Why Growing AEC Firms Outgrow Relationship-Only Marketing

Trevor Gilmore (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to ESOP Radio.

Today’s guest is Perryn Olson. Perryn owns a marketing consulting firm called AEC CMOs and specializes in outsourced CMO leadership, and by CMO I mean chief marketing officer for the AEC industry. And AEC, it’s an acronym, is architecture, engineering, and construction. ASOP companies need effective marketing firepower to execute on growth. And Perryn and his team deliver. I’m Trevor Gilmore, CEO of MENKE.

Let’s go ahead and dive in. Perryn, great to have you here.

Perryn Olson (00:36)
Thanks for having me.

Trevor Gilmore (00:36)
To kick it off, give us a background on your soft pair and and your company AEC CMOs.

Perryn Olson (00:43)
Yeah, so I’ve been doing construction marketing for over 20 years. started a small marketing firm and then grew a little bit bigger and then started going in-house. was actually a marketing director and then chief strategy officer at a small IT firm that actually referred me into my first construction company and grew alongside them. They had a niche in construction and then went and worked at a a national, small national construction and engineering firm that also got me more into technology and we acquired a robotics company and I moved in from VP of marketing to

Chief Marketing Officer and it’s kind of my first foray into the fractional chief marketing officer, but I was still internal. We had three companies and eight brands. So I was operating it much like I do now with my company and then end up going to be a full time external fractional CMO and now I’ve launched the AEC CMOs with our you know focused on the Arcta engineering construction industry and helping them grow. Mostly work with kind of upper small companies, the mid size contractors right now.

Trevor Gilmore (01:39)
And what pulled you into AEC specifically? And by the way, there’s tons of e ESOP owned AEC

Perryn Olson (01:45)
Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (01:46)
companies out there. So I that’s why we’re talking today, but I’m curious what drew you into

Perryn Olson (01:50)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (01:50)
AEC?

Perryn Olson (01:52)
I it was really just a couple of referrals that I got twenty years ago and then like working with them and you know was doing good work. They referred us to others. And then my boss at the time worked you know in the small agency I was at, went to a conference and they talked about niche marketing and you you know, she first told me about it, she came back, it’s like, You’re crazy. And then I was like that night it was kind of that that light bulb went off and I was like, This makes a lot of sense and you know, took it as a career move in my mid twenties and just I could help my clients more, have

you know, less of that onboarding trying understand all these new industries and just you know, really just saw as a career opportunity and just kind of dove in. So I got an association called SMPS that is the marketing business development group for a the AEC industry. Learned a lot, got certified with them, then got certified with the construction marketing associations, kept kind of plugging away. you know, trying to become a thought leader in the industry and just learn more about the industry. You know, so I stopped reading as many like ad advertising agency stuff and then going to start reading E and R and things like that and just

kinda never looked back. I really just fell in love with the people and the Aesops are some of the best because there’s just that that ownership mentality from top to bottom.

Trevor Gilmore (02:56)
Yeah, and we’ll get into that. The ownership mentality is a a big one here. so Perryn, what does a fractional CMO actually do? I mean, it’s not just creating ads and so on. There’s a whole science to

what a CMO

Perryn Olson (03:09)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (03:10)
actually does. So kind of describe what a CMO and in your old what a fractional CMO

Perryn Olson (03:15)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (03:15)
does and how you’re coming in and helping these clients that really need this firepower.

Perryn Olson (03:20)
It’s kind of the right hand of the CEO when the CEOs focus on the future and growth. We’re the ones who really help implement that from the non-operational side. So, and it’s one of the misconceptions in AEC. A lot of AEC leaders, principals really think marketing is proposals. They might think it’s social media. and really proposals is more of a sales function. If you really think about it, it it fits under that. You know, our job is to get to the table, get, you know, attract the client to get us associate contractors, get up an opportunity to bid.

and then there’s also a lot of other facets of you know talent acquisition that marketing can oversee. But one of the biggest things I’m doing as a fractional CMO is you know kind of the what are the strategic levers that we can pull in helping my clients kind of figure out, okay, how do we get from point A to B? And sometimes that’s creating new service lines, opening new geographic markets, doing acquisitions, and then of course that you know, how did it all fit in? And ultimately the other big facet I’m doing is the essentially the voice of the brand. You know, how do we shape what the company sounds like, with the personality, you know.

Well, how does this company differentiate from others? You know, so it’s essentially the the sales and marketing leader, and a lot of times I do have a peer on the sales side and they’re working more at the individual relationships, but I’m working on more of the the holistic piece because really the main difference I have between sales and marketing is sales is one on one and marketing is more global or per industry. So but it it’s really how do we execute with this the CEO’s vision?

Trevor Gilmore (04:42)
So what you’re doing is very strategic in nature. When you step into a lot of your first time clients, what is their marketing organization look

like? Before you step in, and you probably see everything, but what would a typical

marketing organization look like for one? And then two, how long are you coming in and you know executing the strategic plans?

Perryn Olson (05:02)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (05:03)
Because obviously marketing it’s always needed, but I know you’re on the fractional side.

Perryn Olson (05:06)
It yes. There’s

kind of different phases of it. So most you ask most marketing or construction leaders, AEC leaders, who owns marketing. You know, I’m also big in the DOS, which I know kind of fits well with you guys. One of the things I like about it is it it kind of exposes there’s nobody that owns that marketing seek marketing’s, you know, the CEO’s, you know, third or fifth agenda item or the CFO, and it’s just more of an expense item they’re tracking. It’s that chief.

You know, we’re seeing more chief sales, business development officers that are also marketing out, but they don’t really know marketing. or you see that poor 23-year-old that’s straight out of school that is supposed to be now the marketing leader and they’re not. You know, they’re essentially an order taker still because they’re they’re new, they’re young, they don’t know the industry, there’s barely no marketing at this point. So it kind of fills that void and becomes that that’s that marketing leader is that it’s ownership there.

But what I’m seeing essentially is just a lot of immature things. They’re just really dependent on proposals. They’re dependent on referrals. there is no sales motions. It’s it’s funny, you know, I mentioned geofencing to a client about a year ago and he’s like, is this new technology? I’m like, new as the iPhone came out new. Like it’s almost 20 years old now, but like it’s still fairly new in construction. So it’s I don’t have to be a

visionary on some of these things in this industry. They just kind of have to piece together and see what other industries are doing that makes sense. But it it always ties back to that that business goal. And a lot of times my clients are bringing me in, including the client we have in common, is, you know, they’re actually essentially asking me to stand up the department, you know, bring in the right people, figure out the roles we need, hire the marketing director, and then, you know, help get them up and running and then kind of fade out and be more of an advisor, you know, touch point, things like that.

so that’s the fun I’m seeing a lot, especially high growth companies is they’re just they’re kind of going for almost nothing or very junior marketers and now they know we need to accelerate. and they see marketing as either the weak link or an ability, you know, a lever they can pull to really grow.

Trevor Gilmore (06:59)
So would you say you’re focused on growth oriented companies?

Perryn Olson (07:03)
Yeah. Yeah. I

it it’s s sometimes there’s a stagnant company that we can help kind of rejuvenate, give you know, get them moving again. But generally I I like the ones work is the CEO is like, I want to get from here to there and I’m not necessarily sure how to do it, or it’s some very lofty goals. And some there’s there’s definitely some that are a bit crazy. I had a call a timeout with a client last year. The CEO’s like, We’re not getting any amount of leads, and that’s why I brought you in. And I’m like, Okay, we need to kind of do phase one of like we have no idea who the company is.

Like what’s our like what is our voice? What is our tone? What our messaging is. Our website’s horrendous. You know, so like we need to fix some of those foundational things before we can start layering on things like digital ads and all because right now if we started just turning on Google ads, Facebook ads, we’d be spending a lot of money and not really converting, potentially missing our shot. So, you know, really it’s that starting with that foundation and then growing and building on that. So a lot of times there’s kind of a multi phase of foundation, then lead generation and then essentially scaling.

Trevor Gilmore (07:59)
And this ties in with the next topic here is EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System. We see that a lot in the Intop world. A lot of our clients are using it, and and basically it’s a system for

mid-sized companies to scale up and unite everyone around a common goal and usually that is growth. You know, that’s the usually the central theme there. so how many of your clients are using EOS? because I see a lot on the ESOP side, but I I’m curious on yours because I know you work with a lot of non-esop clients out there, non-esop customers. that’s one question is that and then two how do you see

Perryn Olson (08:40)
So I would say mid vast majority of my clients run EOS or at least a version of it in their eyes. are very strict and you know have the software and run it and some of them are they like it in theory, but they haven’t gotten the whole company to buy in yet. that’s a little bit more on the smaller contractor side where there’s you know more of a CEO who’s you know playing the political battles of an office essentially. You know, there there’s other players in there. but you know, where I see it fitting is, you know.

We need to solve a lot of the rocks. We need to figure out some of the issues. And you know the the example I gave earlier if we’re not getting enough inbound leads, why? You know, it came down. So we went and kind of dissected why we’re not is you know, our messaging is generic, it’s it’s off point. we don’t have landing pages, we don’t, you know, we haven’t really figured out who we are. The website shows 20 services instead of three core services. So those are things that we’re working through right now is you know, that those foundational materials.

And then revamping the website just to be, you know, kind of up to date because this is a company that positions themselves as a tech forward company and like your website’s but looks like it’s ten years old. So th there’s a disconnect there. Yeah. So yeah. Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (09:43)
You need to make it easy to get people the contact.

Perryn Olson (09:49)
And there’s just th and it’s one of those the companies grown a lot in the last ten years and you know, they’ve kind of pieced together different things, but you know, that’s one of the big things, is just people

This happens a lot in construction. They don’t think they sell buildings off their website, or they don’t sell civil projects on the website. And I agree with that. This is not an Amazon e-commerce. But what I disagree is that you lose buildings in civil projects off your website. You lose prospective employees. People hear about you, they see your job sites, they see your trucks, you know, they go to your website and they’re like, and they move on. Or they look like, yo, they’re not qualified versus

What I ideally is is like if I go to your website, I’m interested in ESOP like go, look, this is all the information I need. There’s you know, and I can dig in and get more thought leadership and things like that. It’s very clear what you do, who you work for, and how you can help me. And if I went there, say to a you know a competitor that’s a CPA plus can do this, and I’m just confused, I’m like, do they even do this? They say somebody told me they do, and it it just brings that confusion. And when can when you add friction to the sales process, especially early on when

They don’t know you and you don’t know them. Everything just hits a you know a a standstill or they just they leave. So and that’s one of the hard things for construction leaders kind of wrap their head around is they don’t know. You don’t know how many people on their website, they don’t know how many people they’re losing because it’s not trackable. It’s never hit their CRM yet. So that’s one of the things that’s always interesting, is like just sometimes changing a website with the correct messaging and just makes it aesthetically pleasing. I had clients instantly increase sales 10, 15, 20 percent.

Just by that, we’re not doing any digital ads or neural, you know, other expenses outside of that. It’s really just we’re building the you know, I hate to say the better mousetrap, but we’re building a better presentation of what they are and people are finding them already. And now they’re like, wow, this is great. So I got a client we’ve worked with a couple of years now that out 60% of their inbound traffic is past clients and they’re a roofing company. Like it’s and it’s

Like, how many roofs are these people getting? But it’s somebody they worked with 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago that had a good reputation and now they’re calling and we made it very easy for them to find the website, you know, be easy for them to see what services they offer and things like that. So they weren’t getting that traffic before we re we redid their messaging their website. You know. So it’s it’s interesting how something a lot of it is just messaging is one of the biggest issues I’m seeing in the industry.

Trevor Gilmore (12:06)
And there’s definitely art and science to that. I mean, you talked a lot about the metrics there, you know, tracking conversions on the website, maybe calculating ROS or ROAS, return on ad spend, you know, all those kind of metrics.

Perryn Olson (12:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (12:22)
so I wanna talk about something more kind of qualitative here. a lot of AEC firms

especially ones that are founder led and and so on are very much relationship driven. Actually all of them are at the end of the day. It’s a relationship business. But obviously that can permeate all aspects

of the C suite, in including the marketing. So, you know, when you come in and obviously people are hiring you ’cause they have this growth plan, growth strategy that the board wants them to execute on and they need to make it happen. so when you kick things off, how often is it to see, hey, we’re a relationship business, we don’t need to market, you know, and that’s what they say first. I hear that all the time. You know, we don’t we don’t need this,

Perryn Olson (13:06)
I a hundred percent.

Trevor Gilmore (13:07)
you know, we

relationships do everything, but it does to a certain point, but if you’re reaching the next scale, it doesn’t. You need to do something new and different.

Perryn Olson (13:17)
Yes. And it that’s the

big keyword is scale. You know, if you’re gonna scale the company from twenty million to a hundred million, you gotta do things differently. You can only hire so many salespeople. And I’ve I’ve walked into certain companies that have twenty pr 20 people in sales across all their business units and divisions and and it’s like th I totally get the relationships and I understand why they have them, but like you’re doing things the hard way in many cases. So it is how do we we kind of start with them is how do we

Grease the skids and make the sales easier. And then we, you know, kind of reverse engineer the sales process. So for them, it’s how do you maintain client relationships? Then how do you close things faster? Then how do you just fix the proposal? I’m amazed how many contractors send out a hundred million dollar proposal, reads like an itemized invoice, and they don’t actually give you any value. It’s like it’s just that’s a very simple thing sometimes. but and then we just keep reversing things back. And then one of the core things that I do with every company is.

identify their ideal client profile. And that’s one thing that they’ve generally never gone through that exercise, or they’ve used it so loosely that it didn’t really matter. like in it, let me give you an example that actually isn’t construction. I was helping a friend that owns an IT firm and they were struggling trying to get their salespeople to just go after bigger fish essentially. and I was like, okay, what are markets? And he starts telling me, like, we do a lot of government, we do a lot of healthcare and something like what kind of healthcare are you doing?

Medical office buildings, urgent cares, hospitals. And he’s like, Yes. I’m like, okay, that doesn’t help. You know, or are you doing any manufacturing? Okay. Well, what kind of man like we need to dig in a little bit more to give your salespeople even something to go target? And one of the things that we found is their security side of business really loves hospitals, but their IT side really likes medical office builds. So that allows us now to focus in some things. And they and then one of the things they also did a lot of local governments. I’m like, what do you mean by local government?

And one of the things they found in just the it was like a five minute conversation with them was they don’t really want the big municipalities, you know, they don’t want San Francisco, they don’t want New York or Chicago, they want like you know, the woodlands, Texas or Sugarland, like they want all these kind of suburbs, you know, not even a tertiary market like Sacramento. They want even smaller generally because that’s they like rural or almost semi-rural county governments and they’ve done really well with that. And once I said that to them.

Like instantly they just like, we know exactly who to call, we know what to do. And I followed up with them a couple months later, like, hey, how’s it going? Like, that was like that quick refinement just changed everything on how they did sales. And it allowed them how to target. So, like, that’s one of the biggest issues that we’re still seeing in the industry is the most construction companies are generalist and it doesn’t scale because they’ve been focused on relationships and you know, this founder is generally a personality, and that kind of attracts people. And one of the things I, you know.

position a lot or you know talk a lot about is building magnetic brands that both attracts the right people but repels the wrong ones. But you need to know who is the right one and who’s the wrong one. And that’s through ideal ideal client profile. And kind of the way I position it to a lot of construction companies, it’s kind of that first go, no, go. They’re used to go, no, go like score sheets in projects. They get a new opportunity and they go through this formula that says, yes, we should take the time and spend money on bidding this project. Or we shouldn’t based on this the score system.

So the ideal client profile, I also built a scoring system for them and essentially should we pursue this client or not? And it it’s drastically can change their effort because now we have more time to spend on the bigger companies and because we’re not spent wasting our time on these small companies that are not a good fit.

Trevor Gilmore (16:37)
Ideal client profile or ideal customer profile is so

Perryn Olson (16:41)
Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (16:41)
important. And what I found is if you ask

Two salespeople at the same organization for those that haven’t gone through this exercise, you know, hired someone like you or have a strong CMO or strong marketing function who really is a partnership with sales, as you said, CEO, sales leadership, marketing, you’re right in there. But if you haven’t gone through that exercise, you’ll get two drastically different answers because then it comes down to who they like selling to versus what’s right for the company.

Perryn Olson (17:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yeah. And it’s it’s and yes, you can have ideal different ideal client profiles per business unit, brand, geographic market, things like that. But you still want that consistency, you know, two people that are supposed to be selling the same thing. Yes. And it’s it’s amazing what you’ll hear. and like in my own company, like we’re called AEC CMOs. So we do work architect engineer construction. My ideal client is a mid sized contractor, especially with multiple brands.

Another CMO in my team well would love architects because that’s her background. So that’s fine. So that’s why her name is a little bit more all it comes to comes incombassing, but I I still have a special because I can offer more value to a contractor than I can architect firm. Just ’cause of my experience. So and vice versa. So

Trevor Gilmore (17:55)
One thing I found with marketing and sales, often they have two different ideas on a lot of things. one ideal client profile, two

what the sales process should be, what the brand messaging brand messaging should be, how you actually execute. So can you talk a bit about what that looks like and how you overcome those hurdles and g get the sales team on your side and focus

Perryn Olson (18:22)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (18:22)
on execution, because I know this comes up often, you know, sometimes there’s this battle between marketing and sales.

Perryn Olson (18:30)
Yeah. So first thing we we come up, make sure to find some commonality. What are their goals, revenue goals? And then, you know, what is that ideal client profile? If we agree on those two things, then it’s a question is kind of how do we get there? and I try to make sure the sales team knows, like, I’m not here for your commission. Like, that’s your thing. I’m here to make your job easier and get you more clients faster, generally bigger clients. And you kind of explain how I can do that. and then it’s it is how do we create more leads so that they don’t have to go hunting?

And then how do we help speed up the referral process or the the the pipeline process, which can be hard in a construction because a lot of time you’re not gonna make a building start faster. so sometimes in in that case, it’s not necessarily I’m trying to make a change the average sales cycle from six months to three months. What I’m trying to do is actually eliminate competitors. If I can get you from competing with five competitors to two, our odds just went up, you know, because we did a better job of positioning the firm.

So that’s a a bigger pack, you know, piece there. And and then just telling as we really focus on the ideal client profile, like you’re arming the salesperson to say, go fish over there and stop fishing over here. And for a lot of the good ones, they love that. The ones that are struggling and kind of grasping at straws are the ones that want to try to sell it to anyone. And then they wonder

Trevor Gilmore (19:44)
Mm-hmm.

Perryn Olson (19:44)
why they’re not they’re not making any money and they’re so busy. So it you know, very much show them was like, I can empower you to make more money and that it’s a win win. Like

Look, you make more money, the company makes more money, and you make me look good. And and most marketers have some type of bonus program. for me, since I’m a fractional and an external, I I I want the client to stay with me. So if c you know, things are good, they stay with me. And that’s how I get my bonuses essentially. So but yeah, it’s don’t come in, kind of guess respect each other’s lanes, you know. and that’s why I kinda mentioned earlier if sales is one on one and we’re more the global. But you know, there there shouldn’t be any animosity.

The actually the biggest issue I’ve had with sales teams is they want me to be in like every sales meeting, like all their individual meetings. I’m like, guys, I can’t. I can’t be in the leadership meeting, the sales leadership meeting and all your sales meetings and my own marketing meeting. Like that’d be full time at that point. So so but that it’s that’s a good problem. That that shows a lot of respect when they’re trying to invite you in for those kind of things too.

Trevor Gilmore (20:38)
So creating focus with the sales organization, starting with the ideal client or ideal customer

profile,

Perryn Olson (20:44)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (20:45)
leading from there.

That is going to save the sales team tons of time because you’re going to have accounting executive, sales reps, director of sales and so on focused on the right things. Because at the end of the day, there’s only so many hours in the day. And if you’re focused

Perryn Olson (21:01)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (21:01)
on doing the wrong sales activity, doing the wrong chasing down the wrong prospects, well, and that leads to a no. Well, I guess what a no pays zero, right?

Perryn Olson (21:11)
Yes.

Yeah. And it’s it’s also can we build in some tools into their CRM thing called lead scoring that will say based on these characteristics they have a higher score? So it helps them. Okay, I log into my CRM, I have a thousand contacts assigned to me. Who should I talk to?

So there’s some, you know, firmographic data that would help us with ideal client profile, but there might be some also activity based things that you’ve met these people at a conference, they remember this association, they’ve been to our website, they’ve opened emails that helps rise them up. So it’s this balance of firmographics plus activities. And now when I walk into my CRM or log into my CRM, I see I need to call these 10 people this week, not these are a thousand people I can just sort any way I want. so it

That’s the other thing is trying to help them just really focus and even just give more information. You know, sometimes I’ve had clients who add different tools like website visitor identification. So it tells us what companies are on our website. And you know, so that’s great for someone identifying just new companies you might never have heard of that are somehow on your website, they’ve heard of you, but it’s really good for go clients that have ghosted you. You know, if you if you a client that just kind of went MIA and all of a sudden you we set up an alert and you know, ABC companies on the website, you get an alert and you can call them and within

five minutes and try to save that deal. I mean, that you talk about making a salesperson’s dream. They love it because otherwise that person visits the website and have no idea. You know, the company, the client is or the prospect is reengaging and the salesperson doesn’t know until they actually go that extra step, make the phone call, make the email.

Trevor Gilmore (22:36)
So would you say stepping into say a new client, let’s say Utop client, they’re going through the EOS strategy to increase sales, bring the company to that next level. when you’re first stepping in, would you say the most important focus is

Really is you’re in on what that ideal client profile is and then going from there? Is it setting up CRM systems that they don’t have that? Like where do you typically start, you know, and I would say both tactically and strategically

with a a new

Perryn Olson (23:08)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (23:09)
client and also how long does it typically take? You know, we’re talking six months,

Perryn Olson (23:13)
It’s

Trevor Gilmore (23:14)
a year, several years.

Perryn Olson (23:15)
I mean

the whole process can take several years. Kind of my typical engagement’s about eighteen, twenty-four months of you know, kind of standing up a team. but that beginning process, yeah, I definitely start with ideal client pro. I want to know the revenue goals and we kind of reverse, you know, engineering it goals of you okay, how many leads do you need to get to that? What’s your closing rate or your hit rate? just so I’d understand that. But that ideal client profile is really important. And one of the things we should elaborate more is

Ideal client proof doesn’t have to be me asking sales, who can you close, or even asking the CEO, you want a lot of times I like to ask operations. Who are the clients you like working with? Because if they’re a good operational fit, they generally are good sales fit. They close faster and easier. You have less company, but you also create better client retention. You also create better employee retention because if you’re bringing in bad fit clients, you’re pissing off operations and now we have a bigger issue. And it’s it’s one those things a lot of people have seen companies and they’re kind of just looking at like, why are they so good?

Why is the culture so strong? Why their clients love them? And you can’t ever put your finger on it. It’s generally that. They’re attracting the right people and repelling the wrong ones. And that’s it’s like it’s such a simple premise and it’s hard to get right, especially at a company that could be some sizable like an Aesok. but you know, so it just fixes everything and you know it’s kind of also we’ve we’ve talked on the or I’m sure you’ve talked of, you know, bad apples of employees. Like it’s the same thing. One bad apple can ruin a team.

And chase off a lot of people. The bad clients are sometimes worse because they’re paying you. to have a company that’s disciplined enough and you know, financially secure enough to say, no, I don’t want to work with you anymore, you know, is is powerful. so that idea of comparable can be a very powerful thing. And it helps make sure that we’re all in step because that’s the other thing I’ve seen a lot is you said you talk to two different salespeople and they have two different targets. Well, imagine talking to somebody in operations and accounting and CEO and like

They’re all trying to chase different things. And a lot of times the CEO is living in the future, especially if they’re a visionary.

Trevor Gilmore (25:08)
Mm-hmm.

Perryn Olson (25:09)
if we follow EOS, you know, terminology, they’re very much thinking where they should be going. And sometimes the company isn’t catching up. So I’ve even had to build like multi phase ideal client profiles for a CEO one time because they didn’t have the financial means to cut some of the bad clients today. So our goal was to bring in some good clients, cut some bad clients, and every it was like a five year process. And that was really, you know.

It’s still in motion. but that that was a way we could kind of get to that ideal state that the CEO was looking for.

Trevor Gilmore (25:37)
And that’s so empowering. Years ago I was at a CPA firm and we did just that. so you had these clients who weren’t ideal with the the way the firm was headed, right? So they were no longer ideal client mixes. And whether they weren’t responsive or or whatever the case was, operations all the day-to-day accountants got together at once a year and said, Hey, this is the group we should probably consider cutting ties with. And it was so empowering for the people

Perryn Olson (26:04)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (26:05)
task with the day to day communications operations and so on. So the the accountants and tax accountants and so on at to go through that that process versus if you make them suffer through it and the whole firm says, Okay

a client, you know, we’re gonna keep them and no matter what, then you do lose good people is to your point. So it sounds like a part of your strategy is really to come in and unite operations, cells, and of course the CEO’s future vision to make it all happen

and help

Perryn Olson (26:33)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (26:33)
it scale up.

Perryn Olson (26:34)
And depending on how visionary they are, sometimes it is a multi step plan. we can’t always, you know, eat the whole elephant today. and sometimes you have to show them that or like we’re not ready for that. You know, if clients, hey, we want to grow twenty percent year over year for the next five years, I’m like, What are you growing now? Three. Okay, well, how

Trevor Gilmore (26:51)
Yeah.

Perryn Olson (26:51)
do we start stair stepping this? ‘Cause obviously growth gets harder as you get bigger. you know, it’s a bigger number every year. So

it’s you know, how do we how do we fix sometimes the, you know, fix clients going out the back door. ’cause we can’t grow if everyone’s going the out the back door. And, you know, one of the beauties of construction is most client you know, most contractors work off of a backlog. So they kind of know what business is like next year. you sometimes have six months, twelve months to kind of play catch up. the flip side though is it takes a while to close some deals and you don’t necessarily know what’s working for six to twelve months. and that can be a really hard thing, especially with sales, is somebody’s new and all the actions, but

you know, they’re not really closing anything. You don’t know for 12, 18, 24 months. And then you’re like, okay, do I want to start over or do I want to deal with this person? so that’s that is a huge issue in this industry, especially as companies are transitioning from that founder led into more of a system led sales process.

Trevor Gilmore (27:42)
Right, there’s a lag and on the sales front, any energy you put in today, especially if it’s a long sales cycle, you’re not gonna see those results for twelve, eighteen months in the future.

Perryn Olson (27:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most you can see software companies that have a lot more predictive and analytics. I worked for a marketing firm and we knew our web traffic this month would lead to lead traffic or lead count next month and then would be revenue in three months. Like we had that figured out. So we had about a five month forecast. so then everything came for like focused on how do we drive more web traffic, how do we drive more lead flow? And everything else kind of took care of itself, which is great for forecasting. but that’s not

Trevor Gilmore (28:17)
Okay. Absolutely.

Perryn Olson (28:19)
Common in construction. So

Trevor Gilmore (28:21)
Yeah, construction, yeah. It’s you know you look at the backlog and they’re bidding on projects that might break ground in twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, you know, and so on. So it

Perryn Olson (28:28)
Yeah. I I’ve got clients we’re we’re working

on twenty twenty eight projects right now. Like we’re we’re one of ’em’s actually working on a proposal this week for twenty twenty eight. I mean it’s it’s great. Well

Trevor Gilmore (28:37)
And then of course uncertainty too in that space, you know, interest

rates, where where that’s going, you know, is is the developer truly gonna come through and fund and you know, all that all that kind of stuff comes into

Perryn Olson (28:49)
That’s the

real fun with back backlogs and construction is is it actually gonna fall when it’s supposed to? Because there’s a lot of projects kind of get kicked. And I I’ve seen a few companies that have all the money, you know, secured or all the projects secured, but they don’t start on time. And now we’ve got a different issue and you know, teams that are gonna go sit the bench and so it yeah, this one is a repeat client, it’s part of their master plan, like it all fits. So it’s probably ours to win and it’s gonna be a sizable chunk. So like if we if we win this.

We know twenty twenty eight’s already gonna be pretty good year. Like that that’s got that’s a really cool aspect of it too.

Trevor Gilmore (29:21)
Exactly.

predict wa well into the future. So we’re recording this what August 11th, 2026. So 2028, having that that insight there.

Perryn Olson (29:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (29:34)
Perryn, what type of leaders do you like working for? Obviously CEO talked a lot about the visionary. You know, that’s a traditional EOS core principle. Yeah, the the visionary CEO, and then you have the integrator, you know, there’s the the strong COO or maybe CFO, depending on organization. But you know, just

Big picture who what personality types and w do you enjoy working with and then you know, let’s say CEO and then even on the sales side as well, you know, when you do the first interview before you get hired, how can you tell, hey, this is an organization I can really enjoy working with and deliver?

Perryn Olson (30:11)
It’s kind of more are they looking at marketing as an investment for the future or are they looking at it as an expense on the on the budget? I mean, that is one of the bigger decisions. You know, I I’ve had c companies that have actually screened out, they’re like, Well, this is your budget this year, you can’t go over it like and yeah, as I’m even just talking to them, like I know it’s not enough budget for what they’re expecting. and it’s not even my fees, it’s like all the other, you know, things are wrapped around. I’m like, this is where some of your issues and just kind of that open mindedness. I’d rather

an aggressive open, you know, somebody being aggressive on their growth plans, but being very open minded how we get there versus somebody who’s very aggressive on like how it’s done and and necessarily not care about growth. I d I actually don’t like companies that want to just be who they are and stagnate. Like that that’s not exciting to me. It’s just stagnation. so I’d rather the challenge of, you know, growing a company

the client we have common, they they’re they’re growing aggressively through acquisitions right now and they’ve done a couple and want to keep going that way. And that’s exciting to bring those into fold. There’s kind of always something new and that’s one reason I like being a fractional is the the diversity of multiple clients and working for one company was a little boring when I first started that. so it’s it’s why I ended up got a company I had three companies and eight brands by the time I left because it was just it was more exciting that way for me. more of a challenge.

So that I mean that’s the big thing is this investment versus budget.

Trevor Gilmore (31:33)
Yeah, and that probably then leads to companies that i if they view marketing as an investment, ’cause that’s what it is at the end of the day. I mean, it’s true, everything expense and so

Perryn Olson (31:42)
interesting. Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (31:43)
on, but if you’re trying to scale a business to the next generation and use an ESOP, using EOS and make the whole thing successful, you can’t be status quo. If you’re status quo, that probably means you’re shrinking at the end of the day because

Perryn Olson (31:55)
Well, especially it yeah, especially

these days the inflation we’ve had the last two years. If your your status quo, you’re definitely going backwards. So

Trevor Gilmore (32:03)
You’re

growing backwards. Yeah, if you’re growing three percent and inflation’s four, well guess what? You actually shrunk by one percent.

Perryn Olson (32:07)
Yeah. Yeah. And

yeah. And the other side of it is what I tell my clients when I work with them is like, look, I want to know your business goals and I’m happy to hear your recommendations for marketing things. I know they’re getting bombarded with things. I see them too on, you know, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. You see all these videos and ads of I would just do this and so like I get the fads. I’m a lot more I’ll try some things and I think there should be some experimentation with the budget. But what I tell my clients is look

Tell me your business goals. And my job as your CMO is to help translate that in the marketing speak and help lead the team. Cause that’s really the difference between like a marketing director and a a CMO is the marketing director can execute all the marketing, perhaps even better than I can, because of that great tactician, but they’re struggling with the business acumen. And that’s where really a fractional CMO comes in. And the you know, I guess it’s the blessing for me, but this industry has ignored marketing for most of its history. So there’s really not as many people out there.

that have the business acumen and the marketing experience to really help advise these growing small and mid sized contractors. I mean, I I don’t know, there’s tens of thousands of AEC firms in the industry and I’d probably say there’s maybe a hundred, two hundred AEC marketing people that could actually be a VP or if CMO level. So it’s there’s there’s a huge shortage. So

Trevor Gilmore (33:19)
Use shortage. And we say both your clients when you’re coming in, are you the first time they’ve ever worked with experienced CMO? Is

Perryn Olson (33:27)
Yeah. I love the the one client I sat down did the ideal client proposal like day one. He’s like, What are you doing? And I like literally pulled up a spreadsheet and I’m like building out the score scoring metrics for him. He’s like, I’ve had marketing directors for the last 15 years and no one’s ever done this with me. And I’m like, And how has that worked for you? Like it was just it is he’s told me at least five times in the last year, he’s he’ll ask the question, Is this marketing? Like in an excited way, you know, because his eyes marketing’s always been proposals, social posts.

you know, client gifts, event planning, things like that. And it’s interesting because now I’m kind of moving to phase two of them. I’m actually coming back into like, hey, we need to do some events. And these like, I thought you didn’t events. Like, no, I want to do thought leadership events. I want to like take our subject matter experts and put them in webinars and have like host a lunch and learn and not just have Taco Tuesday. that’s not the event I’m talking about. So or even getting more unique client gifts and things like that that are just gonna help, you know

propel the company. And that’s one of the big issues that we see in construction. I think it’s it’s going to happen across every industry very soon, thanks to AI, is this battling commoditization. And construction’s been battling c commoditization because of the low bid mentality a lot of people have. So, you know, sometimes I can actually help we will stagnate high the top line growth, but the bottom line growth is what’s ticking up. I’ve got a client that we’ve actually intentionally done that. We’ve gone, we’ve helped them go from what was it?

10% mark profit margins for trade contract, but eighteen, twenty percent. And next year they’re already lining up for twenty-five percent based on their backlog. And their their top line’s ticked up a little, but for the most part, we’ve been really hammering hard on that idea of climate profile, getting a out of the muck of a really low cost competitor and try to educate their general contractors of why they’re better. And also letting that low cost competitor essentially shoot themselves in the foot. So there there’s a little bit of a waiting game in that too. But we thought that comp we’ve

Trevor Gilmore (35:14)
That’s a that’s impressive though.

Getting

Perryn Olson (35:17)
It it’s it’s

been good and we’ve kind of been waiting our time and we we had a lot of conversations of is like, do we go in that battle? Do we you know we’d get more efficient? And we are looking at some ways just to get more efficient for because if the market isn’t good, you can’t be as picky. That’s one of the challenges of trade contract. You can’t say what these these projects are gonna come. and they’ve been blessed this past year, year and a half of opportunity to kind of elevate the the services they’re offering. But if the market goes down

you know, projects get a little cheaper, their their scopes get a little cheaper. So they are looking at how do we essentially become a little more efficient on the back end that we don’t have to go to the you know, essentially working at cost is what they think the other company’s doing. and just doing a volume game. So a little different.

Trevor Gilmore (35:59)
You’re helping drive value here and at the end of the day, any sales organization th that’s what you sell. You know, unless you’re selling commodities and you know, that can just be automated, you know. But people sell value to people, in my opinion. So and it sounds you’re empowering your clients to do that and this is resulting in higher margins.

Perryn Olson (36:16)
Hund 100% agree.

But if you go ask a hundred contractors what makes them different, you’re gonna hear on time on budget at least fifty percent of the time. and then you’ll hear our people probably the other quarter, and then like it’s very few construction companies that can distinctly say why they’re better, why they add more value, or why they’re even just different. You know, there’s there’s a few firms out there that are completely different. There’s a firm here in New Orleans called Renegade, and they’re just totally different than

every other construction I’ve ever met in my life. and part of it is they do full vertical integration. I mean, they were a vertical builder that, you know, builds buildings and then they added a civil contract to build the f the underground stuff. And now they’re doing full fabrication and all like for them the ideal kind profile is the most important thing because they need a company that will hire them that believes in vertical integration with the entire process. And they’re just on a different mission than any other competitor. And it’s interesting is because I’ve worked with one of their competitors at in real time.

And they went from competing with this company thr you know four or five times a year to like, man, we might see them once a year, but we don’t really see them. They’re kind of going their own world. And then that’s what’s happening is they’re they’re building their own magnet and it’s a very strong magnet. And because they’re doing vertical integration, they actually don’t need as many clients because they’re getting more work out of one client. So it’s been interesting to see, but there’s others that don’t have to go quite extreme of being a renegade and there’s you know,

There’s some like Rogers O’Brien out of t Dallas, Texas is a very large G C it’s very tech forward and actually have some like hardware companies underneath them and you know they’re attracting the likes of like Tesla and things like that, people data centers that you know, a tech company wants a tech forward contractor.

Trevor Gilmore (37:52)
Absolutely, and being vertically integrated, they’re owning the whole process at the end too. So it’s it’s

Perryn Olson (37:56)
Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (37:57)
their experience the whole way.

Perryn Olson (37:58)
Yep. Yep. So it it’s it’s interesting because most contractors don’t think that way. Most of them kind of do what they’ve always done. And I think especially now with the shakeup of AI, where we’re going, I don’t think the trades will be impacted as much because you still need people to do that. It’ll be a while before robotics can get to that point. And I’ve had some experience marketing robotics companies for that. But you know the positioning of the the construction you know, construction manager or the owner rep, the

The contractor at risk, those things are gonna get really disrupted by AI very soon.

Trevor Gilmore (38:27)
Absolutely we’re seeing that and how do you protect yourself from AI? It’s it’s value at the end of the day delivering value.

Perryn Olson (38:33)
And creativity.

And and that’s where I think most contractors really forget is like what’s amazing about construction, why I like working with them is they’re problem solvers. They are very creative, just not in the in the arts way. You know, they can figure out how to make something happen that most people just don’t can’t get around. They just think it’s a stop. So it’s how do you use that? How do you tell those stories? And a lot of contractors want to hide those stories, they’re fear they’re gonna educate their competitors. And I’m like, no, these are the best stories to pull in those prospects. You know, they care that you’ve done a healthcare project, they want to know you’ve done

an accelerated timeline on a busy street or next to a kid’s playground or like whatever. Like they want to hear the challenges that you overcame and you know ones that you anticipated but also the ones you you hit along the way because they want to know if it happens to them, they’re safe. It’s actually clients are looking for the least amount of risk. And when they’re not presented anything different, the client essentially says, Well, I picked the cheapest. So it’s contractor’s job to s sell why we’re worth more money.

Whether that’s, you know, a thousand dollars or a million dollars or ten hundred million, they’ve gotta sell why they’re worth more.

Trevor Gilmore (39:33)
And it’s their brand, it’s the value they bring, it’s the solution to your point. Yeah, I have several clients that do super high quality work. Generally we’re talking about commercial general contractors or maybe some really high end home residential contractors. You go to their websites and it’s like built in nineteen ninety-five, you know, maybe there’s a single photo,

Perryn Olson (39:52)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (39:53)
you know.

And so on. And then I always like to bring up throughout the process, like, you know, hey, hey, you know, I’ve noticed you you clearly don’t spend a lot of marketing, you know, and branding and so on.

Perryn Olson (40:03)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (40:03)
Now, why is that? And it’s often well, we’re it’s all relationship driven and we don’t need to. Well, those people though are selling to the eSOP, retiring, so that next generation, okay, they’ve inherited this

Perryn Olson (40:13)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (40:14)
business with an awesome reputation, but

they have to start from scratch in terms of making the company

Perryn Olson (40:19)
Yeah. And

Trevor Gilmore (40:20)
and the marketing organization ready for today’s challenges like

Perryn Olson (40:23)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (40:23)
right now. That’s

Perryn Olson (40:25)
And and that’s that’s definitely happening now. And ten years ago w a mentor of mine, he was a VP of business, a big heavy civil contractor. He flatter told me over lunch one day, he goes, Parent, I go to more retirement parties and funerals than I go to bin meetings now. Like I like he’s that that his that he’s getting at that age and unfortunately he’s passed this past year and his funeral was insanely popul like populated. Like it was ’cause he just knew everyone.

But it was it he was just saying, like, I’m seeing it. My my client 10 years ago, his clients are retiring and they’re getting younger. And then we were already positioning that company more digital, even though they were a heavy civil contractor. And you know, I remember at the time he called me and is like, hey, we just got a call from this giant general contractor out of state who’s looking for us, you know, looking for somebody who can do what we do. And they found our website. We we said we can do what we do. And they’re like, good. It was a 200 million dollar civil project.

I mean, massive project that came through the website. Like, and you know, I’ve heard these stories from different clients over the over the years. And you know, it’s they it is really they everyone knows us. Well, yeah, they do, but what about people are coming to the new to the market? how do you get into new markets? And that’s the where where a lot of times people come bring me in is they’ve done an acquisition and something’s failing, or they’re growing to a new market sector, a new geographic market, and it’s failing, and it’s because they don’t have those relationships, they don’t have that, you know.

that name presence that they do in those new markets and and they need that engine. and one of my favorite things, you you were talking earlier, it reminded me of a lot of contractors do really good work. And one of my favorite aspects of this job and this role is helping tell those stories. And so one of the things I’ve been adding a lot of my clients is not marketing coordinators, but actually content specialists. And their job is to pull that those stories from the field. Sometimes they’ll go take videos and pictures, but a lot of times they’re more curating working with the field team of like,

Hey, what’s going on? What are the projects you’re working on? Let’s do a day in the life of video. And those are great for both recruiting and clients. and then what I love is one of my CEOs is like, that’s what I’ve been wanting all these years. I didn’t know what I didn’t know how to do that. He wanted this, he’s like, I have all this work in the field that no one ever sees and no one ever appreciates. I want to tell the story of my people. Like I want to tell the these the showcase the team. And it was so exciting to see him.

and it’s funny that we’ve got that position on board. He meets with her every week on as a one on one ’cause it’s like a pet project for him. He’s like, I wanna have this this these stories told and I love it. So

Trevor Gilmore (42:43)
so I always love seeing what our clients build, those in

the

Perryn Olson (42:46)
Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (42:47)
architecture, engineering, construction. We have so many ESO clients in that space and I love always f going and taking taking a look at the jobs ’cause at the end of the day it’s they’re building something amazing. It’s often an old

Perryn Olson (43:00)
Yeah.

Trevor Gilmore (43:01)
engineering feat. You know, these large commercial buildings,

Perryn Olson (43:03)
Yes.

Trevor Gilmore (43:03)
beautiful residential, you name it, highways, it’s civil engineering projects and so on.

and and telling that story and and highlighting that I that that’s showing the art, you know, of what you mentioned earlier. Like, hey, they’re not really artists, but it’s like, hey, the the final product there is. Perryn really enjoyed this conversation today. we’re out of time. Where should listeners go to contact you?

Perryn Olson (43:26)
we’ve got our new website, AECCMOs . com, and then LinkedIn is the best place to connect with me and happy to connect anyone who’s listening.

Trevor Gilmore (43:33)
Awesome. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Check out our new episodes on your favorite podcast channel, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and of course our Menke website. Again, I’m Trevor Gilmore, CEO of Menke. Have an awesome day, everyone. Take care.

Perryn Olson (43:46)
Okay.