Transcript: Using CRM Data for Better Proposals

Lindsay: Do you have a hard time organizing your information or your data, either organizing it or getting it into your CRM system and being able to rely on this data or this information to pull it out and to use it, whether it’s in your sales forecast reports or hit rate reports or your proposals, what if there was some maybe best practices that you can deploy? Or technologies or some software or some automation to help you make this a better process at your firm?

Well, if you’re struggling with that, then today’s episode is for you. I bring on one of my very good friends, Stacey Ho, and we kind of geek out a little bit on this concept of data collection and auditing. and then we talk about some, some best practices for that as well. Some ways that you can think to start to think about automating it and using the tools and technology you might already have. So, without further ado, here’s today’s episode.

Lindsay: Okay, well, welcome back to another episode of the marketers take flight podcast. And today I have my data-loving gal pal, Stacey Ho on the show. So, hi Stacey!

Stacey: Hey, Lindsay. Good to see you.

Lindsay: I know this is long overdue. I know we have presented together in the past, and we’ve done some Facebook lives and some other like, just really fun things. So, I’m glad to have you on the show finally.

Stacey: Thank you for having me.

Lindsay: Yeah. for those of our listeners who don’t know who you are, can you give us a little introduction of who you are, your career path, and how you help AEC firms today?

Stacey: Yeah, absolutely. well, I have a long once you, how old I am, but I have a long career in AEC, and I’ve definitely done the gamut of marketing positions. And like you, and I’m sure all your listeners know those are rough career teeth cutting positions with a lot of burnouts. A lot of people take the path of a marketing manager or strategic pursuits manager, even communications.

My brain definitely went left, and I followed a career path that was much more about how can I make my marketing team look more efficient. How can I make them smarter without having to work harder? And that really, for me, was database management. Um, whether it was, you know, pipeline CRM or whether it was information management.

That was definitely where I found my passion and where I found what I love. So, most of the jobs that I’ve had, and the career path I’ve taken has been to further develop those sorts of systems, you know, whether it’s Project descriptions resumes, or now lately more of the opportunity pipeline at the forecasting and data analysis, KPI type stuff.

Lindsay: I love it. And that’s how I think we met. We, I think connected somehow on social media.

Stacey: Yeah,

Lindsay: Years ago. We won’t say how many years ago. And then we met up at a build business, which is now amplify and, uh, the rest is history. Shall they say?

Stacey: I know.

Lindsay: We’ve been conquering, pipeline management, and sales forecasting ever since.

Stacey: I definitely found my, uh, my simpatico with you. And we’ve had a lot of conversations about those.

Lindsay: Yeah. Okay. So, let’s get right into it because I have you on the show today to talk all about data, data, entry, data cleaning, and data maintenance. So, let’s start with some, of what you would say or share with our listeners. What are some best practices when it comes to data collection and data auditing?

Stacey: Yeah, definitely. And I, and I want to be clear about the differences sort of between data collection and data auditing. Because I, when I, especially when I come into new roles or when I’m being asked or you’re just sort of hired for new roles, I get a lot of questions around. What do you do? Do you just do the data entry?

And I, and I always want to sort of describing this to people that, the role of data entry is for every user, anybody who has data should do data entry, but the role, um, of, you know, whether it’s a person who’s full-time or part-time or whatever, whoever you, your, your data auditor is their jobs. Not necessarily to do all the data entry.

Now, of course, we all do data entry. You just said that even I do. My exact moto is data entry is not a dirty word, as you know. Um, but there’s also somebody who needs to do something with that data to make sure that we can report on it. So, I feel like the role of a data auditor is to review the data for things that are missing. Things that we should be analyzing that we’re not. Or things are out of date and, you know, creating, updates through various systems depending on your system, you know, through reporting or workflows or whatever, to make sure that the data is clean and can be used and reported correctly.

So, for me, it really is. There’s a difference between data entering the data auditor. To that end though, you know, best practices I think involve a little bit more. And for me, it’s sort of, I think of it sort of as building a really solid table with four legs, I need to provide really good training so that I have a high user adoption, so I get lots of data, right? So that’s the data entry part of the data collection part, but even with really good training, I definitely need to have somebody checking to make sure we’re not getting garbage in. Cause Garbage, in is garbage out. So that’s the auditing part. And then there’s also the show them the data part.

Right? So that’s the reporting part. so, you’ve got sort of the training, the collection, the auditing, and the reporting. And I feel like if you try and collect audit reports and repeat, you can get a really good best practice system.

Lindsay: Nice. Nice. I like that. Yeah. And I like the, what you say the reporting is the showing

Stacey: Yep. They show me.

Lindsay: You kind of have to relate it back to. Why are we doing all of these data entries? Show me what the benefits are from doing all of this data collection. and not just reporting for reporting’s sake but using it in a way.

Stacey: Yeah. I’ve had a lot of people say, you know, well if I don’t want to show them the report if it has that data. But I, I pushed back on that a little bit because I feel like, again, it’s sort of them. You won’t be able to collect what people don’t see as missing. So, you, sometimes you have to show them just to get the data

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and, or, you know, for a specific example on that is hit rates, um, and hit rate reporting, or win rate reporting. I remember at a previous firm; we would do it by market sector in summary. They were all over the place because their data was all over the place or they wouldn’t report.

They wouldn’t tell us when we won, or the dates would be passed. And so, it wasn’t in the report. They just didn’t update the date. So, it would be counted as a win in that report. And so, I still showed it. I still pulled the reports. I still showed the reports, but when it’s on metrics, that market sector lead or that business developer is being evaluated on their performance

Stacey: Yeah,

Lindsay: they have it interest in it, and they help, but they don’t know that it’s outdated because, you know, there’s probably 10 project managers or the seller doers that are helping to maintain the data. And so, they need that report to also, I guess, audit it, to look at it, to make sure to see what data is missing or past the date or incorrect.

Stacey: No, and you’re and you’re right on, and, and I think this is why I like to come into my position describing that, that you, you know, you need data entry people, but you need auditors because you have to back up the cycle, right? Like, so if I, if I want to produce the report on Friday, I should be doing the auditing on, you know, Tuesday or whatever, you know? There’s that cycle, whatever that cycle is. So, I need the data collection on Monday, the audit on Wednesday, the report on Friday repeat, or whatever. Um, and I think that that, if you don’t have those, then you’re probably missing some leg of this foundation.

Lindsay: Yes. Yeah.

You know when you said that back it up and have a cycle. So,, I recently helped one of our subject matter experts write a blog post. I helped edit the blog post “having a good accounting calendar” and it was about, okay, well, here’s the timesheets that are due on this day. And then they need to be posted, you know, reviewed and approved and then posted, and then that feeds into you. So, it’s the same thing for our CRM reporting. It’s the same kind of cycle of, okay. Well, if I need to issue this report every Friday or the last Friday of the month, or the first Friday of the month, then how do I back up and make sure. Like you said, well, I need to pull the draft on this day and then look at it and then gather the data or update the data. So, I can issue that report on that Friday.

Stacey: Yes, absolutely. And I have, I have people will say, well, I pulled the report and I pull the audit report and I send it. Nobody does anything with it, you know, there’s that too. And, and so then you, you know, then you start to ask yourself, does it require, why do they not have enough training to know what to do with it? Do they not have a why? Do they not have a reason? Are you not using that report data for something like you were talking about the hit rates when they get invested. Right?

Lindsay: Yeah. Is it a report that nobody’s looking at, to begin with? Like, so the data and it doesn’t really matter. cause, not the right people are looking at it, you know?

Stacey: It’s sometimes it just comes down to, some handholding and this is why I added training and to that leg of the table because I feel like sometimes it is just a matter of holding their hands. I can’t believe how many people I talked to who, when I say things like I’m doing a forecast analysis on your pipeline, they’re going like, what, what is, why would I do it? I

Lindsay: that sounds so fancy. An analysis.

Stacey: Like what I D I just have, I have pursuit. I have projects I want to pursue that are not enough.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Stacey: So, I think it does require a lot of handholding training, and why to help, to help build that the pattern of good behavior.

Lindsay: so, yeah. so, I love this analogy, the analogy of the table, right? Training data collection, auditing reporting. So, you need all four to get your, data collection and like just good data and keeping it constantly, you know, reliable. Let’s say it’s not going to always be a hundred percent clean, but I think you can remake sure it’s reliable for how you need it

Stacey: Yeah. Or you figure out which one you’re having difficulty with, and you focus on that for a while, right?

Lindsay: Yeah. So, there’s a lot of software. There are a lot of techs, there’s like an app for everything. So how can we use, or how can firms out there use software and, or technology to automate some of our data collection and this auditing process.

Stacey: Yeah, it is becoming a little bit overwhelming. How, how much tech is out there? I don’t remember who it was. but I saw somewhere something like, technology’s not nine-tenths of the law, right? Like some quotes, like it’s so true. Like really honestly, best practices are. And behavioral practices are probably way more important than technology, but we are all really pressed for time.

So, I do find that. Some software is better at helping you with the data collection and auditing process. And this is something that I’m even working on now with my current firm is using things like workflows to automate stuff. So, for instance, being very serious about forecasting and looking out and getting, trying to get ahead of our pipeline and our projects to know if we can meet goals or meet plans. I find that we’re using a weighted revenue projection a lot. Um, but people aren’t putting in clean probabilities. So, so one of the things I’ve been working on is automating that so that when we go to a certain stage of the pursuit, it just automatically updates the probability, but it can be overwritten.

So, if you know, you have a better or worse probability, you can change it. Sort of picking up the slack, so to speak of what people don’t fill in or what I know they’re not comfortable filling in probability is one of those ones it’s like my gut tells me one of the three. What does that mean?

Lindsay: It’s so subjective. Yeah.

Stacey: Right. So, by automating that for them, I’m giving them an out and I’m saying, if you know, better, go ahead and change it.

Right. so, it’s little things like that, where if I can automate, uh, notifications to people when they need to update something, or if I can bring it in visual aspects. This is actually one of the things I think is, a turning point for our industry is that not just finance is using dashboards, but now marketing is using dashboards too. So, using the dashboards to show. All the pursuits that have passed due date or the top pursuits that are upcoming in the next six months and where they’re at in their stages, or, you know, really helping them visualize not just the past, the hit rates stuff, which is important. but the future stuff too, with conditional formats or big red, you know, big red text or whatever I

Lindsay: the things you should pay attention to.

Stacey: Yeah. And there’s technology now to help us with that, you know, whether it’s within your system or whether it’s like power BI or those tools too. So yeah,

Lindsay: Yeah, I am. Uh, I’m so glad you said dashboards because I have been screaming about dashboards for probably over a decade and no matter what, like CRM or accounting system. Pretty much all the major ones have dashboards that you can customize somehow. So, this isn’t like, you know, a Deltek thing or Salesforce or central thing. It’s all of them have something that you can do. And I’ve always been a big proponent is, if you want your project managers or your business development or your marketing team to pay attention to certain pieces of information, don’t make them hunt for them. Bring it to them on their dashboard. Because that really helps not only with, it helps with user adoption, but then it also helps because if they see something that’s incorrect, they can usually then like either click on it and it goes to the record and they can update it or some dashboard parts so you can update like the record right in the dashboard.

Stacey: It’s the live aspect. Absolutely. You know, I don’t say how many places I’ve been, even my current firm where I walk in and they say, well, we’ve got a form that, that the project manager fills out and then it comes to accounting and then they fill it out in the system. A form to fill out a form to fill out a form. I’m so confused. Why do we have a form? So, I feel the same way about reporting by the time I’ve reported it, separated it out into each organizational group, given all the reports to people, ask them to update their data. They’re going like, well, but I just updated. You’re like, oh, but that was two days ago. I pulled the report three days ago.

So yeah. Dashboards, the visualization of real-time data. Absolutely. I think where technology should and will go.

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a good summary of that. it definitely helps you. I don’t say, I don’t want to say like necessarily automate your data, but it automates the seeing of the data in real-time. So, it helps with encouraging people to correct things that are wrong or pay attention to things that they need to pay attention to. When, and it’s in a visually appealing way. Meaning it turns red when a due date is approaching. It just does it automatically.

Stacey: Or it combines parts of the system that you never thought to combine before. Like, um, I’ve had a really, sort of, high-level focus on client management lately. Um, and a lot of firms will do something like, well, I’ll pull my top 10 clients based on all the revenue I’ve done for them for the last five years or Great, I got a top 10 client list. Okay. But, um, do those clients pay well? How many days outstanding do you have with them? what is your pipeline looking like with them in the next five years?

Lindsay: Was it just one big project with one client? And that’s how they got you, on the top 10 list.

Stacey: What’s our win rate. Who do we compete against? Uh, when we pursue work with them, do they have Diego? Do you know? And so, I’ve been trying to look at dashboards as a way, not just to say who are our top 10 clients, but of those clients, you know, what else can my data tell me? Can it tell me if they’re good clients can tell me if they should be future clients? Can it tell me if? You know, a good hit rate with them. So, you know, way more digging into what can the data that even a marketing team doesn’t typically collect, show us if I combine the marketing aspects of it with the, with the financial aspects of it?

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. And that really helps. I mean, it probably doesn’t help in the day-to-day of putting together a proposal, but it does help to gleam that kind of information and be able to show it. and tell that story of those top 10 clients helps you probably, I would imagine. I would love to have that kind of information when we go into our business development planning

Stacey: Yes, exactly. Or go or go no go discussions or, you know, I mean, I think it works, works mostly around the planning, the go-no-go type discussions, but also, I mean, if you just want to say to a client. You know, we have a good working relationship with you. We’ve done X amount of revenue with you. Six projects, you know, we’ve always had a good, uh, you know, invoicing, repertoire with you. Whatever it is that you could say with that data, you could put it into a proposal, I suppose to.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it also helps you when it, like, maybe you’re from leadership or, you know, business developers or whoever’s like, you know, the client manager to kind of know, you know, have that complete story of that client too. So, you know, if they have. 10 clients, but only two are in that top 10, you know, they can help prioritize maybe their time or their efforts or how can they get the other eight to be like that?

Stacey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay: you know, if they want, or do they need to drop, you could probably do the converse in your bottom 10 clients

Stacey: absolutely.

Lindsay: we need to, these are people we’re not going to work with again.

Stacey: Or you know, we were even just, somebody was asking me the other day when I started putting together this draft client dashboard was what’s our average multiplier with this client. It turns out it’s really bad,

Lindsay: Oh, gosh.

Stacey: know, God, can you imagine we’ve done tens of millions of dollars in revenue with a bad multiplier. Now, of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a no-go and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad client. Sometimes the multiplier does not tell the whole story. But what I am trying to get is the whole story, right? So that we can make really sound business decisions with more than just our emotions, which a lot of times when you go into a go-no-go discussion or a client, or you have client management plans, or you build your top 10 client wish list. Right? You’re like, oh, but, but everybody works for that client. You know, I hear that a lot in, in Oregon, everybody works for ODAT, but it’s like a really hard client to work for. I wonder why. and so having the ability to use our system to pull together all of this information and to help us, make sure that we’re, staying focused, but also, not just making gut decisions, you know, it’s not a go just because

Lindsay: it’s ODAT. Yeah. And we go after everything with ODAT. yeah, yeah. I like that. and you’re not going to use the data I don’t like the go-no-go systems that are like, just on the data. Like you fill out a form and you get out of the score and that’s the decision, but you can use the data to then have the discussion and say, and you’re just having a more informed discussion while you’re evaluating to pursue that project.

Stacey: Everybody’s short-staffed right now. Like, I don’t know anyone who isn’t short-staffed, and then they, and then here comes a train, you know, here comes a giant infrastructure bill and a bunch of work. And I think, if you don’t know what your, what your needle movers are in the next six months or the rest of this year, and you’re just you know, all over the place, like, you know, it’s going to be really difficult to meet plans and not burn out a bunch of people. So, this is also really about retention of staff and utilizing your resources in the right way and smart ways, you know, making your marketing team smarter, making them elevated, and using what you are collecting in your data financially and marketing-wise to really make sure that don’t burn out people, right?

Lindsay: Yeah. Cause it’s so easy. I mean, anybody can just go and get another job at another firm now. So.

Stacey: Pretty much.

Lindsay: Yeah. I mean, I see job postings all the time. my husband’s in construction. He probably gets calls from recruiters at least once a week. Um, so firms have to be really careful to not burn out their staff. It doesn’t mean that another firm isn’t going to burn them out, but at least there’s like ramp-up time. They can go work at another firm for a year and then get burned out. And you know, so it’s like, it’s not to say that other firms wouldn’t do that, but we just want to be mindful of it.

Stacey: Yep. And it’s really, for me, it’s what leads me to be so passionate about these systems is, you know, can I collect project information so that we’re not stressed when we’re building proposals? You know, can I help find or dig into data to help them create that winning strategy, so that they are focused on strategy and development of the proposal and not the weird random field that says, how many projects have you done with this client in the last five years or whatever strange thing they’re asking for these days in these proposals.

Lindsay: I know. I know. so, with that said, what are some other unique ways maybe we’ve covered some that you thought about, but maybe you have some other unique ways that listeners can use their data to either make decisions or maybe even in their proposal.

Stacey: Yeah. I mean, for me, I think, you know, just because you know, me, you know, I’ve been really, really focused on forecasting. This is just something that I feel super strongly about in terms of, where a business can make the most impact on either, growth. Uh, staffing focused, you know, I mean, I could name a dozen things. And so, this is what I’ve really been zeroing in on lately. and this is that concept of, you know, what is my pipeline over time, right. So, where is the new work could be coming from? Which, parts of my organization, which market sectors is it going to be coming from? which ones look to be going up, which ones look to be going down, which groups have enough work, which groups don’t have enough work? All of that can sort of be, both visually and data-wise extrapolated from your pipeline, your CRM system, if you do it. Right. So,, for me, it’s been a real focus on, how we improve that, especially coming into this role. As somebody, they’ve never had somebody in this role here where I’m at. So, um, so we’re looking at things like, they’ve always sort of looked at their pipeline, but now I’m starting to ask deeper questions. So, what are, the pieces of work that there may be not tracking the new faces or new tasks, agendas, right. Things that they maybe aren’t tracking. So now we’re building into our system ways to track those.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Stacey: or the one I think a lot of people forget about that will kill you in the end. If you’re trying to make a plan what’s your backlog adjustment or your negative sales, right. Cause sometimes you get into it, and it turns out, you know we didn’t Get that second phase, or we didn’t get something we planned on getting. And so now I’m really trying to help, uh, you know, understand the whole picture, not just the pipeline, but the whole back backlog

Lindsay: the whole like project life cycle picture, I like this subsequent phases, big change orders, stuff

Stacey: for a lot of firms, the majority of your new work is actually from existing clients. And it comes a lot of the time it comes as tasks or project agendas. And so, if you push too hard on a new pipeline, you’re going to spend a lot of marketing dollars to get it. You know, whatever your hit rate is, 50%, if you’re lucky, right. If you’re

Lindsay: Yeah.

Stacey: so, you know, so for every dollar I spend, I’m getting 50 cents or whatever your return rate is, versus for every dollar I spend, I’m getting, you know, 150% because I’m doing such little work to get you, it ended up. So I think by, sort of using my system in this, in this new way to track more than just new pipeline, but also new work from existing PI from existing projects, we’ll be able to really see where we need to be investing our dollars because sometimes you need to be investing your dollars on making sure our projects going well more than you need to be doing our proposal that just popped up.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. And that type of work, I know from my experience, it’s harder to track. it takes more involvement and more communication from the project manager of those projects. Because there is so much emphasis from the marketing team or the proposal team, we’re focused on the proposals that need to get out the door, or that are upcoming, that we’re like trying to prepare for. And so, we’re not necessarily, I mean, we’re talking to these project managers about those, but we’re not really, I don’t think as good, or at least I know self-admittedly, I wasn’t about the current projects that were going on.

Stacey: Yeah. Yeah. And, and finance is, but they’re not talking to marketing, so then you’re not getting yeah. Yeah. So, you’re not getting the whole picture. And so, I’m definitely trying to build a whole picture and it, it, it requires, you know, I mean, almost every firm has seller doers, so these are super busy people.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Stacey: But they’re being held accountable for both ends they’re being held accountable for their project work and their marketing. and they’re confused sometimes about which counts is what. It is a little confusing. So, it’s, it’s starting to create a discussion amongst uh, project manager, financial accountant, project coordinator, and a marketer to where we’re all starting to understand why each of us holds a piece of the pie. And then when we put it all together, how that helps us.

Lindsay: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I would love to continue. I know you and I will continue to talk, but I would love to, you know, see how that, you know, learn how that’s going. Cause I think that’s kind of like the next level of like marketing, I would say sales, not really marketing sales, forecasting sales, data management.

Stacey: Yeah. And I feel like that sort of along with, like I was saying, like the client dashboards and the sort of dashboarding that we’re doing, that’s future in nature, is really kind of what’s coming or what’s unique. I hope proposal development, or at least the ability to produce, you know, is not a final document, but some proposal document is coming to. It was there for a while, and it seems to have lost its way some. I think I’m hoping it’s coming back around. We customize so much, but by proposal automation, I still think it, is important. And I do want to see that, that come back around at some point.

Lindsay: Yeah. Well, and now that they have you there, I don’t, I think what, well, I think what a lot of firms, you know, I see this, a lot, in fact, a couple of years ago, I wrote a marketer article about it. This role of marketing technologists, because so many marketing departments, they’re busy doing proposals or other marketing campaigns. You know, data entry or maintaining records or updating records. Yeah, they should be doing it, but nobody’s really managing the process of it. you know, it’s just kind of like an added on it’s a role until like firms start getting, you know, and it’s often in the marketing department. It’s somebody that is mining the shop, so to speak mining the database, minding it, like to make sure and doing these audits and making sure things Are being done the way that they should be. It’s really hard for firms to then go to the next level of proposal automation. I don’t care what your system is. Because the data isn’t there. And so, it’s, it’s more of a pain to merge it out and then still fill in the blanks because the data isn’t there. So. I always tell from, well, you know this, because you’ve heard my spiel, but I always tell firms it’s like, you’re not ready for proposal automation until your data in the database. and you’ve agreed that the database is your one source of truth and you’re not going to hold files somewhere else too.

Stacey: amen. The one source of truth.

Lindsay: So, we can go onto a whole nother topic of that. But I want to be mindful of your time and our listener’s time today. So, I’m going to go ahead and start wrapping up with our rapid-fire questions. Are you ready for them?

Stacey: Okay, let’s go.

Lindsay: Okay. So, question number one. What is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new in the AEC industry?

Stacey: Okay. So, number one for me is learning to manage up down, and across, the organization. Because marketing is a piece of everything, as you know. and I, I think I didn’t probably learn this until I had my CPSM my MBA and I had you know, sort of a lot of different backgrounds, but strive to learn how to manage up, how to manage down and across that organization. And, and then, you know, because there’s just always some level of burnout within this position. I think that’s also really about finding at least one part that you’re really in love with and growing your expertise in it. I think even if you have to, I think, I think you’ve used this to call, eat the frog. Even if you have to eat the frog and do the things you don’t like to do some days. Right.

Lindsay: Do those first.

Stacey: Yeah. But then come back around to something you love.

Lindsay: And everybody’s different. Like you gravitated toward data. I have a marketing specialist that works with me now and she loves graphics, and she puts out beautiful graphics. I am not graphically inclined, so everybody has different skillsets., but we all have to still do our basic job, but then we can grab it and eat the frog on the stuff we don’t like to do. For a lot of people is data entry, I’m sure.

Stacey: maybe you’re great at presentation, interview coaching, maybe you’re great at strategy. Maybe you’re great at, you know, whatever, or maybe you’re passionate about events or social media, whatever it is. Like, you know, find some time to dig in and grow your expertise in that.

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

Stacey: Okay. I was thinking about this one and, and a lot of people would think, I would say, oh, when we got our resumes to pull out of the, you know, system perfectly. And, and that is a huge win. But I’m a marketer at heart. And I started way back in doing proposals. And I remember pursuing, what was, uh, sort of the first-ever city of Portland resiliency plan. And resiliency plans are just sort of a new thing, but this one was new and interesting because it looked at not just seismic or economic, it looked at climate impact. Which, which is a big deal for me and my family. It’s something we’re very passionate about. And so, I worked, you know, as sort of a strategic proposal, strategic pursuit lead on this, where we really put together a team that, that looked at all things Holistic. And then we sat down and said, how can we be unique or how can we be different? And we thought we need to bring in an equity specialist because if some part of our water or wastewater system goes down, or we have major stormwater, a hundred-year stormwater flood, the people who are going to be the most impacted are the people in the most, lower economic development

Lindsay: The more vulnerable.

Stacey: The more vulnerable. And so how can we get, immediate, assistance to them? And so, we brought on, you know, all these specialists’ experts in things that they hadn’t even actually really thought much about and I, and we won that project and I felt really sort of proud that, we had these unique aspects to it. But also from that one, win I have seen the turn in discussion and tied in this whole industry around climate, around DEI, around us, all these amazing things, sustainability. And that’s why I came to this industry without an engineering degree, you know? So how has definitely, for me, been my most memorable win because I felt like it was a moment in time where I could see the change.

Lindsay: Yeah,

Stacey: the impact that I was having in my, and my community. And that, that was really special.

Lindsay: I love it. I love it. I’m getting goosebumps. Okay. So last question for today. What are you excited about?

Stacey: I really, I am one of those persons that have a lot of projects going on. So, I’m excited about some projects I had, and I have a couple of, older kids, so I’m excited about their future and all these really cool decisions that they’re making about their future. One who thinks she wants to be an engineer of all things.

Lindsay: Wow.

Stacey: but I think what has been most exciting to me right now in AEC is, seeing these mid-size firms, like the firm that I, worked for now attack who, you know, 350 people realize that CRM is important that having somebody who can look at. their data as an analyst on the marketing side is important. Having a full-time manager of their data is important. and that, they’re, they’re acting on that and they’re creating a career path for somebody to do that. And it’s not just, you know, the giant companies that have the full-time person doing that now. and I, and I see now, more open positions for people who do what I do. I have more people asking me for my job description. And more people are starting to realize that this is a potential career path. And for me as somebody who’s been speaking about this for.

Lindsay: A decade.

Stacey: too long. it’s really lighting me up to know that now I can get on a call and there are 20 other people on that call who have a very similar role to me. And that’s not something I would have seen 10 years ago.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one day we will, at the Deltek insight conference, there will be just as many marketers as accounting people there. Wouldn’t that

Stacey: Isn’t that crazy. And I hope that is the case. And I, you know, it’s funny, I, when one of the first weeks on this job, I said to our Deltek admin, who’s our, accounting manager. I said I think you and I should speak at Deltech. And she just went like, whoa.

Lindsay: Who is this lady wanting me to present?

Stacey: but I, I, I agree. I think it would be great to see more of, uh, more of the whole use the whole system use conversations going

Lindsay: Yeah. And not just, I mean, I just said Deltek and Sykes. I know you and I will both be there, but any like any user conference that is, you know, a system, you know, just as much our accounting and, marketers and business developers equal, equal there. So. Okay, Stacey well thanks so much for coming on the show today. I know we could probably talk for hours about data, and I know we just scratched the surface, so, but I wanted to thank you for taking the time, and to come on the show.

Stacey: Ah, thank you for having me. I hope some people got a few tips and I’m looking forward to hearing what your users have to say and questions they want to ask and more dialogue, more conversation.

Lindsay: Yep. Love it. Thank you.

Lindsay: Well, okay. I hope you got a little bit of inspiration and a little bit of knowledge from Stacey. I know that she and I could have talked all day long and we, as I said, we just scratched the surface on this whole data maintenance data entry, data collection, data auditing. And I love that phrase. So, I’m glad that, she introduced us to this concept of data auditing, and I loved her analogy of the table, you know, needing the four legs of training. Data collection data auditing, and then data reporting.

And if sales forecasting is new to you, I have linked up two resources on the show notes page, which you can find over on marketers, take flight.com forward slash 59. Stacey and I did the basics of sales forecasting on Facebook live two years ago. So, I linked up that video. And then I appeared on the entree or architects podcast in 2021. All about just the basics of, or introduction to sales forecasting for AEC firms. And so, I’ll link that up as well on the show notes page. So, if you like this episode, or you want to hear more about data, make sure you look up Stacey on LinkedIn, connect with her, and make sure that you give me that five-star review that you like it, and you’ll get more content like this.

Okay. That’s it for me for now until next week. Bye. For now.