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Level the Playing Field with Strategic Alliances

by Jim Rogers

 

Photo of Steve Osborn

Steve Osborn, P.E.
Founding Principal, CE Solutions

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., struck out years ago to create his own firm. In the early years, he faced some limitations deriving from the size of his startup. He shared how he overcame that obstacle and landed a dream client by creating a joint venture with several small- and mid-sized firms. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve. 

Jim: Can you tell me about a pursuit that you had – whether it was a dream project or client – and what you did to win it?

Steve Osborn: Sure. The first one that comes to mind was when CE Solutions was probably seven or eight years old – so we were a lot smaller and probably had five or six people. We had a relationship with someone who was a project manager for the city because when I worked at a larger firm previously, we did a big project with this individual. Indianapolis was getting ready to expand the existing convention center, which was a fairly significant project – around $275 million. This gentleman I’m referring to was assigned the project manager role and led the selection process. He worked with advisory councils of notable city officials and outside consultants that were assigned by the mayor and the governor.

It was a pretty interesting and high-profile group of folks. Through SMPS and other activities over the years, I developed relationships with quite a few of those individuals. It just kind of happened that they were the ones involved with this process – but I had a really good relationship with the individual who was leading the selection process.

There was no way CE Solutions would get selected by themselves to provide structural engineering on a $275 million project. We just didn’t have the portfolio developed yet – didn’t have enough staffing capacity to do it. However, it was a project that fit really well into our core mantra of making a difference in the communities where we live and work – so we were looking to get involved somehow.

The governor, at the time, was really promoting Buy Indiana – wanting to keep it local by helping firms that wouldn’t ordinarily get projects like that and find creative ways to get them involved. I put the old thinking cap on and started kicking it around with some of my fellow clients and folks that were also pursuing this architecturally – and came up with the idea of putting together a joint venture with a couple of our competitors of like size and mind. I reached out to other competing structural engineering firms of similar size and a geotechnical engineering firm, and the four of us put together a joint venture called Structural Alliance.

I laid the idea out in front of the individual who was spearheading the selection process, and he said, “You know, this looks really interesting. You’re making my job really easy. This is exactly what the governor is talking about – helping firms like yours and others who wouldn’t get the job on their own and creating a way to maybe be involved.” He said, “I can’t guarantee anything. There’s a lot of people involved in the selection process.” All I was looking for was, “Does this make sense? Is this something we should pursue before we go and invest a lot of money in the formation process and everything else?” He gave me the encouragement to go ahead and do it without any guarantees, and we knew we were at risk.

Lo and behold, we were selected. We didn’t get the master structural contract, which would have been a really long shot for us – but we had people pulling for us for that role. In the end, they said even though we were all established firms, we hadn’t worked together as a joint venture, and this would be our first project, and it’s a fast-track project. It’s a high-profile project. They didn’t want to put us out there and stretch us too far – but they gave us an associate role, which they really didn’t have to do. It was an extraordinary achievement, in my opinion, and a huge success. It was nice to have the JV partners all sitting in the room that day when the selection happened, and it was announced publicly. It was a great day.

The Importance of Networking

by Jim Rogers

Joe Viscuso, SVP and Director of Strategic Growth

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Joe Viscuso, SVP and Director of Strategic Growth at Pennoni, discussed starting his own company early in his career and how networking positively impacted his success. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Joe. 

Joe: After I left college in ’73, I went to grad school and took night classes. Six years later, once I had completed my graduate degree and had my PE license, I started my own company – so I was relatively young at the time.

One of my early decisions was that I wanted my own business. For six or nine months, I left consulting and worked for a fast food restaurant called Gino’s, which at the time had even more restaurants than McDonald’s.

The economy was not in good shape. I saw that they were trying to shed potential sites rather than build restaurants. I decided I would form my own business – and it was right in the middle of a recession, which was probably even crazier.

Many of my peers were members of ASCE, ASME, and several other trade organizations — and to me, as a business developer, that never made sense. How would I get business if I was in a room full of people just like me, looking for the same kind of business?

I decided that I needed to take another course of action to develop my business. I joined the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Council — business associations where people might be looking for people like me. That early career decision turned out to be one of my best because I was in a room full of like-minded people who, when you peel the onion,  are all looking for business and to make connections. Rotary was another great one for me.

It’s like going to a high school dance. It’s tough to ask that first girl to dance, right? It felt similar because I was the rookie in the room. A lot of folks were older and obviously more seasoned than me — I was a little intimidated. It took me a year or two to realize that age wasn’t a factor because we all shared a common element — everyone was looking to grow their business.

Something that can be frustrating is not having instantaneous results. But then six months later, “Joe Brown” would call me and say, “Hey, I met you at a Rotary luncheon. My brother is building a building. He’s going to need some civil engineering services, and I thought of you.” Then all of a sudden, the connections start to happen. I learned that you don’t necessarily get instantaneous gratification.

Anytime I joined an organization, I usually made it through the ranks. I became very involved. I have been on executive committees and eventually became the board chair of quite a few organizations.

Participating In Professional Societies

by Jim Rogers

Photo of Steve Osborn

Steve Osborn, P.E.
Founding Principal,
CE Solution

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., discussed his involvement in professional organizations. He credits these organizations for attributing to his professional development. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve. 

Jim: Thinking back to the early part of your career, was there something that you were intentional about in terms of developing skills that later helped you in sales, business development, and marketing?

Steve Osborn: The first company I worked for after I got out of school was very supportive of my participation in ASCE. I was pleased that they supported that. A lot of it was on my own time, but a lot of it was on company time. I learned so much from a leadership standpoint – how to run meetings, communicate, manage, and organize events. I went through all the different leadership roles up to the president and got to experience it from each position, including committee activity.

As my career developed, I reached a point where I was with a different firm, and my responsibilities included managing and overseeing the production of the vertical market. The company I went to was primarily focused on the horizontal or transportation business, and the owner wanted to expand their business into the vertical or building side of things. I came on board to do that. All of sudden, my role changed. I was responsible for finding business, as well as helping grow and manage a division of business for a firm. I had no formal business education – I have a degree in civil engineering.

So I looked for ways to get smart quickly and for mentors. Through ASCE, I got a chance to build relationships with some of the business owners of civil engineering firms around the city. I took advantage of those relationships. I met with them, asked questions, and considered them mentors. During that time, I got introduced to an organization called SMPS (Society for Marketing Professional Services) and immediately saw that it would be a target-rich environment for me as a consultant. There were client opportunities and relationships within that organization.

There was also great educational programming for exactly what I needed, which was marketing professional services. I got involved in SMPS and went through the leadership structure. I’m still active today and also an SMPS Fellow. I go to their national conference every year. It helps me build the business. I learned a lot about how to do business development and marketing in our profession and also how to build a network. It was really important to me at the time of starting my own business because I built it around the knowledge and relationships that I developed through the SMPS organization. I have grown my business by continuing to stay active in that organization – learning and gaining knowledge.

We’re also a member of ACEC and have been for years – ever since I started the business. The difference is ACEC is a firm membership or company membership, whereas SMPS is an individual membership. I was active in ACEC before I started my firm, too, but I really needed to build a client network, and I didn’t see that in ACEC as quickly as I did through SMPS.

Jim: At what point in someone’s career do you think it might be of value to join SMPS?

Steve Osborn: It makes sense for anyone who has a responsibility to develop and maintain client relationships to be a participant in SMPS meetings and learn their best practice in that regard. If you have marketing professionals in your organization that are active members of SMPS and have that body of knowledge close at hand, there can be internal training without the engineers having to go to those meetings. But every once in a while, it certainly doesn’t hurt to expose them to that sort of thing, especially if there’s a good webinar or session on a particular subject about client relationship management – even technical writing.

We talk about SMPS a lot in our organization, and our marketing professionals share knowledge internally. Our senior-level folks are the ones that have a lot more front-line client relationship responsibility – but every once in a while, we’ll take one of our young people to a meeting. We encourage them to participate as well. They aren’t necessarily members, but it doesn’t prevent them from going to a meeting here and there.

Creating a Service-Driven Culture

by Jim Rogers

Steve Osborn, P.E. Founding Principal, CE Solutions

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., discussed how he has created and continued to sustain a service-driven culture within his company. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve. 

 

Jim: What do you do within your firm to instill your values within your employees? 

Steve Osborn: I’ve been lucky because I started the firm from scratch by myself and have been able to grow it organically. The hiring process is probably the most important thing we do since we’re a service provider. It’s important to have that culture — that foundational philosophy and those principles instilled in people when they come on board here. Our recruiting process is very intentional.

During the interview process, we talk a lot about what our firm is like, what’s important to us, what our foundational principles are, what our brand attributes are, and how we deliver service. We can tell by listening to people if they align with us. We look for the character values and attributes that we want. We’ve had really good success with that.

We create a lot of opportunities for those individuals to grow quickly. We involve them in client contact and give them all the responsibilities of project management upfront. The only thing that they don’t have is experience — but they have all of the other qualities that we’re looking for in a strong project manager. So we allow them to manage their own projects under the supervision of an experienced senior professional.

They can then be responsible for their work. We develop and prepare them. By the time they’re ready to take their PE exam, they’re very comfortable, prepared, and have a high success rate of passage. Then they get their own projects and fly solo after that.

Our clients have complimented us on that approach. They think it’s pretty unique that we give young individuals that many opportunities at an early age. They enjoy working with them as well. The young professionals are the point of contact, but they know they’ve got the senior guy next to them. Our young people get excited about that opportunity.

Perseverance Builds Confidence

by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, shared her experience building confidence as a seller-doer. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

 

 

Jim Rogers: The middle game of business development is the hardest part of this, in my opinion. If you can think of a time when you first took ownership of that middle phase and led a potential client or a potential project through to fruition – how did you learn how to do that?

Laura Wernick: I don’t think my path was a particularly easy one. I can remember very clearly talking to a potential client and then feeling very crushed when we weren’t shortlisted for the project. But maybe what I did is a useful tip for others. I followed up and said, “Geez, you know, I was disappointed. I was excited about this project.” And I remember very clearly the person saying, “Well, Laura, you’re a nice person but you seem kind of awkward. And I wasn’t always comfortable talking with you.” Whoa, that was a tough one.

Jim Rogers: Wow. Unvarnished honesty there.

Laura Wernick: I was trying so hard – And it can take a while for many of us to be comfortable, to find ourselves, and to speak as ourselves. You’re trying so hard to be this perfect salesperson that you’re not perhaps perceived as being genuine or true to yourself. It was a bit of slow learning perhaps. It takes a little while and maybe some maturity for many of us to become ourselves.

It’s hard to be a good marketer if you’re not comfortable in your skin and comfortable with who you are. I think that’s something that people can learn – And it takes time. It takes encouragement, trial and error, and learning what your natural voice is.

Jim Rogers: Trial and error yield wisdom and confidence.

Laura Wernick: Absolutely.

Jim Rogers: I think it takes care of itself over time. You can’t just tell somebody, “Don’t be nervous when you’re talking” – It doesn’t work.

Laura Wernick: I believe the key to all business development is being persistent over time, trying to learn from your mistakes, and sticking with it. That’s always the hardest thing because often the gratification is long delayed. When you finally make that sale and close a deal, it’s a wonderful feeling, but there are a lot of dead ends and sowing a lot of seeds before that final contact can be made sometimes. And I think that persistence and sticking to it is really hard.

Jim Rogers: Beyond just building the gravitas and confidence that comes with experience – Was there anything that you did intentionally to study some of the skills that you needed to acquire? Such as training or finding the right coach or mentor to help you learn and develop those skills.

Laura Wernick: I was always looking to others as role models. Fortunately, one of my partners loves doing business development, and it always helped me to talk, connect, and ask questions. I found that partner to be my greatest role model. My greatest learning technique was seeing others do it and then doing it myself over time. You become more sophisticated in how you spend your time, what works, and what doesn’t work for you. I’m very active in a range of professional organizations now, and when I see other people, I study how they reach out to people and what they are involved with. That’s been my pathway – Learning from my peers or from people who have been doing it for a while. I study their approach and what works for them – And then try to make it work for who I am.

The Importance of Exceptional Client Service

by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., spent the most time talking about what it means to deliver exceptional service to clients — and how that helps you build your business. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve. 

 

Jim: Steve, you’ve been very methodical and intentional about what you do to ensure your folks deliver great client service. Could you tell me about that?

Steve Osborn: Absolutely. Happy to do that. The idea behind starting my firm 19 years ago was based on four foundational principles: strong relationships, mutual respect, integrity, and ethical practice. It’s how we operate and make decisions daily. It’s how we have grown the business and determines everything we do, from the hiring process to who we do business with – I’m very much a relationship person. I’m very interested in the business of the business, as well as the profession of structural engineering that we serve. 

As a result of being a relationship person, I’m also a very caring person, and I want to be able to take good care of the people that entrust us with their projects. I can’t over-emphasize how important real effective communication is in our business. It involves keeping our clients informed of the progress that we’re making on their projects regularly. I don’t like when our clients have to contact us and ask about the status of something. I like being proactive in keeping them informed. It’s important to me that we hire people with similar characteristics because I feel those are the kind of things that are difficult to teach someone. It’s also about doing business with people we know and trust — people who care about and respect us as well.

Jim: Can you give me an example?

Steve Osborn: Sure. We’re proactive in terms of providing regular updates on the projects. Before they ask, we give it to them. We get nice feedback and are complimented all the time about that. Clients say, “We always ask that of somebody, but we don’t always get it.”

Another good example is the level of completeness of our documents. We produce and deliver them in the timeframe that we promise. We get complimented all the time about coming to progress meetings which are intended to discuss 50% completion, and we bring documents that are 75% complete. The clients notice that. 

Another thing we’ve done is deliver projects ahead of schedule. We’ve delivered projects two to four weeks ahead of schedule — and sometimes when we’re prime, it allows them to put it on an earlier bid letting. In one case with one of our institutional clients, our project was scheduled for a bid letting towards the end of the year, so it was jammed. They had a lot of projects going on in that bid letting, so they were worried about getting good competitive pricing. We were able to deliver the project several weeks ahead of time, which put it on an earlier letting — which had less competition for projects going out. As a result of that, they felt they got better pricing.

Jim: That’s a great example of an outcome a client gets from that kind of service.

Steve Osborn: In a follow-up, even the client commented when we did that. They said that this is unheard of. They had never experienced that before with somebody, so I felt like it set us apart. It was kind of surprising that nobody has done or offered that. I remember them specifically saying, “Nobody does this. This is incredible.” It was a nice thing to hear.

I tell my staff all the time — “You never know where your opportunities will come from. Just go out there and be sincere. Be yourself. Don’t be shallow. Don’t be artificial. Don’t just go through the motions. You have to be real. You have to be who you are.” That’s why we consider those characteristics during the hiring process. We try to hire people who truly care.

Discovering and Developing Your Public Speaking Skills

by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, shared insight on the importance of public speaking and that her firm involves younger staff in presentations — even high-stakes presentations — early on. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

 

Jim Rogers: One of your professional strengths is public speaking to help develop business in the K-12 school market. Did that come from experience, or did you intentionally work on getting better with outside help?

Laura Wernick: Public speaking was one thing I always enjoyed doing. Even when I was nervous, I was still enjoying it. That carried me through in a lot of ways because I enjoyed going out and speaking, as well as making presentations. I also enjoyed doing interviews. As I did it more, I certainly became more comfortable with it. I learned by watching other people, including learning techniques from educators.

I have also gone through some professional training in terms of how to organize my presentations and present more effectively. That has been very helpful regarding refining techniques and understanding how I appear to others in a presentation format. I would certainly recommend getting a professional trainer, whether you’re an experienced presenter or just starting. That type of good coaching is huge.

Jim Rogers: Do you offer any formal training for your professionals?

Laura Wernick: We do have a professional coach who comes in every few years to provide some training on presentations. We’re also doing more mentoring, and this is more of a bottom-up request from our employees. We’re always taking a younger person with us whenever we go to any professional organization or community event.  It allows them to watch us and others operate while learning what types of events we’re trying to participate in. We’re trying to get people out in the marketplace on a more regular basis.

We also work very closely with a writer who will help our young people put together ideas for articles. To whatever extent is needed, he will either support or critique their writing so that we have more people producing articles for magazines. We’re encouraging people to participate more in making presentations as well.

There are several public speaking opportunities across the calendar year, so we always try to have people from the firm speak at different presentation opportunities. We always have younger people not only come to interviews with us but play roles in those interviews. We’ve found that if you’re going to be part of an interview team, you have to have a role. Their role may be small at first, but we work with them to make sure they understand their script. There are also opportunities to be an observer, but if you’re on the team, then you’re presenting. People rise to the occasion.

From personal experience, I have found that if you’re speaking about something you care about, you may stumble a bit, but your passion comes through — and showing you care deeply is one of the most important things in giving a presentation. Oftentimes, that is even more important than the actual content. We find that our younger people do very well in interviews.

 

Drawing Younger, Less Experienced Staff into Marketing & Business Development

by Jim Rogers

 

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, discussed how to support younger, less experienced staff in developing their networks and becoming involved in marketing and business development. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Laura Wernick: It’s important for me to bring in opportunities or connect younger people in the office to help them build their networks. I’m often doing that initial introduction within the firm as a way of helping and then providing those leads to other people in the office.

They can then develop their networks and become marketers and business development people on their own. So that’s another end of the spectrum — making sure that others in the office have the opportunity to build networks and develop their prospects.

Jim Rogers: How do you know when people are ready to be more involved in business development?

Laura Wernick: I think some people are naturally inclined towards business development. They feel comfortable being introduced to people. They feel comfortable carrying on conversations and pursuing potential clients. So sometimes, it’s obvious.

There are other times when you’re trying to develop a person who may not see this as their forte, but you want to help them grow. So that’s probably the more challenging thing. That’s a little bit more of a push-and-pull situation. And I think it’s a gradual process.

The first layer is just getting them out to meet people in professional organization environments or community events and seeing how they respond, while providing feedback and encouragement. Hopefully, you’re able to push them into other situations and see how they respond at each level. Most architects are not inclined to do business development. They’d much prefer to sit at their desks and solve problems — solve the specific problem that’s handed to them.

So I think it’s about encouraging those with that natural inclination and giving them opportunities. And when do you know? I think that when you’re working with younger people on projects, on actually doing the design and following through with a project, and you see how they’re relating to the clients that they’re working with on a day-to-day basis — you begin to see those who can easily interact with their clients, lead their clients, and gain the confidence of their clients. So you know that those people are going to do well in the larger marketing environment. It just takes some encouragement, support, and opportunities for them to do well.

For other people, I think you just have to keep nurturing and nudging and building them up over time. And ultimately, not everyone will be able to do it easily. So you want to just help people to rise to their greatest potential.

Everybody has to be doing some level of marketing and business development; some people will do well at it, and others will just participate.

Building Recognition for Your Authority

by Jim Rogers

Picture of woman with speaking to an audience at a conference.

Building your authority through speaking at professional and industry conferences.

In Becoming a Seller-Doer, I introduce the RLOCK model that reflects the five stages of the client lifecycle: Recognition, Lead, Opportunity, Close, and Keep. The R is about building recognition for your professional expertise and your firm’s brand and capabilities.

Building recognition can be done in many ways: blogging, writing articles for professional or trade periodicals, speaking at conferences, or conducting webinars or lunch-and-learns.

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, spent the most time talking about how “authority marketing,” as some call it, helped her generate scads of business over the decades. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Jim: Tell me about yourself.

Laura Wernick: I’m a graduate of Cornell University. I got my Bachelor of Architecture there and then came to Boston, and I’ve been in the Boston Cambridge area ever since. I’ve been with HMFH Architects for over 25 years. I focus on educational design and how to create the best facilities for teaching and learning, primarily for students in K-12 environments.

Educational design really captured my imagination. We were working with young kids a lot, so everything we did was to stimulate their curiosity and excite them. To be able to design in a very playful and imaginative way – We had some very wondrous and special environments, which were engaging, and I fell in love with that. I also got intrigued by how schools are a piece of the community. They really are community centers.

I got very engaged in the history of school design and if schools have always been that way. There is a fascinating story to school design and how you can use it thematically to look at history, to look at lighting, to look at mechanical systems, and to look at how education has evolved over the years. And that’s my fascination with schools as a building type. It was my entry point into starting to do marketing, even before I knew that’s what I was doing. I turned my interest in school design into research and the research into, early on, some talks at small conferences. And I think for the first conference, I actually paid for my transportation and registration fee because I didn’t even know that that was important to a firm’s marketing.

I think the first place I spoke was at a conference for what, at the time, was called the Council for Education Facility Planners International, CEFPI. It’s since become the Association for Learning Environments, A4LE, but in both manifestations, it focuses on creating great environments for students.

Jim Rogers: Often, people with technical expertise who want to put it out in the world to help others like to go to their professional association to do that. Well, that’s where your competitors, peers, and colleagues are, and if you’re not taking it to where your prospective clients are, then you’re limiting your impact. Is there a talk that stood out for you that paid off or surprised you with the result you got?

Laura Wernick: Well, that first one was quite the learning experience, and I had people asking me questions that I didn’t know the answers to, so I had to learn to sharpen my game. In terms of payoff, I think it helped allow us to spread more nationally. Over time, as I attended these conferences regularly and ultimately became part of the organization’s leadership, I got invited to other places in the country to interview and participate in pursuing schools. So that was one outcome, but I can’t tie it to a single presentation. It was building that over time.

The other thing, as you said, is that there are different architects or competitors at those conferences. The advantage was we could get invited to other places in the country where these teaming partners needed our expertise. I found over time that those peers sometimes became resources for us when we were looking for consultants in a different part of the country.

 

Want to Ace your Virtual Short-List Interview? Follow These Tips to Keep the Focus on You and Your Message Instead of on the Technology.

by Jim Rogers

One year into the pandemic, MS-Teams and Zoom meetings have become the new normal for most of us. What’s more, your clients are now routinely conducting most, if not all, short-list interview presentations remotely.

More so than an in-person interview presentation, video conferencing inherently has many variables that could distract your audience, undermine your confidence, and ultimately compromise your team’s chances for the award. The variables are compounded by the number of presenters you have and how many virtual sites are involved. If you have six presenters presenting from separate locations, that’s 6x more chances something could go wrong. 

With proper preparation, you can reduce the chances for such distracting problems and you can deliver a more polished and professional presentation that outclasses your competitors. If you and your team members are equally polished, then your professionalism will be all the more impressive.   

In this post, you will learn techniques to make sure your technology comes off without a hitch and creates a more professional perception of you with your client. While you should check in with your “IT guy,” here are some DIY steps you can take, regardless of how much tech support you get.  

Technology/Bandwidth at Home

Your office is a safe, fast, reliable place to be for an interview. That said, most of my clients have been in their home offices because of the recent surge. Home is not usually as reliable. 

At home, be sure to head off any connectivity issues. First, if you can, connect your computer to your router through an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. Your ethernet cable will be more reliable. If your computer is within sight of the router, you may find that your 5G frequency will perform better than 2G. However, if your router is in another room, you may find 2G to be more reliable. 

Reboot

If you haven’t rebooted your equipment in a while, take the time to restart your laptop, cable modem and router. Your internet service provider should have instructions on the sequence you should use. Play it safe by doing it the day before, not hours or minutes before showtime — you don’t want to get frantic the day of the presentation if you encounter an issue that takes some time to resolve. 

Pause Sync

Contention for bandwidth can yield poor audio and video quality. To ensure that your video conference software isn’t competing for bandwidth, pause any backup synchronization software such as Dropbox, OneDrive, iDrive, or Google Drive. This is especially important if you do not have blazing fast internet. Then, make sure you’re not competing with other members of your household. If it can be helped (hey, lots of us have kids at home doing remote instruction), take care that they’re not downloading or streaming movies or music — or gaming! 

Checklist for go time

  • Ask household members not to stream music and movies or play games online during the call
  • Close any applications not needed for the presentation
  • Pause any backup services
  • Fully charge your headset 
  • Fully charge your laptop, or better yet, plug it in.  

Sound

The key here is that your voice should be heard clearly — and it should be the only thing heard. Make sure you are close enough to your microphone. Check for ambient noise in the room, for example, a fan. If you are using two computers, make sure that you only have one microphone open and that you only have one speaker active. 

Checklist for go time

  • Place a do not disturb sign on your door
  • Turn off the cell phone ringer
  • Mute email alerts on your computer 
  • Mute Alexa or Siri, or whoever your personal assistant may be
  • Mute yourself when not speaking, so the client can hear your teammate. 

Video

Even though their cameras may be off, your client wants to see your face — and your expressions: camera positioning and lighting drive that. Try to avoid having a window behind you and be sure to have a light in front of you. A selfie ring light is a good choice, but a desk lamp will do. I have a $20 desk lamp in front of me with a low wattage bulb, pointed a bit downward so I’m not blinded by it. 

Proportion matters: Don’t center your face on the screen; this leaves a big open space above the top of your head, which is distracting. Vertically, your screen should show from armpit to top of cowboy hat (that’s 3 fingers above-head if you don’t have a cowboy hat!) with your eyes at 2/3 of the way up. Laterally, your face takes up the middle 30% of the screen. Put your laptop on a box or stack of books, if necessary.  

Get a Quality Camera

Make sure you are happy with the quality of your camera and microphone. Many laptop cameras are grainy and hate low lighting. 

For a high stakes presentation, consider an upgrade to an external HD camera with a better lens and more features, like adjustments for low lighting. I have a Logitech C920 for under $100 that has worked great for hundreds of webinars and video calls over the years. [Note: Many firms have been buying and shipping equipment upgrades directly to interview teams or are reimbursing them after the fact, because they know what is on the line … and it’s a small price to pay.]

A word about virtual backgrounds … because it is friendlier, I recommend using your office (wherever that may be) as a natural work setting if you are able to stage it nicely. Make sure the scenery behind you is professional and reflects your work personality. As I live in Kentucky, I have a bottle of bourbon (unopened, mind you) on the table behind me for a conversation piece. If I had a high-stakes presentation with a client that didn’t know me well, I would consider stowing it out of sight. 

Alternatively, a meaningful virtual background would be one that reflects work that you have done or are doing, such as a clear photograph of a client project you’re proud of. Such green screen-type, virtual backdrops are tricky, though — when you move, you break up around the edges of your head and body outline. Parts of you can disappear as you are talking if you’re an animated presenter. 

Checklist for go time

  • Point camera at eye level
  • Wipe camera lens clean 
  • Check the background for distracting items
  • Make sure you are front-lit, not backlit
  • Position yourself close enough to adjust the camera if needed
  • Turn off the camera when not speaking, so you can feature the speaker (but follow whatever rules your presentation team has agreed on)

Finally

Remember, your work does not speak for itself — your video presentation speaks for it. If your work is worth a client’s attention, aim to deliver it flawlessly. To keep your work from being obscured by any distractions, there is a lot to attend to. 

Adopt the mindset of an athlete — respect the importance of pregame preparation by attending to these many variables. And when you’re done, win or lose, you’ll be satisfied knowing that you left it all on the playing field.