easiest, simplest, easy to plug in. It's a little bit more user friendly.

These are relationships that you want to continue to nurture, or they might have, a way into a project at some point, and so you're continuing to nurture those relationships. At the moment that it becomes evident that there is an opportunity, that there is an actual project being done. That's when it then moves over to the sales pipeline. And it's like almost the sales cycle.

It's there's the discovery process, there's the proposal process, there's the negotiation stage, and then there's, did you win it or did you lose it? And those are generally the stages, but those are the two different, like they really are two different pipelines that you have to manage and there's conversion rates to all of them. It's almost how, what percentage of people in your lead pipeline eventually turn into an opportunity.

And then once you start an opportunity, what percentage of, Projects that get to the proposal phase, do you end up winning, right? That might be like 25 percent or something. And so you begin to get yourself in a position where you can forecast, literally from your lead pipeline, you can begin to understand, okay, I literally need, I need 100 people in my lead pipeline at once because I know that 5 percent of those are going to transition into an opportunity.

And out of those opportunity out of those opportunities, 25 percent of them are going to win. And my average contract value is, 50, 000 or 100, 000,

They realize they don't have much revenue forecast much revenue pipeline So I think that's why just like putting it out and realizing, there's a decent amount like There's definitely a quantity play here where you need to Be nurturing a certain amount of relationships and for those leads for the lead pipeline that might just be checking in once a month or, I think we've talked about this before, but like probably 20, you probably want 20 percent of your time after projects get going, you

probably want to devote 20 percent of your time to business development still. especially until you I shouldn't actually, I take that back. I was going to say until you. Find yourself with, the three projects and you're full, but you actually probably shouldn't stop then either, because that's how you make the mistake that most architects make where finish your projects and then you actually don't have a warm pipeline. you don't have a full pipeline and you've got to restart again.

So always be devoting about 20 percent of your time, at the beginning, until you have more opportunities, you're probably spending more of your time on that lead pipeline, right? So you're checking in maybe once a month, you're going in.

You know once a week and you're saying here's the ten people I'm going to reach out to this week I'm gonna focus on these people I'm going to try to get like I want a real answer like do they have a project do they not have a project Do they know someone that has a project or do they not know someone that has a project, right?

I'm gonna really focus on those relationships this week And so yeah, just having a way to manage it having a way to see it I think is the most important thing but like those are the things you want to lean into and then obviously You The second you hear about a project that kind of becomes your priority as a solo architect, right? And if you hear about an opportunity, you want to be leaning into those.

Now, at the same time, you've definitely like the higher priority always is going to be anything that's in your sales pipeline, right? So the distillery project, the developer project, those are higher priorities than anything that's happening in your leads right now, because those are the closest to the money, so to say, right? Like those are like, there's. There's scope to be had there. There's revenue to be made. on your part, there's problems to be solved. there's an actual project.

And so it's easy. I think when they're in that sales pipeline and the project isn't moving forward, it's easy to forget about them. But those are really like, those are your warmest ones. And I think your goal with any of those is always going to be to get to a decision as soon as possible. You want to keep that sales cycle I don't want to say as short as possible, but you want it to be healthy, right? Like you don't want your sales cycle to be 90 days for you as a solo art.

that's just too long from the time that you have your first discussion and you learn that there's a project at the time where they on average signed the contract. Like for you, I'm assuming you probably want to be closer to 30. you want this process to happen within a month, right? And so your goal is probably always be to shorten that in a sense, right? and, keep the project moving forward and understand what their timeline is and at least get, you want to get a decision made.

So I think that's your goal with the distillery and the development project too. Like you, you don't want to be hopeful for something that's not going to fall into place. you want to be able to plan for something that is going to happen. so

It's the emotional, it's the mental. It's you're, there's a lot going on there that you're keeping this in the back of your head as someone that you need to connect with, that you're someone you could potentially go and do something with. And, as we all know, we've got a lot going on. So I guess that's all part of the sales management process.

And so for you, figure out what that is, however many hours you're willing to work a week. If that is 40, then you want to make sure that, you basically have 32 hours a week to devote to work because you want to leave eight hours for business development.

Thought about the marketing side of things where I have made a big push on that obviously recently But I also want to keep certain things moving, and keep awareness and engagement active

the hats right now. And

the goal should always be to find the best fit for your company and for your services, and that will provide the most value to your team and your clients. Really. So

it. And so as things start to, progress for myself, with a couple of these projects coming in and me wanting to, Put myself on more value work. And then that is meeting, getting people in, building the pipeline, all that stuff, it's about, delegating that out to potentially, remote teams and stuff like that. So that, cause I, right now, as you're a startup, you need to keep lean and, you want to keep the expenses as low as possible.

And so, you know, there's a lot of play there, but I feel like that's the way you can get from, you can grow the business seeing it with a few friends of mine that are a few steps ahead, you know, let's say three projects come on and I'm, doing all of them, some help with a contractor or something, freelance, whatnot, you just get caught up in this cycle for about, a year of getting through the work and the paperwork's just building.

And at the same time, it's Is you're, then you come out the other end. So I'm just trying to preempt this kind of journey that's, I'm going to go on and how to start to have something in it, some team that's working that works for me, that understands, a bit about my process and, can be there and I feel is like effective, right?

in reality, that just wasn't like, the technical part is not something that I love. that's not an aspect of architecture that I ever found that appealing. and so it was always a trudge for me to get through that. And when it comes to delegation, I forget there, there's a few different models for it, but there was one that I recently heard about, when I was in a group, like cohort call and it was essentially, it was like four quadrants, right? But there's things that you're good at.

There's, the dichotomy is like, things that you're good at and things that you're not good at, right? And then there's things that you like to do and things that you don't like to do. things that you're good at and things that you like to do, best case, that is the best quadrant, you want to maintain those things. But the first things that you want to start to delegate are the things that you're not good at and the things that you don't like to do.

So if you have that quadrant set up for all of the work that you do, and you have those four quadrants, things I like to do, things I'm good at, things I like to do, but I'm not good at things I don't like to do, but I'm good at and things I don't like to do. And I'm bad at that bottom quadrant, that's the first one you want to tackle. Delegate that out immediately. And so for me, like I'm now able to do that now, because for me immediately I'm running my own business.

Bookkeeping and accounting.

I think if you lean on yourself, especially since you're small, like you should be leaning on your mental capacity a little bit. So don't feel so bogged down by the common titles of architecture. That's like, do I need a designer? Do I need a project manager? Do I need this? So no, don't think about that. Think about think about that quadrant. What are the things that I need to get off of my plate that I don't enjoy doing?

Work with different people. There's always people you can call upon and all that stuff. And I think it's just interesting as you start to go through the steps, where is it necessary to bring that in for that bit of like focused support, or selective, and I can carry the certain amounts of it and everything.

So it's just something I'm definitely considering and having some conversations around at the moment around what that looks like and getting ahead of it and not like last minute panicking to try and get someone in, Yeah. Yeah.

So you said you got 10 or 15, I don't know what happened with those other replies. It sounds like one turned into an opportunity, but those other ones, I don't know if those are conversations that are continuing or if it was just more like a support, like, Hey, great to hear, glad you're excited. there's still 70 other people that maybe didn't respond.

And this is specifically, if you're working backwards from cold outreach for you, for warm outreach, it should probably just a little bit shorter. but you should consider that kind of sequencing with your warm email. One email going to be enough as we found out for 75 percent of people, right? So a quick followup, that's just something like, Hey, any thoughts or, Hey, just want to make sure you saw this. Just a one sentence email. And maybe that's, 10 of them that you're sending a day.

Hey, curious if you have any thoughts, right now could be good and you'll probably get another, trickle in there. You'll get more responses for sure, but you'll get, maybe there's one or two other opportunities that are hiding in plain sight. You just want to make sure that you're following up and warming those up for you. let's talk about London. Yeah.

how adapt my services to situate different situations? I, obviously it's just going to be a discovery call. It's going to be figuring out what it is and it's early days, but I think for certain people, I've started to think about, is there a lighter engagement services that you can offer that hey, maybe this person only has. The ability to do a week's of work, you know, like maybe I can only do a week with this person or put together a smaller package.

I'm just thinking of if there's smaller ways of engaging people in, or maybe that work is not worthwhile going after it. It's a separate thing now, but anyway, I don't know what this is, where this is leading, but it just got me thinking about offering, my service offerings. And can they, do a day with me or can you do, lighter engagements.

And they're like foot in the door packages that you can put together if you find yourself You know, I wouldn't do it unless you get a clear indication from your market But this is now the second this is now the second kind of residential project in europe that's come your way and in the last month or so and so I do think you know having an ear out for what those issues are and it'll be important to be mindful of What it is that people are looking for because maybe there is kind a low cost high

value offer and the point of a low cost high value offer isn't A one and done situation. It's just a foot in the door, right? It's to overcome that initial hesitancy that for example, residential clients will usually have, because they're less used to, how this process works And so they might be more hesitant to make a large investment up front or something like that. So low cost, high value offer is just.

It's a way for you to do what is, a relatively simple and easy process for you, but it offers them a lot of value. So that's like a concept design package for example. It could be something like that. that they pay for, 5, 000 or something. And that includes you flying out, or maybe it probably had to be higher than that, 10, 000 or something that includes you flying out. And then you put together a concept with a certain amount of renderings and these different things.

And if they want to move forward, then they even get a discount, you know, if they do choose to move forward with the rest of the project or something like that, And so I think, that's generally the way I would treat it. I think you want to avoid setting yourself up for one off things where it's like, Oh, I'm just trying to get. I'm trying to get 10, 10 people to pay me 10, 000. because that's a, lot of, that's a lot of, management for you.

But whatever that number is I think you have to decide like what's the minimum amount that you can accept right now to take your attention away from all the other things that you're working on. And my guess is that probably is somewhere around 10 right. for a