Why AEC Firms Struggle with Business Development (and How to Fix It)

 The AEC world is full of brilliant engineers, architects, and builders—yet many firms still struggle to grow the way they should. In this episode, John and Mark break down what’s actually broken in AEC business development by bringing in three guest voices who see the problems up close every day.

First up is Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering and host of Being an Engineer. Aaron shares why so many engineers hesitate to market themselves, why “humble brags” feel impossible, and how he built a media ecosystem—podcasts, community, events—to escape the expensive black hole of traditional trade shows.

Then, Leslie Blaize makes the case that AEC firms dramatically underuse one of the most powerful tools in business development: storytelling. She explains why technical expertise alone can’t win a project, how emotion drives buying decisions, and why firms should be capturing, curating, and reusing their best project stories instead of letting them disappear after a single proposal.

Finally, Perryn Olson brings a construction-focused lens to what’s broken—namely, over-reliance on founder-led sales and a lack of clear ideal client profiles. He unpacks why these habits choke growth, destroy succession value, and leave firms trapped in a cycle of “sell only what the founder can sell.”

John and Mark tie all three conversations together, highlighting themes across engineering, architecture, and construction—from cultural reluctance around marketing to the chaos of co-opetition to the structural challenges of building a scalable BD function.

If you’ve ever wondered why AEC firms struggle to tell their story, stand out, or build a real sales engine… this episode brings the receipts.

Share your feedback in our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8V9T6Z7

Transcript

Aaron Moncur: 0:00

My background is a mechanical engineer. But I think most engineers just. Intrinsically don't, don't really understand. Or, or like sales and marketing. In fact, a lot of engineers, we shy away from it. We, we don't want to put ourselves out there. We don't want to do, even humble brags, you know, like, oh, this thing that we did was, was so great, even in a, like a humble way.

Mark: 0:40

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm Mark, and I'm joined, as always by John. John, how are you today? I.

John: 0:53

Mark, I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Mark: 0:56

I'm well, thank you. Aren't we, aren't we just all pleasant today?

John: 1:00

Right.

Mark: 1:01

Yeah. This, this is, yeah, we're great. We're great. And we have three guest voices who are also great. They were nice enough, to, join us, today we're going to recap some recent interviews that you had with three people that you know. They're business owners, they're consultants. They, uh, have some perspectives on what is broken in business development. And I think these three are specifically, or at least their backgrounds are in engineering and architecture and construction. So that sort of a EC world and. You know, let's, let's, let's dig into it, John. So, uh, you spoke with, and I'll let you riff a little bit'cause you know these folks, right? You spoke with Aaron Ker, you spoke with Leslie Blaze, and you spoke with Perrin Olson.

John: 2:06

Yeah. So folks that are listening to this podcast episode right now, You can check out the full interviews with Aaron, Leslie, and Perrin if you want to go to the Breaking Biz Dev YouTube page. we've got those videos up there and so, yeah, mark, the kind of impetus behind this episode was we wanted to really understand and get some guest voices around what's broken around a EC. Right? We did, an episode a few months ago, maybe it's been longer than that, focused on the accounting industry. And we thought, well, hey, you know, there's, there's lots of great ideas and perspectives across different professional services industries, so let's go and see what's broken in a EC. And, um, you know, there are some similarities. There are some differences, but I think folks are gonna find it interesting to hear from these people's perspectives. So I'm excited about this one.

Mark: 3:04

Good, good. As am I. And yes, this is our fun question that we have posed over time. What is broken about? Business development in your, in your experience, right, in your in your world. And we've asked this to people in the past. We have previous episodes. Uh, if this, uh, type of episode is of interest to you, you can go back and listen to some of those previous episodes. I'm sure we'll have those linked in the show notes, John. and, uh, we will continue to do this in the, in the future. We've got some, some. I think we've got some folks lined up for the future, but anybody listening, you know, who has, uh, a, a, a particularly interesting, maybe even spicy perspective on what's broken in business development, you know, Let us know. You know, you're welcome to come on in and, and share your, share your perspective. This is, the way that John and I like to incorporate or include people in breaking. You know, we don't do a ton of, you know, guest interviews, but, uh, we like to bring new guest voices in. So we, we, we have some fun with this. Do you wanna give a little, little, sort of 32nd on Aaron?

John: 4:10

Aaron is the owner of Pipeline Design and Engineering. They, help, manufacturers of hard good products Aaron is, uh, the host of the Being an Engineer podcast. So I know that we have some engineer engineering folk out there that are li that listen to the show. So I wanted to talk to Aaron because, uh, I think what he's doing with his. His firm is very marketing forward and it's very innovative on the marketing side of things. So he's got a podcast and then he has a community and he is doing in-person events. He's hosting events and so it's, it's a very interesting marketing mix in one that I think helps Aaron and his team punch well above their. Their weight class.

Mark: 4:54

Okay, so here's at least a little bit of John's conversation with Aaron.

John Tyreman: 4:59

on these interviews I like to start with a big question and we can kind of drill down from there. Uh, take it in any direction that you want. Um, but from your perspective, what do you think is the number one thing that's broken about the way engineering firms go about new business development?

Aaron Moncur: 5:18

I, I think primarily it's the fact that we are engineers and we don't understand marketing and sales, and that's true for myself. Even. Even, even though I've been primarily involved in sales and marketing and business development for the past, I'd say five years or so. My background is a mechanical engineer. That's what I went to school for. That's what I, I did for my day-to-day work for a long time. But I think most engineers just. Intrinsically don't, don't really understand. Or, or like sales and marketing. In fact, a lot of engineers, we shy away from it. We, we don't want to put ourselves out there. We don't want to, What's the term that, uh, that I heard recently? We don't want to do, even humble brags, you know, like, oh, this thing that we did was, was so great, even in a, like a humble way. But, uh, I think you have to a little bit when you're doing sales and marketing. So, I, I think the mindset of an engineer, generally speaking is just not really aligned with what it needs to be in order to succeed at, at sales and, and business development.

John Tyreman: 6:22

You obviously see the value in marketing and investing in marketing and building a media arm of your business Why is that such a focus for you?

Aaron Moncur: 6:34

We've attended some large trade shows in the past in an attempt to generate more visibility for our company, right. As a sales and marketing tool. I mean, lots of people do this, right? It's a pretty typical. Effort for companies to, uh, participate in marketing and we spent a lot of money at this one trade show in particular we attended for as an exhibitor for five years. And it cost us, uh, after you factor in everyone's time and travel expenses and things like that, it was costing us around 25 grand a year to be at this show. And I committed to doing it for five years. I said, I'm, I'm gonna, let's see what happens, right? I'm not just gonna go one year and call it quits if we don't get a bunch of work out of it. So we went for five years and, and really didn't get hardly anything out of it. And we were just, you know, a, a small little guppy in a, a, a sea of much bigger fish, uh, at this, at this trade show. Of course, there were smaller companies like us there as well, but we just kind of got lost there. I think, you know, it was so big and there was so much going on and we just, there wasn't a lot of enough focus on, on us, and I thought. Where is it that engineers hang out where do I go to get eyeballs from engineers? And like a trade show is one place, but where else could we go? And there, there wasn't like a great answer to that. There's some conferences, um, but podcasts, engineers listen to some podcasts. So I started thinking what could we do as a company to uh, Own the engine that, that attracts engineers attention. Right. So we started this podcast being an engineer. That was kind of the, the beginning of what you referred to as our, our media arm. Um, and we've since informally, at least internally started referring to that as the pipeline media group. And, and we'll start. Formally branding or putting that brand out there more and more as we continue. But we started the, the, uh, the podcast and we're on season six now, and we've done, uh, close to 350 episodes at this point. And that's been, uh, a really tremendous tool for us. And, and what we've learned is that the business we've acquired from the podcast is not so much from listeners who are tuning in and, and listening. Consuming that content, but it, it's actually been more from the guests that we have on the show, and sometimes these guests are chosen strategically. They're people I'd like to do business with, and having them on the podcast as a guest is just a great way to start building that reputation without, you know, in a, in a low pressure environment. Um, and other times, uh, the guests on the show are just interesting people in the engineering community that, that end up somehow leading to some kind of paid engagement with my company. So the podcast has been really helpful there. And then we, a few years ago, started, uh, Online community called the Wave Engineer. And that's a community of, of tools education for, uh, engineers. And it's a place they can go and they can connect with other engineers. Most recently we started PDX, the Product Development Expo. And this is an in-person event. The format that we've created there is a little bit different than your typical trade show. So instead of showing up and just. You know, talking with a vendor and getting a flyer or something like that, uh, each exhibitor at the event is contractually required to do formal training for attendees. So we've got training on, you know, like 50 different topics at this event. So all these different efforts that we've been working on, the podcast, the Wave Engineer Community website, PDX, these are, are, are all intended to be like our business development engine, right? Because pipeline is at the center of, of all these things. And so. Instead of paying other people to send engineering eyeballs our way, we're creating our own ecosystem platform that engineers want to engage with because we're providing really interesting, unique, and, and valuable. Content, tools, education, community. And that's, that's been the strategy to just build out this ecosystem, um, that, that drives our, our marketing instead of, you know, being a, a really small fish in a, a giant pond like we were at this one trade show.

John: 10:49

I thought when Aaron phrased, his reluctance to make humble brags, I thought that was a really interesting point because, um, humble brags and, and to use his words is like just relevant case examples is what you and I would say, right? So when you're having those conversations, it's okay to talk about past work that you've done, if it's relevant to the conversation, if it's relevant, if it's helpful to the client. Finding ways to share those relevant case stories I think is, is really powerful.

Mark: 11:20

Yeah, that was interesting. He kind of went that way and it's actually funny that it connects a little bit to what one of our other guests is gonna talk about today. But yeah, so I can see how engineers, Can, you know, feel it's a little awkward or uncomfortable to be talking about themselves, which is actually kind of an interesting, good indicator. I think it's, it's, it shows me that, that people out there appreciate sort of having a low self-orientation, which is, is really important. But I think communicating past experience, you know, through client success stories, you know, little snippets, whatever else, just relaying relevant. Information to your clients or prospective clients or just your audience, is, is important. So yeah, nice perspective from Aaron.

John: 12:07

Alright, so let's, uh, let's move on to our next guest voice.

Mark: 12:10

yeah. Leslie Blaze, you had a nice conversation with Leslie. We appreciate, uh, her talking about storytelling. I think that's, that's a lot what she talked about.

John: 12:22

Yeah. Leslie is a freelance writer who serves a EC firms. We talked about the importance of storytelling and that it is something that is such a powerful tool that can be used to develop new business, but it's. Currently not being taken advantage of. And so that was kind of the focus of our conversation around why stories are important, why it's broken, and then how firms can incorporate more storytelling in their business development.

Mark: 12:50

here is John and Leslie Blaze.

John Tyreman: 12:54

on the Breaking Biz Dev podcast, we like to shine a light on what's broken about the ways that architecture, engineering, construction firms go about, um, winning new business today. So Leslie, I'd love to, uh, you know, understand from your perspective, why do you think storytelling is something that's broken among these firms specifically?

Leslie Blaize: 13:19

Well, first I wanna start out by saying that I really respect the professionals and the a EC firms. You know, they're amazing, they're talented, they add to the. Quality of life for, uh, clients and, you know, their users of, uh, different facilities. but you know, in their emphasis it's always often on the technical side of, you know, how projects were solved. And what, what I argue is that, you know, if you wanna build, you know, human connections is you've gotta use the storytelling to relate to your, uh, clients and prospects. Uh, so. You know, of course they wanna hire you because you're technically, uh, advanced and know how to solve their problems. But they also want to like you, they wanna know, like, and trust you and know that they can work with you and it's gonna be a, a great experience. And stories can, uh, do that, you know, project stories about how you went the extra mile. Uh, they, you know, they can show how you'll be. A delight to work with. And also, let's face it, uh, people, you know, listen to the logic. They listen to the data, but they, purchase with their emotions and they wanna feel connected with you. And so, and then you can use stories in a variety of ways, but that's one thing. It's like. Hey, a EC firms out there, you know, stories are important. When you hear a story, what happens to it? You know, maybe you use it at one client presentation and then it, you know, goes away and that person disappears. But are you, are you saving those stories? And even more important, are you seeking out those stories? You know, are you, are you recognizing, are you, you at the top saying, Hey, these stories are important, you know, we need to. Encourage our clients to talk about'em and to save'em and to record'em so that we can use them and help, uh, our bottom line.

John Tyreman: 15:03

A hundred percent. And you, you know, you're speaking my language. I'm a big proponent of storytelling. In fact, um, it's one of the, you know, I was doing some research on the history of podcasting. And you know, you can go, go as far back as you know, radio was introduced in the late 18 hundreds. And you know, people are listen, used to listening to voices on the radio. But I think it extends, you know, well beyond that, like storytelling was how knowledge and information was passed down from generation to generation well before hieroglyphics even. Right. So it we're wired as humans. To learn and want to learn through stories.

Leslie Blaize: 15:47

People remember stories. You know, if you, if you have a client interview, um, and if you know, if, if you're being smart about it, then when you're. Preparing your presentation, you're saying, okay, what are some good stories about this project? Or even what are stories from other projects that may not be related, but they show that you know how to meet a timeline or you can, deal with various challenges. As a prospect, I wanna know that, you know how to handle challenges, and I'm gonna remember if you tell a cool story about an engineer driving through the night to deliver a project or to deliver a part, you know what, I'm gonna remember that, Hey, you guys are dedicated, you care. Um, or I'll tell another story of a mechanical engineer who was, uh, went to a construction site of a building on Christmas weekend. It was like maybe Christmas Eve day or something, and he found frozen pipes and he, you know, called somebody and they solved that. And if he hadn't made that inspection, they could have had, the client could have had lots of, uh, lots of damage. That would cause a lot. So do you think it's a prospect? You're gonna remember that story? Yes. You are.

John Tyreman: 16:52

Well, and it conveys that, you know, they're on top of it and even on Christmas they're looking and checking in to see if there's frozen pipes. And so that story that you just shared, conveyed, a focus on the client, customer satisfaction, right. All the things that firms like to say, you know, we understand our clients, but that story shows it.

Leslie Blaize: 17:14

And then in this world of ai, you know, you're answering a proposal and a lot of people can put the same prompts, but you own your stories. You know, even if it's, maybe a few sentences. I know proposals are tight and you don't have a lot of room, but you know, you can find a way to say. This community had rotten water and because of our water treatment plant, now they have pure, delightful water coming outta their taps. And it's, you know, changed their lives. You know, they're gonna remember just even those few sentences are gonna make that project come alive.

John: 17:46

Good stuff from Leslie. There really good stuff from Leslie.

Mark: 17:50

mean, I like the fact that she has a pretty tight, you know, focus on this. I do think that, most professional services firms fail to understand, not just sort of the bigger picture with storytelling, why it's so important, and, why not just in the world of sales or marketing. It's important just in, in everything, but also sort of, she's really focused on the, the tactics as, as well.

John: 18:15

what stood out to me was the way that she positioned stories as showing your differentiators. Whereas, so the example she used was one of our engineers stopped by the building to check on. The pipes on Christmas and found a frozen pipe or a leaky pipe or something to that

Mark: 18:33

Yeah.

John: 18:34

you know, that just that shows that you know, hey, we don't take those holidays off. We're still working behind the back. You can trust us, right? Just from that little, that little story signals that point of differentiation. So I thought that it was an interesting point that she made where, you know, sometimes showing and not saying you're different, showing it through stories is a powerful way to communicate that.

Mark: 18:58

It's good. and we've talked about storytelling in the past, mostly I think in the episodes related to the client success stories. Leslie, I think talked about a few examples of, storytelling. we, we even favor super short stories. When I talk about client success stories, I'm talking about ones that are, you know, 60 seconds long or, you know, two minutes or whatever that are super fast. I have. not just embrace the importance of storytelling and the work that I do with my clients. I have also worked with people who were fantastic storytellers. So I have real life examples. You know, a previous firm I worked with, the, the figurehead, the face of the organization was a fantastic storyteller, and it seemed like every client conversation that he had, and I was sort of on the side listening in. It ended up being, uh, just a series of stories, which it was so powerful because they're so memorable, right. You can just, you know, it gets people nodding and engaged in the conversation, so super powerful.

John: 20:01

Another takeaway that I had from. My conversation with Leslie is the different variations of story length, like you talked about, like the very short stories, 62nd stories. You know, sometimes it can be a two to three page PDF of a client engagement that's written out. A long form podcast conversation with your client recounting many stories that arcs throughout the whole engagement. Or you know, it could be just one slide. On like a webinar presentation where you're just talking about the engagement or it's got a couple bullet points, key moments, so you know, there's, there's different flavors and formats that you can use to incorporate storytelling. It's no, there's no just one size fits all.

Mark: 20:45

Okay, last but not least on, our list today is Perrin Olson. And you've known Perrin, I believe, for some time. Right. So Perrin has a great perspective. Um, and you, I think had a looked, sounded like you had a good conversation with parent.

John: 21:04

Yeah, per and I worked together for a couple of years He has a focus on construction companies and working with construction companies. he is a fractional CMO that serves the construction space. And, he identified what he sees as broken, specifically in the construction space. That's what we focused, focused on, was the founder led sales and reliance on founder-led sales and how that hinders organizational growth and then poorly defined. Ideal client profiles. So not knowing what makes a good client versus a bad client. So those were the two things that parent identified as being broken. so it was a really, really interesting conversation.

Mark: 21:43

Good. Well, let's listen in.

Perryn Olson: 21:45

Architects and engineers have more of the professional services model that you'd see in a law firm and accounting firm, things like that. And even in maybe in an ad agency, marketing firm, construction doesn't, you know, there's still so much hard bid that's going on and so much negotiated. So they two biz forms of business development are generally founder led and then outside business developers, like peer business developers, they're not swinging. A step above even being a senior PM and they're a little bit more of the business. And some of the bigger companies have both a project executive and a project manager. The project managers focused on the schedule and the labor, essentially the budget and the project executive, essentially in charge of the client, maintaining that client relationship and mentoring those project managers. So you're getting a little bit from the field, but you know the midsize companies, the small companies are definitely more founder and. Essentially that becomes the ceiling is their founder led rainmakers. And it's also a huge issue in acquisitions. You know, it's, I was talking to a buddy, he's actually not in construction, but he, he's struggling because the owner's 90% of business development, he's a piss development. He is just, he feels like he's handcuffed and I'm like, Hey, when's your owner wanna retire? You know, sell the company 10, 15 years, like three. I'm like.

John Tyreman: 23:05

Oh

Perryn Olson: 23:06

If he doesn't get out the way of and build a sales process that doesn't involve him, he's literally hurting his, his margins like three to four, maybe five x multiples.'cause he is the company he is. So that company is so risky that if he steps out in a year or two, the company falls apart. He's got like 30 employees in this. He's been in the company 15, 20 years, built it all up, but they've never built out the sales and marketing processes to offset him. And I'm like, you're killing your resale value

John: 23:36

Awesome. So good stuff from Perrin. I think he hit on a couple of notes that Mark you and I like to talk about or that we've talked about in the past. specifically transitioning from that founder led sales model to a more institutional led sales model and. Well, I think we've, we've said democratizing sales across the organization.

Mark: 23:57

Yeah. Yeah. It is hard. It is one of the hardest things that a founder and an organization can do is, is um, empowering more and more people in the organization to go out and find and win new work. And it sounds like it would be a fantastic opportunity, but there's so many forces against it, right? The founder is resistant. maybe some of the up and comers who are just learning. How to do all of this kind of doing doer, seller kind of stuff. Maybe they'll go out and screw up, and the founder is dying. The founder is like, no, I have to sweep in and, you know, come in and close the deal. And it's super hard for a founder to make this this big leap. So it's understandable why firms struggle with the founder led sales model.

John: 24:46

Another, um, another point that Perrin made in that conversation was, and I, I found this really, really interesting and I, it's probably a little bit more true in the, uh, the, the a EC world than in other professional service industries, but it was this notion of teaming partner partners being like comped. Where you're working with them on some projects and you're, you're bidding against them and others, and it's, there's a, a strange relationship that exists there.

Mark: 25:16

Yeah, I use the term coopetition.

John: 25:18

Co-opetition, there you

Mark: 25:20

right. It's very It's, you know, on one project you're cooperating and another project you're competitors. and it's. Crazy, you know, and, and it's, it's, it's understandable how it would come about. you know, different firms have different little slices of expertise that they can, you know, sort of patchwork together with others to really. be able to provide what a client needs. Sometimes natural, particularly with firms that have done it a lot and have worked together a lot, and, know what it means to, work well together and, you know, not be stabbing each other in the back. But other times it can be really, really tricky. you know, some people think it's just the nature of the beast. I would agree with Perrin that, it's kind of broken.'cause it, there's a lot of times there's no rules. it all goes a little sideways sometimes. So, yeah, I like it.

John: 26:10

Excellent. Well, mark, this has been a fun way to recap some of the, uh, recent conversations that I've had with some of these folks. You mentioned at the top of the episode, we do have more that are in the can that will loop into future episodes. And if you have a hot take, maybe a spicy meatball about what's broken about business development in your industry or in your market, shoot me an email, uh, shoot me a message on LinkedIn, let me know and we can schedule a time to get your voice on breaking biz Dev.

Mark: 26:44

Good. I, um, I like it and people are invited to do the same with me as well. John, thanks for taking the time to interview these three guest voices who all brought their own little spin on what is broken in business development. So I think it's been up on episode until next time.

John: 27:02

Until next time.