Transcript: Have We Mislabeled the AEC Marketing Coordinator Role?

Is your job title, a marketing coordinator or a marketing manager. If so, how much of your time is actually spent on marketing versus putting together proposals? Leading capture plans, preparing for shortlist presentations. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Is the marketing coordinator or the marketing manager role at our AEC firms mislabeled? And is that mislabeling really affecting the ability of our AEC firms to recruit great talent and retain great talent.

And I have a special guest on today, Tim Asimos. He’s a partner at circle S studio, and I’ve known him for gosh, almost 10 years now. And he talked about future proofing your job at SMPS central Florida chapter event, years and years ago. And it’s been noodling on my mind ever since. and especially since I came to work over at Full Sail Partners and marketing in my world. And so, it really got me thinking. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today is this idea of a marketing coordinator role and maybe a proposal coordinator role and are we mislabeling or misaligning roles and how that’s hurting our AEC firms. So, I can’t wait for you to listen to it.

Lindsay: Okay. So today I have Tim Asimos. He’s a partner at Circle S Studio. And while he normally is helping firms with website development, content marketing, that’s not what we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be talking about… this role of the marketing coordinator. but before we get to that, Tim, thanks for being here with me today. I know you and I go way back on the SMPs conference circuit. and we finally got a chance to sit down and do a podcast episode. So, thanks for being here today.

Tim: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be part of your wonderful podcast.

Lindsay: And so, before we get into today’s topic, can you tell our listeners if they don’t know who you are, a little bit about yourself, your career path and how you help firms today?

Tim: Man. Great question. Um, my career path is, I wouldn’t say atypical, but, uh, I I’ve definitely had an interesting career path, uh, would not have thought it would have gone the way that it did, but every step along the way has been beneficial to the next step. So, I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. So currently I’m at Circle S Studio, I’m a partner there. We’re a marketing, branding, digital agency. We help, firms with, their brands, with their websites, with their marketing strategy, content marketing, kind of anything and everything where we kind of serve as an, as a augmentation, uh, and an, and sort of a partner, an extension of marketing teams to sort of provide expertise that many firms just don’t have in-house and obviously we, we build a ton of websites. Right. And I love websites on the digital director. So, you’re right. I talk about websites all the time and, and content marketing. We do a lot of that, as well. But I think what makes me a little unique, is that I haven’t always been on the agency side. I’ve been with Circle S since 2012 and prior to joining Circle S I actually was with a civil engineering firm for six years. Before that I was in, I was in media and advertising. always knew I would end up with an agency. I started out, in college with an internship at an agency, and I knew that was where I wanted to go, ended up in media and saw this job posting for a corporate marketing manager at an engineering firm and thought, oh man, that’s cool. That’s marketing. I’m ready to move into management. So ended up getting that job. And I literally had no idea what I was getting myself into, what I was walking into. I had zero idea. I mean, I was like completely clueless.

Tim: I just got my MBA. I had all these great marketing ideas. I was ready to get creative. I was ready to get strategic and wow, it was a bit of a culture shock for, for about five and a half of the six years. I’m just kidding. No, but for at least the first six months, I was just like drinking from a fire hose and kind of trying to figure it out but that work, with that engineering firm, when I left there, I had no idea that I was going to go work with an agency and be a consultant for AEC firms. I literally thought the day I left that firm, I thought. I’m about to just bookshelf, a lot of useless information that I’m never going to need again.

Tim: And,

Lindsay: All that, all those acronyms.

Tim: Yeah, you know, I was just talking to a friend the other day, we coached baseball together and he, he’s an electrical engineer and he was talking about SF three thirties. And I’m like the fact that I even know what you’re talking about, and GSA schedules and other friend is in IT. And he was talking about, I’m trying to get a GSA schedule. I’m like, yep. I’ve done that. And he’s like, really? I was like, yeah, man, I’ve got so much crazy stuff in my brain from those six years, but no, it makes my ability to connect and engage and to understand our engineering and architecture and construction clients. I mean, it’s just like, it’s priceless. I mean, within, within minutes, principals of these firms are like, okay, this guy gets it. You know, this from this agency gets it. We don’t have to teach them the basics, like they have a very short learning curve. And so, I’m able to have a lot of conversations now that I’m on the agency side with firms that I could have never had if I had just come to the agency side. So, yeah. So that’s a little bit about my, dotted line sort of career. Definitely not a linear movement, but it’s been good.

Lindsay: Yeah. This idea for this episode has been like burrowing in my mind, you know, you and I were talking before we hit record. I think, I saw you present several years ago at the central Florida SMPS, ahead, spring education event about was something about future-proofing your career. I think that’s what you remembered title being, you spoke about this idea. Of marketing skills or skillsets marketers are going to need the future.

Tim: Yeah.

Lindsay: And it wasn’t all about proposals.

Tim: Yeah.

Lindsay: In fact, none of it was about proposals. And so that got my wheels spinning. you know, cause I think by default almost every AEC firm uses the term marketing coordinator or marketing manager. But they might not be doing just marketing or what other industries consider marketing. So, do you see our industry or the AEC industry? you know, how do you think that they get it wrong between, you know, what they call sales or business development and marketing?

Tim: This is a great question and probably have like a series of podcasts episodes to fully deal with all of the nuances of it, but I’ll, I’ll be succinct for the sake of you and your listeners. But so, I kinda share this joke. Sometimes the first two questions I asked on my first day with the engineering firm, the first one was why do we spend $25,000 a year with yellow pages? For the younger listeners, you don’t even know what that is for those my age or older. You’re like, dang. Yeah. I don’t know why we did either. They didn’t have a good answer. So, we canceled that pretty quickly. And the second question was, why are marketing people doing proposals? And I got some interesting looks. I got some crickets and honestly, that’s a question I’ve been asking since 2006, right? I think that there are, there’s a lot of misconceptions the industry at large. Now and all of the great marketing folks like yourself have been the calls and trying to reeducate firm leaders about marketing and business development. But I think largely it’s been a very misunderstood thing. think that marketing was just kind of anything and everything in any way, shape or form was done to try to help the firm promote their name and get more business. And some of it was marketing and PR and brand, but a lot of it was just like and trying to win work. And I just think that if I’m a young major fresh out of school, not unlike when I saw the job, I just thought, Ooh, marketing. And they come in and I think quickly they’re like, Dang. I don’t really get to do marketing or rarely, or man we’re having to like push and fight to convince the leadership that we should be doing marketing things that it doesn’t seem like it should be a hard sell to convince them to let marketing do marketing.

Lindsay: It sounds so obvious. So, for maybe of those who might not know what are some of the differences between I’m going to put, I’m going to say business development slash sales, because in every other industry it’s called sales

Tim: Right.

Lindsay: and marketing. What are those differences between those maybe roles or responsibilities or tasks that they, they work on?

Tim: Yeah. Marketing and sales have been evolving a lot. In fact, I would say compared to when I started in the AEC industry in 2006 in the outside world, marketing and sales, those lines are blurred way more than they ever used to be. I think it’s because the roles have changed. I think it’s because buyers are more empowered to control more of the quote buyer’s journey and salespeople are really not as essential as they, maybe once were. Because all of us as consumers, we’re just used to, doing our own research. I mean, you, you know, these days you need to buy a car. If you can even find one, but these days, you know, you show up on the lot and you know exactly what car you’re buying, you know, what the number is, you know, what the cost is, and you’re just ready to deal. You don’t need the salesperson to tell you all about the car, right? Like that’s kind of the mentality that I think a lot of the AEC firms work with, that’s how they think. So, I think sales is all about closing a deal. It’s chasing an actual opportunity, building relationships with people on a one-to-one basis.

Tim: Whereas marketing is more about, building the brand, educating and informing in advance of a proposal in advance of an RFP. Like I, I think in a perfect world scenario, your firm is already known or as invited to an RFP because marketing has done great work to pre-position your firm in advance of a very specific pursuit. So, this may be a long-winded way to answer your question.

Tim: but I think the idea is marketing sets the ground to build that foundational knowledge and awareness and understanding, and the thought leadership and position the firm and the mind of potential clients. So that when there is an RFP. You’re top of mind so that when there is an RFP, you’re the one of the firms that they want to consider.

Tim: That’s exactly how it works in retail, right? When you need a car or you need to buy, a washing machine or a refrigerator, we had someone in an office have to buy one. You’ve got a handful of brands that exist in your mind because they’ve done marketing and branding to put it there. so, I think that’s what marketing is supposed to be all about is building that brand awareness and generating that top of mindness so that the sales or the business development people can do their job. Does that, does that make sense?

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So where in your mind, I’m going to throw a question at you. Where does the like actual, I know the majority of the marketers and myself too, when I was in, in marketing, in-house at a firm spend 90% of their time putting together proposals. Or practicing shortlist presentations or, just everything having to do with a pursuit, whether it’s capture planning, putting together the proposal, putting together a shortlist presentation. Does that fall under marketing or does that fall under umbrella of business development slash sales, your opinion?

Tim: Yeah. Great question. So, in virtually every other industry on the planet proposals are a product of the sales department, not the marketing. It is really unique to AEC that, I mean, like you were talking about capture planning that that is 100% about sales. That is business development, as it could possibly get. A proposal it’s a sales proposal. An interview is a sales pitch. I think part of the reason is for one reason or another, I think it goes back actually, historically I’ve seen the SMPs history, where at one point like architecture wasn’t allowed, it was illegal to advertise and things like that. So, I do think it goes back historically where they didn’t want to call it sales because it was almost like you weren’t supposed to be selling if you were a professional services firm. But again, that’s what it is. You can call it business development, you can call it client development, you can call it whatever you want. At the end of the day, it functions very much, it’s sales. And pulling together a proposal, pulling together a pitch, which is what an interview is, that’s a sales that’s not marketing, that’s sales. At that point, you’re responding to a very specific client over a very specific sales opportunity to try to ultimately close a deal that is sales. And I think it’s just been mislabeled as marketing, because a lot of business developers are really relationship builders. Right?

Tim: And they’re seller doers. So, it’s part of their job. It’s not their full-time job. And a lot of full-time business development people are really just full-time relationship builders because they’re not the ones doing the proposals. They’re not the ones doing the interviews. They’re just kind of making connections, making introductions. Again, don’t miss hear me. They play a valuable role.

Lindsay: Right. Right. And they might contribute to the proposal or bring insight into the proposal, but they’re not like physically, oftentimes physically putting it together.

Tim: Right. But in other industries that salesperson that’s been working that lead all these months, all these years, they’d absolutely be the one delivering the proposal. They’d absolutely be the one in the pitch, in the meetings trying to close the deal. And they’d be the ones getting sort of that, the bonus check when they brought the deal in. And that’s just how it works in every other industry.

Tim: So, I think because in many firms and I say many because the tide has turned. I mean, the, the things I used to feel like I had to get preachy about like years ago, when you and I met, speaking, I don’t have to preach that sermon anymore. Everyone gets it. And firms are, the tide is turning, the ship is turning around. It’s there’s improvement. So, more and more firms are getting it. But I do still think largely again, business development is viewed as the relationship building and marketing is viewed as that sales support. And I just think that is that isn’t, that is not defining the sales function properly completely redefining what marketing is. Period. Especially in every other industry, how it’s kind of treated.

Lindsay: Yeah. And I think this is a good time to talk because also like what we were talking about before we hit record, everybody’s hiring, right? You’re hiring, our firms hiring. I was looking for marketing staff. Let’s just say marketing staff right now. So, this mislabeling of let’s just call it the generic marketing coordinator role or marketing manager role. How do you think this is affecting recruitment and retention at AEC firms?

Tim: That’s a great question. So, when I was on the client side, when I was, uh, marketing at an engineering firm, I quickly learned that I really had to look for marketing coordinators that had previously worked in other firms because whenever I would interview someone who was from another industry? Not only did I realize that I had a steep learning curve in order to train them how to basically do proposals and submit AE forms and SF3-30’s. I realized that when they would inquire about the role and the job, like there was just like, almost like a silence around what they’d actually be doing. Because if you’re someone coming from a marketing role in another industry and you’re doing brand work and you’re doing promotions and you’re doing content creation and you’re really focused on, you know, marketing communications and branding. To find out that you’d be essentially responding to RFPs day in and day out as 95% of your job. That’s a deal breaker for a lot of people.

Lindsay: Well, yeah, it’s just not what they’re interested in.

Tim: Totally, and I, I, I know other people that have been burned out because they got sold a job saying, oh, you’re 80% focused on marketing communications and your like proposal overflow. And what ends up happening is they become 80% proposals and 20% marketing. I mean, I have a client right now. I will not name them, but like their title, their role, they’re supposed to be focused solely on marketing communications. They have a team, a very large team that does proposals, and yet this person still constantly gets roped into other things. And it takes their time and attention and effort, not only away from what they were hired to do and what their function exists to do, but also what their passionate

Lindsay: Yeah.

Tim: about. And so, it leads to burnout. It leads to sort of a lack of job satisfaction. And I think that I’m seeing some really great marketers leave the industry. And either jumped to the agency side or jump to a completely different industry because after a while you just get kind of tired of fighting the battle that no marketers should ever have to fight in the first place. Convincing leadership that they should be doing actual marketing, that they should invest in their brand, that they should invest in their website, that they should create content to generate thought leadership and to put their name on the map. Like that just shouldn’t be a conversation that anyone has to actually have with intelligent business minded people. But for some strange reason in this industry, there’s just a fair number of leaders that they still haven’t changed their view of marketing the way that I know a lot of us, you and me and lots other SMPSers have been trying to get them to see the world differently.

Lindsay: Yeah. And you talked about we’re losing great marketers. I will say, you know, it’s not all, I think there is some part of our industry that maybe gets a little bit better. And I would say that’s the construction side. Because in construction firms, just the nature of their bids, they usually have, especially the larger firms, have pre-construction departments and they’re really putting together the bids marketing might get involved for some of the ones that, you know, our best value or, you know, have some qualification or design build. But I know I had a senior marketing coordinator who was awesome, who came to my architecture firm from a construction firm. And she only stayed in maybe like two or three years and she went back to construction because she missed all the marketing. She was doing proposals.

Tim: Yeah.

Lindsay: And she was called a senior marketing coordinator and she missed doing all the brand stuff. And all of the, you know, the, the websites, the graphics, the actual marketing activities. And so, when you said that great marketers are leaving, luckily, she stayed within the industry. She just went back to construction, but that’s

Tim: Yeah.

Lindsay: think of that. So, maybe I don’t, I don’t know all construction firms, but it seems like when I talk to marketers who work at construction firms, they’re a little bit more involved. They just don’t have as many proposal efforts that take as much as their time. Maybe.

Tim: Absolutely. That’s a great point. And before I follow up to that point, I do want to say for your listeners, I don’t think I’ve said this… The person who creates proposals that responds to RFPs that comes up with capture plans that builds out interview presentations is immensely valuable to the firm. Like I am not in any way diminishing the necessity and the value that, those people bring. So, by saying that isn’t marketing, that isn’t a jab that isn’t saying that you’re somehow performing a lesser duty, I’m just kind of trying to properly define what marketing is and what sales is and where, where that divide is off. So, I just kind of wanted to put that out there as a disclaimer.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a great point. In fact, sales, I mean, you said earlier, like the sales is closing the deal. That’s like the important part is getting those deals closed.

Tim: Right. Well, and truthfully, the people that do proposals all day, you can demonstrate ROI a lot better than us pure marketers, right? You can say what your hit rate is. You can say, you know what your hit rate and a proposal. I mean, it gets you to the table. It’s not all on you, but on you, right? I mean, a great proposal, gets them to the table. Now it’s up to the professionals to do the right thing in the interviews, to win the job, but still you can be connected directly to a lot of revenue and feel really good about what you’ve done. for your firm. But it’s an interesting point you make. So, always a little controversial, for me to talk about, but I’ll share it cause you, you open up this door, you know, I think if I look at AEC and if you had to ask me like, okay, well, who does it better? Who gets a little better? I would agree generally that construction has a little better handle on it. I would say those size of the firm matters, um, really small construction firms. They barely have marketing. They’ve been really successful without a lot of marketing. I think the mid-size to larger firms are the ones that have pretty powerful marketing teams. We have construction clients where they’re marketers there, they don’t do proposals.

Tim: So. They do brand and content and promotion and advertising and campaigns. And, you know, they’re, they’re the ones experimenting with some cool digital advertising and things like that, that we’re doing. I will say though, I’ll always have a little place in my heart for engineering firms because I worked at one for six years, but I’ve been impressed with engineering firms in the last couple of years. Engineering firms, I am seeing them really start to get it in a big way.

Lindsay: yeah. I think COVID helped

Tim: yeah.

Lindsay: With everything shutting down and people having to just being willing to try new things, because there was nothing else going on.

Tim: Yeah. Well, and here’s the thing, the talent war, the talent shortage, the great resignation, all those things. If the conversation I’m having, if I’ve conversation, once I’ve added a hundred times, That’s the reason why firms are doubling down on their brand. They’re doubling down on their website.

Tim: They’re pushed to do bigger, better things with marketing, because they’re recognizing that to stand out. To win talent, to get people even to come to their site and to fill out a resume and to apply online. They need to do a better job marketing as an employer. And so, it isn’t necessarily driven as much by the need to engage potential clients. Although I think that that’s going be eventually, they’re going to realize that they’re going to have to work harder in that regard as well. But I think it’s the talent war. That’s really been what has caused this seismic shift in engineering firms. Of the three, I would say architecture, marketers have the biggest challenge. And I say that with an asterisk, like, I’m not I’m broad stroking there. I’m sure there’s plenty of innovative architecture firms. I just think the nature of architecture being a design-oriented profession, and architects probably consider themselves to be creative people. I’m sure they all do right. Marketing’s a creative sort of function. So, I, I just think that there’s a little, it can be a little bit more of a challenge. Architecture firms are not necessarily the ones I see lining up to get super innovative with, with marketing, at least not investing the same level of dollars that you’re seeing from engineering firms, and construction firms.

Lindsay: Right, and construction firms. We talked so far about you know, kind of the differences between marketing and sales and maybe how things are misaligned right now, or mislabeled, I guess I should say. They’re aligned right but we’re calling them the wrong things and it could be hurting recruiting and probably definitely hurting retainage our marketing coordinators. So based on, you know, you’ve worked on the agency side, you work with other industries, so your firm works with not only AEC firms, but other industries as well. What are your thoughts on how these, you know, particularly the people putting together proposals, the people that are, closing the deals, know, supporting, the teams that are closing the sales for our firms. How, how should they be aligned or labeled or what should they be called based on the other industries that you work in?

Tim: Yeah, great question. I think based on what other industries do. If someone is dedicated to proposals, at least if it’s 75% or more of their duty, then the word marketing should not be in their title. Proposal manager, proposal coordinator, proposal specialists, sales specialist, sales support manager, sales support specialist, pursuit manager, pursuit, specialist, anything like that. Client development specialist, client development coordinator. You know, whatever your vernacular that your firm’s comfortable with, it just shouldn’t be marketing, right. It

Lindsay: Yeah.

Tim: it’s not marketing and it’s really not helpful for recruitment and it’s not helpful for firms that are trying to, especially if you’re a marketing director. You’re a CMO and you’re listening to my voice right now. Like this doesn’t help you long-term to perpetuate confusion around what marketing, what marketing isn’t. Because again, I know this one client, have one marcomm person, marketing communications. They’ve got like 10 others that do proposals, but they all have marketing in the title. So, when they say we need more marketing support, they’re like, you got 12 people over there. It’s like, yeah but 11 of them do proposals. Yeah, but that’s marketing people. you’re, you’re, you’re shooting yourself they’re like, it’s not the same thing. This person’s drowning trying to execute all of these communication and content marketing strategies that don’t have the support for but if you look on paper, it looks like the marketing teams huge. Really, it’s a marketing team of one and a half and a proposal team of 10. Right. So, I think that hurts marketing leaders in the long run when they don’t properly kind of, designate those roles. I think the larger firms should have someone who oversees a proposal team that is sort of like a pursuits manager, director of pursuits and their job is like, oh, oversee think again, there are some amazing marketing directors, senior marketers in, in the world of AEC and SMPS but they’ve had to figure out how to be really great at overseeing the proposal world and oversee marketing and oversee public relations and oversee content marketing now in the last 10 years and oversee digital. And it’s just a lot of a leader be great at all that I really think it should be separated out and handled completely differently. It should be its own team.

Lindsay: Well, and I think too, to go with your point of like resources, I know at my last firm I would track, you know, that’s how I, I mean, even though we still called them, Marketing coordinators in senior Marine coordinators they work side by side with their market sector directors

Tim: Right.

Lindsay: for pursuits. And I was able to justify hiring more because I looked in our pipeline and I said, okay, well, our pipeline by 25%. I need another body. I need another full-time equivalent. And so, I think it ties the resources closer to revenue when you call them proposal managers or pursuit managers or proposal specialists, to which I think it makes it easier when you’re going to your CEO or your COO and say, I need more, any more staffing, I need more resources.

Tim: Yeah. And while we’re at it, incentivize those people, like their bonuses should be tied to, to some of those things. If the firm is hugely successful and they played a role in some of these big deals, they’re firm landed like, you know, they sh they should get a piece of that. They should, they should have some extra compensation because they were part of that team. And I think handling it like a team, a pursuit team where you got the same coordinator, handling the capture plan, handling the RFP process, the proposal, the interview, and all of that. Like that person should be experiencing all the fruits of their labor because they played an important role in helping the firm bring that deal in this.

Lindsay: Yeah. I think too, by, you know, taking the word marketing out. If their sole responsibility isn’t marketing. that doesn’t mean they can’t support marketing or help out with stuff, but if their sole responsibility or their, their major responsibilities, or most of their time is spent on proposals

Lindsay: Yeah.

Lindsay: By taking that word marketing out of their title, you know, I’ve been talking, you know, since I’ve been doing the podcast, there’s this whole other world of proposals that is outside of AEC, like that are federal contract proposal managers, for other services. Especially if just with federal contracting. And so those people know how to put together proposals. Now, it might not be for a roadway design, but they know the proposal management process.

Lindsay: And so maybe they’re looking just for a different opportunity in a different industry. And so, but they’re probably looking for something that has the word proposal in it or sales.

Tim: Or contract specialist or something.

Lindsay: Contract specialist Yeah. They’re definitely not looking for anything market that says marketing coordinator.

Tim: Right. That’s a great point. That’s a really great point. So yeah, if your firm is having a hard time hiring marketing coordinators, because you need proposal, people you’ve missed because you’ve mislabeled it. Like to your point, you’re, you’re missing out on a market that could easily transfer their skills from another industry.

Tim: because I mean, let’s face it at the end of the day. I understand that there is creativity. There’s a lot of smart marketers, in this world of AEC and SMPS that, brings a lot of creativity in marketing to the proposals, but largely responding to an RFP is a very much it’s a very task oriented administrative checking, a box, following the guidelines, making sure that you’ve given them exactly what they’re asking for. And the creativity is involved. Now, I think that marketing could support proposals with graphics. And, you know, having a good brand and, and thinking through, you know, the way that it’s bound up and the way it looks, and it gets presented, but largely, a lot of proposals, especially in the state and federal world. There’s just not a lot of creativity, you get to add to them, and you got to just follow those instructions to a T, get disqualified.,

Tim: yeah.

Lindsay: that, and just like project managing the process, managing the process internally

Tim: Yeah,

Lindsay: the parts and pieces.

Tim: absolutely.

Lindsay: that’s a skill. that definitely is transferable from, you know, proposal and contract managers from other industries into ours

Tim: Yeah.

Lindsay: So.

Tim: I’m curious too, for you, what you think? from my experience, I’ve rarely talked to someone who does proposals all day. And doesn’t feel either that they love it or that they, they only do it to get to all the other things that they really want to do. Like, I don’t know many people that have said, oh, I wish half my job was pure marketing. And the other half was proposals because I’d still love proposals. But I also love marketing. I feel like you have a lot of people that they love one or the other. Not that proposal folks don’t want to be occasionally involved, but you know, a good that’s why I’ve always said, man, a good proposal writer is worth their weight because they are a gem because they love it and you know, they’re strange birds because they love proposals and the rest of the marketing coordinators are like, just get it over with I’m ready to get to some marketing. So.

Lindsay: yeah. And they’re fun to have drinks with. Usually, the stories that they tell

Tim: Oh, yeah. Hey, uh, we’re going to go after this. It’s due tomorrow morning and we have a 0% chance of winning, but we’re going to go after it anyway.

Tim: Uh, yeah. Oh, and the go no-go form. I overrode that because I’m a principal. So, forget your form you’re go no-go process.

Lindsay: yeah. so, but I think the, the key takeaways here, I think that you and I are both saying is that marketing and proposals are, both. They’re separate skillsets, both valuable to our firms and by mixing them up or blurring the, just what we call the people that do either, or it’s, I think it’s really hurting firms.

Tim: yeah.

Lindsay: I kind of it in a nutshell.

Tim: Yeah. I, I, think that it’s, the, the vision and the goals of a marketing leader, I think this is counter to them achieving their ultimate vision in building out a true marketing, strategic marketing function. And yeah, it hurts recruitment. It hurts retention. And I think it’s allowed marketing to have, to have a harder battle on a lot of things related to resources and budget and people that they wouldn’t have to have if things were a little more separated and more properly defined and designated, I think that kind of summarizes the gist of our conversation.

Lindsay: Yeah. Okay. So, before we leave today, I’m going to ask you the rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

Tim: Yes.

Lindsay: Okay. Question number one. What is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to the AEC industry? And I guess it could be marketers or proposal coordinator.

Tim: Ah, yeah. Right. man, I honestly, this is probably the best piece of advice. I give it to anyone in any industry, which is. The best way to grow vertically is the grow horizontally. What do I mean by that? Grow beyond your job description. Like obviously looked for promotions will come. Advancement will come when you quickly realize, get competence with your job description and grow horizontally, take on things that aren’t your responsibility. That aren’t anyone’s responsibility. Look for opportunities to kind of grow out horizontally that will definitely lead to vertical growth and opportunities. Climbing the ladder.

Lindsay: I love that. I love that. I haven’t had anybody answer that yet. Like give that answer. So, I love it.

Tim: Cool

Lindsay: Question number two. What has been your favorite or most memorable win?

Tim: That’s a good question. I know this sounds kind of cliche, but honestly like my wife and my two boys are my greatest prizes. So, yeah, they’re, um, I’m blessed and to, to be a husband and to be a father, and every day, you know, that they’re definitely my driving motivation to work hard and to have the opportunity to come home to them.

Lindsay: Okay question, last question for today. What are you excited about?

Tim: I’m just excited. Uh, circle S is growing, and engineering firms are just coming out of the woodwork to do some cool things that I would’ve never thought that we would be doing. Just yesterday got, got a green light on a really innovative website, doing some really cool things that I’ve been trying to get firms to do for years. And I finally got a taker, so I’m really excited about just the, the advancement and the innovation and the growth that I’m seeing. Like, we talked earlier, I’ve been sort of beating a drum for a lot of this stuff since forever. since I started speaking with SMPS back in 2013, and now it’s just cool to see that the industry really is progressing and, that firms are really starting to get it a whole lot more. So, I’m excited about that. And then I’m going to see you next month at the Southeastern regional conference. I’m going to get the keynote and I’m super excited about that opportunity. now just have to come up with a great presentation, but I’m working on that.

Lindsay: Love it. I can’t wait to see that. I can’t wait to just be at a conference in person again. So, I’m excited about that.

Tim: Yes.

Lindsay: And, and then last question for today, how can firms get ahold of you or how can folks get ahold of you to learn more about you or to work with circle S??

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. So, look me up on LinkedIn. Tim Asimos, I’m there. Circle S studio.com is our firm’s a website address. Oh, I’ve got a new website launch and really soon. And my email address is [email protected]. Just feel free to reach out and connect. If you have any follow-up questions or disagreements or debate you want to have with me, uh, hopefully I haven’t offended anyone. Hopefully everyone’s understands my heart is that everyone has very valuable role. We just need to properly define those roles, but, uh, uh, hopefully Lindsey has not stepped me into landmines here

Lindsay: Yeah, thank you for coming on for a potentially controversial topic and being, a willing participant in that.

Tim: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Well, hopefully Tim and I didn’t stir up too much controversy on this episode where we’re talking about some topic that could be a little bit sensitive. You know, job titles, job responsibilities. And I hope that you understand that neither one of us really, want to diminish either role, marketing coordinators, proposal coordinators. Both are vital to a successful AEC firm, but I do strongly believe that by mislabeling both of them we’re hurting everybody. Let us know what you think., let us know, hopefully, you know, if you agree, if you disagree, if you have some different ideas, please let me know over at the show notes, marketers, take flight.com forward slash 55. and I’ll make sure that Tim gets, all the comments as well.

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That’s all for me today until next time. Bye. For now.