Barry Kain is passionate about sales in the design and construction industry. As former president of Pennsylvania-based contractor H.B. Alexander Enterprises and a national accounts exec for Armstrong World Industries before that, Barry has spent his career honing skills as a seller-doer and coach. For the past twenty-plus

Today’s post is the final installment of the social selling series.  To review, we’ve covered: Creating a Robust Online Presence Developing Social Networks Using Social Tools to Gather Intelligence Sharing Content to Drive Business Development Today we’re going to address the ultimate goal of social

You’ve decided to move forward with social selling, and created a robust online presence.  Next, you developed your social network, focusing on low-hanging fruit (existing contacts) and LinkedIn groups.  Then you sat back and learned, gathering intelligence to inform your social selling and marketing. 

By User ChiemseeMan on de.wikipedia (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons In previous posts, we've discussed the first two stages of the social selling process, creating a robust online presence and developing your social network.  In this post we'll move on to the third stage, intelligence gathering. The

In the next post we'll continue with the social selling series, but in light of the holiday week, a bit of levity... I recently traveled to give a presentation for the SMPS Foundation.  I knew my co-presenter,  and we had previously shared the podium at an event.  So despite the hundreds of miles that

In the last post we introduced the concept of Social Selling within the architecture, engineering, and construction market space and confirmed that yes, it does make a lot of sense.  We also reviewed the first step in the process, developing a robust online presence, and the importance of LinkedIn to the Social Selling

A few weeks ago I posted about content marketing, and why it is important for design and construction firms to utilize this important marketing tool to enhance brands, build reputations, and potentially generate leads. Closely related to content marketing is a relatively new business development approach commonly referred

A few months ago I began developing a lunch & learn program for my co-workers.  The topic was mega-trends in the design and construction industry.  I created an initial list of 17 trends, gleaned from both my personal opinion as well as an analysis of A/E/C industry and business publications including

With the recent news of AECOM’s acquisition of URS, followed by their subsequent purchase of Hunt Construction, it seems like the big just keep getting bigger. If AECOM was a mega-firm at 50,000 employees, what is it at 95,000?  Since a gigabyte is larger than a megabyte, it stands to reason that AECOM is the

My firm received a letter informing us of the good news - we had been shortlisted for a project.  The proposal had done its job.  But near the end of the letter was one of those statements that sends chills down the spines of people who do what I do: "Kindly leave your sales and marketing staff back at the