“You need to bring in work.”
Stay in engineering long enough, and you’ll be told this is what you need to do next to move up, particularly if you are in either a small firm or a civil-engineering related field.
For many engineers considering starting their own firms or making a move to an ownership level, this thought acts as the barrier to keep you stuck in a job you don’t love instead of forging a new path.
Other engineers recognize that there is a pattern to those least likely to be laid off in economic downturns – the ones with the client contacts! – and decide to start learning these skills to protect themselves.
Whatever the case is for you, a feeling of dread and the sick feeling in your gut at the mere thought of “bringing in work” is universal when you hear or think it, especially for the first time.
You imagine yourself transforming into the engineering equivalent of a used calls salesperson, which is not at all what you envisioned when you decided to go for that leadership position.
Cold sweat breaks out on your forehead as it sinks in you may have to attend networking events and make connections with strangers.
You shutter as you think about your last bad experience with a salesperson.
Once you’ve had a moment to absorb the idea, the next thing that happens is an avalanche of overwhelming doubt:
How I am going to bring in work? I don’t know how to do that.
I’m not going to be good at this. I’m an introvert and not a natural networker.
Am I going to become one of those annoying people that requests a connection on LinkedIn, then immediately follows up with a sales pitch? No one likes them.
I don’t have the connections to do this.
I wonder if another job exists where I don’t need to do this.
This sounds like an impossible task better left to someone else.
You’re far from the first to have this experience. You’re stepping out of your comfortable technical zone, which by definition is, well……uncomfortable.
But just like engineering school, the skills you need can be learned.
Today, I’ll share why engineers struggle with business development and specific strategies you can use to start the process, even if you’ve never done it before, aren’t a networker, or are an introvert. They can be used by anyone at any career level, but work best with 5+ years of technical experience.
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Engineering education and early-to-mid career development are woefully inadequate on the profession’s business aspects
Many college majors (not just engineering) are taught in a bubble that does not give due time (or respect) to the business and financial aspects of the industry.
It was a running joke in my college engineering program that whomever couldn’t hack it engineering moved to school of business. For many engineers, the only time business topics such as schedule and budget were covered are within a single class specific to those topics or within a capstone project.
An engineer’s early years of employment are largely focused on the technical, further cementing the illusion that technical competence is the primary driver of an engineers’ continued employment.
To be clear – I am not at all implying you can be an incompetent. Technical competence is definitely important. However, the view of engineering as a purely technical field made for those gifted in science and math - which is usually how engineering is presented to potential engineers in school - is fundamentally flawed.
This flawed mindset creates a bias among many engineers that the technical part of engineering is “pure” and of more worth than the business side, which is further perpetuated in college by some faculty who have had limited experience in the real world of engineering outside of academia.
We see the outcomes of this bias on message boards deriding engineering management, in the lack of recognition that young engineers demonstrating leadership skills experience, and in the lack of training new engineering managers receive.
It even shows up in the language we use around the skillsets required to be successful in building relationships with clients. We call those skills “soft skills”, as if they didn’t have HARD financial and career consequences for getting/keeping a job and becoming an engineering leader.
There is irony in the fact that if the work of an engineer didn’t make employers money, no engineers would have a job.
It is also my belief that the business side of engineering is more difficult to master than the technical aspects, because it involves people who are not nearly as predictable as engineering outputs.
This isn’t purely an education issue, however.
As evidenced by the general lack of salary and financial transparency across the engineering industry, it behooves many organizations to keep their engineers in the dark as to the direct financial impacts of the engineers’ outputs. This can be for many reasons: not wanting that information to get into the hands of competitors, an organization with a strong hierarchical structure (which often encourages information-hoarding between various levels), or even managers who only assign technical work to new engineers because that’s what their manager did.
When all of these factors are taken together, it’s little wonder that when engineers are told to bring in work and participate in business development activities, they experience feelings of doubt and don’t know where to start.
Learn the Skills You Need for Business Development
The solution is to study and practice these skills.
Embrace learning the business side of the industry as part of the capabilities you need to rise from just a capable to an extraordinary engineer, one who can command higher salaries, better projects, and even start their own firm if desired.
While an engineering degree didn’t teach you the exact skills needed to understand business basics, it DID teach you how to learn, which you can apply here:
Learning the skills needed to build client relationships and bring in work is no different, they are just different skills you haven’t learned YET.
5 Ways to Apply Your Problem-Solving Skills To Business Development
First, it’s important to understand that there is no “quick fix”. Building relationships requires caring, not just a transaction. People do business with people they trust and who provide them value. Providing value is something every engineer can do no matter their level of experience.
Just like you wouldn’t be expected to manage your first engineering project the day after your college graduation, learning how to build and cultivate client relationships is not something you can be effective at overnight.
It requires time, effort, and energy to cultivate those relationships. There’s an art to it, but there’s also a high amount of process when done effectively. Here are 5 specific strategies to use to get started.
#1 Define Expectations
Business development starts with defining exactly what that means and what training is available. If you’ve been told you need to bring in work, have an explicit discussion about expectations related to bringing in work.
Things to discuss include:
What does success look like to the firm around “bringing in work?” Not all paying clients are desirable clients. The goal is to understand both financials and what type of client is the ideal/desired client FIRM WIDE (not just within the limited scope of your own projects.)
Under the 80/20 rule, 20% of existing clients are bringing in 80% of the revenue (and yes….this is true based on my own experience, in some cases it skews to 90/10. What that means to you is that you can bust your rear to bring in 80% of the work, but if those clients aren’t in the 20%, you’re doing a lot of extra effort. Who are those 20%, how is it best to access them, and how can you get more clients like them?
Is there a particular type of client that is currently the firm’s main focus/expertise?
Are their types or sectors of clients the firm wants to avoid?
What are the emerging client markets or sectors that firm leadership sees as valuable to pursue? What are your managers’ thoughts on how best to gain access to those markets
How is the idea that “your best client is the client you already have and love working with” incorporated into this process? What percentage of current client work is repeat work and how is that measured in the “bringing in work” metrics?
What resources, training, and 1:1 mentorship opportunities are available (and how do you get access to them)?
How many hours per week should I be focusing on bringing in work? Is it expected that this is done in addition to technical/project work?
How should this activity be prioritized as it relates to project work?
What about someone who is starting their own firm and doesn’t have an experienced person in house ask? Do your own market research, draw up a business plan and plan to invest money and time obtaining training. You do NOT want to leave this to chance, and you absolutely need a mentor here unless you’ve got money to burn in your business.
#2 Measure and Track Performance
Performance metrics should be discussed with your manager or someone with expertise in these types of metrics. They should be tracked, specific, measurable, and within your control to meet.
For example: “Attending x networking events per month” is specific, measurable, and within your control. In comparison, saying “Bring 50,000 worth of new work this month” is not.
Data is extremely important here. Your company should be tracking sales activities and win rate numbers, including the types of projects most likely to result in a win for the firm. Armed with enough data, you can pare it down into exactly what should be done to produce a reasonable expectation of the desired result by applying design thinking.
Let’s say a goal is set of bringing in 100,000 worth of work. The data may tell you: Doing 30 cold calls typically results in 10 leads, 5 proposals, and 1 winning bid. If the average winning bid is 50,000, then scheduling 60 cold calls is the reasonable first, measurable step that will allow you to meet the goal.
The data may also tell you that certain sectors are much more likely to result in wins than others.
#3 Thought Leadership
Some engineering sectors (especially outside of tech) have been slow to catch on to thought leadership. One glaring example in is within the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, where many firms still do not have a modern website or social media presence.
This is both a huge mistake for firms and a huge opportunity for younger, tech-savvy engineers to fast-track their rise.
Clients have the ability – especially in a virtual environment – to go beyond their local region to find the best firm to complete a project. The visibility of your thought leadership online matters and will continue to increase in relevance and drive project decisions moving forward.
If your firm is an expert in a particular type of project and you can’t tell it from a google search, that’s a ripe opportunity. Making that thought leadership visible to current and potential clients is one of the fastest paths to bringing in work.
Specific ways you can contribute to thought leadership (with permission from an employer, of course!) include:
Spotlight an interesting client on your website
Provide lunch and learn opportunities to clients (i.e. teach them something or otherwise share value)
Interview an existing or potential client on their topic of expertise for your firms’ website, blog, podcast, or video series
Present on technical topics of expertise at client events
#4 Find Networking Opportunities Authentic to You
Determine what type of networking opportunities are best for your personality and interests, and do that. The best type of networking is the type that you can both stick with consistently, and expands your network beyond your immediate reach (which tends to be limited to people similar to you in both world outlook, race, gender, geography, or other identifying factors)
Here’s a couple of ideas:
Virtual networking: LinkedIn is primary for many. Use whichever social media network where you are most likely to see client engagement related to the business.
In-person networking: networking events, volunteering in groups where clients congregate (especially for good causes), holding client appreciation events
Create an in-person or virtual group relevant to your industry and invite current and potential clients to the group where value is provided (do this in conjunction with thought leadership)
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#5 Schedule Networking Time
Networking time must be included in your schedule if you are expected to bring in work (and also as a general rule for everyone). Since you established expectations in #1, schedule the time allotted into your calendar, and make sure you spend it accordingly, no matter how tempting it may be to focus on a quick-win technical task with which you are more comfortable.
When starting out, an average of 15 minutes a day over the course of a month pays big dividends over time. Just remember to always network with the intent to add value, not to sell. You don’t want to be one of those annoying LinkedIn connections who makes a new connection with someone on Monday, and by Tuesday they’ve sent a request to meet to discuss a proposal. Everyone sees right through those types of transactional relationships.
Learning these skills is one of the few “shortcuts” available in a career path
An engineer with even minimal business savvy is the type of person who is going to negotiate their salary (because they understand how much they are REALLY worth to their organization), speak up for those high-profile projects, push back when they feel stuck doing work that isn’t tied to high-priority company initiatives and jump at the chance to build relationships with customers.
That’s how you fast track your own career path, and create a professional brand that is in high demand from engineering employers (and clients!), even in times of economic uncertainty.
