Build Business 2019 Recap

It was a memorable few days in Washington, DC at the 2019 Build Business Conference! We had a great SFBAC showing in the Nation’s Capital for networking, learning, and celebrating our successes.

After I sorted through notes and summarized my experience in my office, I reached out to several attendees for a recap and asked them to share their favorite moments, including something they learned, what they took back to their firm, and someone cool they met.

Here’s what a few of our members said.

Meagan Dietz (Thomas)

Marketing and Communications Manager

Turner & Townsend

My favorite moments were the presentations. The content was outstanding, and I truly enjoyed the presenters’ energy and engagement with the audience. I learned so much at this conference. Key takeaways for me were: content creation workshops and repurposing, and aligning KPI’s with our company’s 2025 vision to ensure we are measuring marketing’s impact to the business and what’s important to our firm’s leadership (improved revenue growth, win rates, dollar value in pipeline). I took away the importance of aligning our brand with the customer and employee experience. I also gained a lot of knowledge from the seller-doer symposium, in particular, the seller-doer toolkit for success and content presented by Wally Hise with HDR.

I downloaded all of the presentations from the conference and uploaded them to our sharepoint for our leadership, marketing, and BG teams to review. I found the planning documents to be extremely useful and would love to hold follow-up workshops with our team to better understand how to implement them in their local offices. I also sent an email to our Managing Director for the USA explaining to him the trends I saw and the need to become a marketing-led firm. I’ve also expressed my interest in receiving my CPSM certification and am currently looking into the program.

I met several amazing people and would have to say that meeting Ashley Campbell, Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Communications for HITT was the most impactful for me. I loved her insight into the industry and her advice on leveraging relationships with technical and operations staff.  She gave me several ideas on how to increase marketing’s value to my firm.

Myrna Esther Wagner, FSMPS, CPSM

Vice President, Business Development

Swinerton Management & Consulting

What I got from Build Business this year was the theme of Leadership, including the fact that BD/marketing is playing a more significant role in the operations of companies. Also of great interest were the leadership / behavioral tips that were shared that can help empower us to have more of a positive voice in how our individual companies are managed. I downloaded various presentations on leadership and hope to present some of those to my team.

Kerry Gudjohnson, CPSM

Regional Marketing Lead

DPR Construction

My favorite moment was seeing the amount of engagement by the CPSMs during the CPSM Forum—the program was engaging and practical, and the group breakouts were truly beneficial to me both as a Marketer and a professional wanting to grow as a Manager.

I learned how pervasive it is that our colleagues are only seen as proposal producers, and how vital it is that we as a collective develop, communicate, and demonstrate ourselves as strategists, critical thinkers, and true partners to our technical comrades.

I took back to DPR the message and lessons around how crucial it is to be well-rounded in our industry. We need to understand the financial side, our competitors, and industry trends, and develop our abilities to communicate our opinions and observations in a meaningful way in order to help influence our firms to make great business choices.

I met SO many great folks at the CPSM Forum, it’s hard to list them all!

Laurie Lumish, CPSM

Director of Marketing and Business Development

Degenkolb Engineers

My fave moment was seeing my colleagues and associates recognized for their hard work as Fellows (Kenda Salisbury) and CPSMs (Susie Smith and Michelle Martin).

I sent an email to our management group about the trends I noticed in the sessions and discussions. Highlights that I shared included the fact that marketing is even more integrated with other functional units like People and Finance. I’ve already sat down with our Director of People to talk about personalized on-boarding programs, and our CFO to talk about better revising our marketing KPIs.

Marion Thatch, FSMPS, CPCC

President

Distinction in Marketing

Heading to Build Business is always great fun, especially seeing old friends and meeting new ones. This year was no different. BB2019 started off with meeting Joy Woo of AECOM for dinner and a friend for many years. Despite both living in the Bay Area, our schedules make it difficult to find time to get together, so this year we planned a dinner ahead of time and reconnected.

When it comes to making new friends, one moment that stuck out was meeting Jillian Grabenstein with Harris & Associates over cocktails with other SFBAC members. As marketers we are good at seeking common ground when we meet someone new because it is one of the best ways to make a connection that sticks. It turns out Jillian and I discovered strong ties within minutes. She grew up and currently lives less than 1/2 mile from where I lived in Danville for nearly 30 years, and then we learned that her return to the Bay Area after being recruited was for a firm I had been Marketing Director a number of years ago—the evening resulted in a great conversation around stories of the people we both know.

And...

If you’re interested in seeing my internal Build Business recap presentation or have any questions about this article be sure to reach out to me!

Susie Smith, CPSM (Marketing Director, Associate at KPFF) is the 2019-2020 SMPS SFBAC Chapter President. Susie ([email protected]) leads marketing, strategic planning and business development at structural/civil firm KPFF. She brings a future-facing edge to our local SMPS chapter, focusing programming on handing off skills that will set our members apart from the pack! Susie lives and actively promotes the SMPS vision “Business Transformed Through Marketing Leadership” and is committed to serving our members, the board, and the future of SMPS!