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referrals

TCEP 062: Growing a Civil Engineering Company from Day 1 to 15 Employees

July 19, 2017 By EMI

http://media.blubrry.com/engineeringcareercoach/traffic.libsyn.com/civilengineeringpodcast/TCEP062.mp3

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Growing a Civil Engineering Company

In episode 062 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I talk with Anthony Venafro about growing a civil engineering company from day one to 15 people.

Engineering Quotes

Anthony Fasano Tweet this

Anthony Veneafro

Here are some of the questions I ask Anthony:

  • Tell us about your background as an engineer?
  • What do you think gave Blake the confidence in bringing you into his company as employee #2?
  • Walk with us through how the company grew?
  • What did your daily tasks consist of?
  • How long after you started this civil engineering company, did you start hiring new people?
  • Take us through the progression as the company started to grow?
  • What made you decide to leave the company?

Here are some key points discussed on growing a civil engineering company:

  • When growing a civil engineering company, you’ve got to have good people around you.
  • We started off with an 8×10 office space. Within the first 8 months, we got our first residential project, started hiring after that and conservatively grew the company with the work that was coming in.
  • Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations is sometimes the best way to learn.
  • The pressure started to pick up as we started hiring more people.
  • Referrals are a huge component of building a civil engineering company.
  • My family started to play a big role in my life, and as my children started to get older, my priorities started to change.
  • When your civil engineering company is the small kid on the block, trying to break into an industry, the only way that you are going to survive is if you put enough output, plans, projects, and turnaround as fast or faster than some of the bigger firms.
  • If you want something or you want to get something off your chest, put it down on the table and ask for it.
  • The way you start off your day in the office is very important. Try to keep your staff happy and motivated by starting the day of light.

More details in this episode…

About Anthony F. Venafro

Anthony F. Venafro holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from James Madison University wherGrowing a Civil Engineering Companye he graduated with Cum Laude honors. He entered the land development industry in 2005 as a Designer with Loiederman Soltesz Associates, Inc.  There, Mr. Venafro quickly mastered his design skills and was promoted to Senior Designer in 2006, followed by Assistant Project Manager and Lead Technological Group Representative in 2007. He joined SMITH Engineering at its inception in October 2008 as a Project Manager. In his role as Director of Engineering with SMITH Engineering, Anthony managed the Engineering Department and further streamlined the in-house engineering operations.

Sources/References:

Anthony’s LinkedIn Profile
Smith Engineering

This episode is brought to you by PPI, the leader of civil engineering FE or PE exam preparations. Use promo code PREP and enter the raffle here: www.ppi2pass.com/civilprep

This episode is also brought to you by SkiCiv, a new and powerful structural analysis software on the cloud that is changing the way engineers work. To receive your free 14-day trial, sign up here: www.skyciv.com/coach 

Please leave your comments or questions in the section below on growing a civil engineering company.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

    Download the Productivity Routines

To your success,

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

Filed Under: Career Goals and Challenges, TCEP-The Civil Engineering Podcast Tagged With: Anthony F. Venafro, building relationships, Career Decisions, engineer, Growing a Civil Engineering Company, hiring new people, referrals

TCEP 048: Seller-Doer Series – How to Generate Leads as a Civil Engineer

January 4, 2017 By EMI

http://media.blubrry.com/engineeringcareercoach/traffic.libsyn.com/civilengineeringpodcast/TCEP48.mp3

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Generate Leads

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:

Generate Leads

Generate Leads

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

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

win-more-work

 

 

 

 

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.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

    Download the Productivity Routines

To your success,

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

 

 

Filed Under: Communication & Public Speaking, TCEP-The Civil Engineering Podcast Tagged With: cold call, generate leads, Jim Rogers, Keeping good clients, maintaining leads, referrals

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