Some recent research on how clients hire A/E/C firms challenges some standard assumptions.
I stumbled across some interesting research last week from a firm called Fusion BD on how clients buy A/E/C services. Of course, there’s a lot of research on “how buyers buy,” but in my experience, most of it is too general to be useful. This research, however, surveyed 109 decision-makers across 4 key market sectors and took a practical look at how they research and shortlist A/E/C firms specifically.
A few data points jumped out at me:
- 66% of buyers use search engines more than 6x per week to research service providers.
- And 36% use AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) to “build initial shortlists of providers with a specific scope of expertise.”
For years, A/E/C firms have told me that their clients “just don’t use Google” to find firms like theirs. I always saw it as business leaders burying their heads in the sand and hoping the digital revolution would skip their industry like a tornado bouncing across an open plain.
My counter to these hopeful leaders has always been that clients might not specifically search for service providers, but they absolutely search for answers to their most pressing business problems.
Well, it turns out they do both. Literally all the time. And now, with AI, a subset of them is finding they can do it on hyper-drive with targeted precision.
Case in point, I had a call this morning with the sales and marketing lead of a mid-sized consulting firm who spoke in clear detail about the specific AI prompts he used to find me. I promise that your clients are doing the exact same thing.
That’s Okay, Targeted Business Development Still Works
Does it? I’ll cherry-pick a few other interesting data points from the research:
- 81% of buyers receive 7+ meeting requests per week
- 70% would “never” or “not likely” respond to a cold call from a BD person at an A/E/C firm they’ve not heard of
Of the 7+ meeting requests you get each week, how many do you take? How often do you take meetings with companies you’ve never heard of?
The same firms I told you about 100 words ago that have been afraid of thought leadership investments wouldn’t think twice about hiring another business development lead to initiate targeted outreach.
I get it. There’s something reassuring about having a person on staff whose full-time job is to proactively reach out to prospects and tell your story with conviction.
The problem is it doesn’t really work. Worse, the money spent to connect with that 30% of buyers was money NOT spent on a thought leadership program that could’ve helped connect you with nearly 70% of buyers.
What Are the Implications?
I’m going to let the author of the research, Steven McGill, do the heavy lifting for me:
- “SEO should be treated as ongoing infrastructure – owned, measured, and resourced – rather than a one-time website project.”
- “This reframes thought leadership and earned media as direct pipeline activities.”
Ultimately, in a world littered with AI slop and automated email outreach, the best anecdote is working with your people to develop a compelling point-of-view on the real business issues you help clients solve.
There’s not really anything else to say. Other than – read the report.
