Around this time of year many marketing professionals are knee deep in planning and strategy meetings for 2025. What are your firm’s business development goals for the upcoming year? What tactics will best support your team? To answer these questions, it can be helpful to know what other firms are doing to calibrate your own efforts. Industry comparisons can help you make the case to implement new processes. They can also help you understand what your competition is doing to help spark ideas for differentiation.  

The Deltek Clarity survey and report is an excellent resource for architecture and engineering industry trends and practices. Each year, in collaboration with professional organizations (SMPS is one of them), Deltek conducts an industry survey of architecture and engineering firms and publishes the findings in five key areas:  project management, human capital management, financial management, tech trends, and business development. It’s a great place to gather ideas and can help you evaluate areas for improvement or growth – even if you are a department of one. 

Some of the top business development findings that may interest you: 

• Measuring client satisfaction: Of the 650 firms polled, around 44% measure client satisfaction in some way. Of those that do measure, 53% do so for strategic projects only and 45% for all projects. Does your firm measure client satisfaction, either formally or informally? If not, what could this process look like? Though you might not be the one to drive these conversations with clients, your insights can help shape this process.

• Business development model: Most firms (52%) rely on a combination of dedicated BD staff and seller/doers to bring in new business. Many (36%) rely solely on seller/doers to perform this key function. No matter the model, do your seller/doers have the resources and training they need to be successful? Do they know how to network, build relationships, and ask for work? For many people, business development is not an intuitive skill, and your insight on this topic could be super helpful. 

• Customer Relationship Management systems: The majority of firms (75%) use a CRM to manage business development processes. The remaining 25% don’t have a dedicated program or use Excel. If your firm is not utilizing a CRM, what kind of data are you missing out on? Are there incremental steps you can suggest to guide your firm along this path?

• Go/No Go processes: Almost half (45%) of firms employ a go/no go process for all opportunities while 20% don’t use one at all. The remaining firms polled use this process for strategic opportunities (26%) or new clients (8%) only. What are the advantages of using a formal process to assess opportunities? If you use a go/no go process, do the decision-makers honor the outcome? Using a go/no go process can help your firm allocate resources if your proposal team is stretched thin.

The Deltek Clarity survey and report is a critical resource to understanding how your firm compares to others on a range of topics. It provides insightful industry information to architecture and engineering firms looking to improve their business processes. I’m using the findings of this report to spark ideas and conversations with my leadership team about what we want – in 2025 and beyond. 

To download the full report and access recorded webinars on findings, please visit:

 https://www.deltek.com/en/architecture-and-engineering/clarity