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In episode 048 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, part one of our Seller-Doer series, I interview Jim Rogers of The Seller-Doer Academy for Civil Engineers on how to generate leads using the RLOCK approach (Recognition, Leads, Opportunities, Close, Keep).  In this episode, we focus on the L in R-LOCK, representing Leads and explain how to overcome one of the biggest obstacles for civil engineers in doing business development, which is being able to generate new clients by reaching out and getting a first meeting with them.

IMPORTANT: Jim mentioned that there is a free assessment available for civil engineers to take to help you understand where you currently stand with your seller-doer skills sets. It will be open to the first 500 civil engineers to take it.  Click here to take the survey and your results will be sent to you once all of the results have been compiled.  Consider taking it now as it will provide invaluable information for your development.

Engineering Quotes:

Here are some key points discussed in Part One of our Seller-Doer Series:

• If you want to do interesting work as a civil engineer and you want to have control over whether you do work for good clients and can fire your bad clients, then being able to attract the kind of clients that you want to serve is the first step.
• Keeping good clients as a civil engineer is one of the best ways to get new business (repeat work), but generating and maintaining new leads and converting them into opportunities is something not anyone can do in their career.
• To generate leads is one of the toughest things for civil engineers to do, because a lot of times it requires talking to or contacting people you don’t know, or you haven’t worked with before.
• When you call somebody, have something to offer of value to them, and don’t just call and make it feel like a sales call. The key thing is for it to be an introductory call where your goal is to try to get face to face with somebody, because that’s where the magic really happens.
• No matter how hard-hearted or logical we might be, there’s some emotional cost to rejection.
• When measuring the different tools, you must balance the effectiveness including how quickly it can turn into a an opportunity to generate leads versus the emotional cost of doing it.
• The cold call is the hardest one and has the highest emotional investment, because the potential for rejection is high. If it’s a warm call you can make that call with a lot more confidence. Warm calls mean that they’ll know who is calling them. It could be that you’re following up with somebody that you met at a networking event or through a referral.
• You should get about an 80 to 90% effectiveness rate on asking for referrals.
• Leave some space in conversations, because you can come away with some gems of information that you can then use to generate leads.
• When asking for referrals one of the key things to do is to call your new connections and to do it early in the project as this will give you a higher success rate.
• If you ask for a referral or if you soften people up by sending them something in advance like your book, white paper or tip sheet, they’re more likely to remember you, be willing to talk to you, and you’re also already starting to act like a trusted advisor to them.

Jim mentioned that there is a free assessment available for civil engineers to take to help you understand where you currently stand with your seller-doer skills sets. It will be open to the first 500 civil engineers to take it.  Click here to take the survey and your results will be sent to you once all of the results have been compiled.

More details in this episode…

About Jim Rogers:

Jim Rogers is a nationally recognized proposal guru and author who helps professional services clients win more work. He is a consultant, speaker, author, and sales presentation coach. Civil engineers hire him to help build their authority and to help them prepare proposals and presentations that seal the deal.  He is the author of the book Win More Work: How to Write Better AEC Proposals. Today, he is a master distiller of ideas, that is, he helps his clients distill their ideas to the time and space allotted by their prospective clients. He is founder of Unbridled Revenue, Inc., which helps A/E/C firms win more work and also a co-founder of The Seller-Doer Academy for Civil Engineers.

Sources/References:

TCEP 027: The 5 Stages to Becoming a Seller-Doer as a Civil Engineer
Seller-Doer Academy for Civil Engineers
The Engineering Mastermind
The Seller-Doer Survey
Jim’s email address

This episode is brought to you by PPI, the leader of civil engineering FE or PE exam preparations. Use promo code CIVIL for 20% discount at PPI2Pass.com/coach.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Win More Work: How to Write Winning A/E/C Proposals

How can I generate new leads as a Civil Engineer?

Please leave your comments or questions in the section below on how to generate leads as a Civil Engineer.

To your success,

Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success