GUEST EXPERT PROGRAM
Grow Your Business by Joining the Faculty of
Our Workshops for Public & Private Revitalization Leaders
In most
competitive-bid situations, companies
providing services or products related to restoring natural
resources or redeveloping communities normally "make the case" for
their firm in three of the following four ways:
- Portfolio, awards, etc.:
Nothing adds more to your credibility than proof that
you've successfully accomplished the kinds of projects in
which the prospective client is interested. Of course, any
decent-sized firm that's been around for a while is going to
have an impressive portfolio and a number of awards,
so--while absolutely necessary to get short-listed--these
might not sufficiently differentiate your firm from the
competition.
- Professionalism:
This is a given, but is hard for the prospective client
to evaluate, other than via portfolio, awards, etc. While
technical expertise, honesty, and reliability are essential,
they don't provide much sales value as a differentiator.
- Diversity of Restorative
Disciplines: As communities increasingly look for more
holistic approaches to socio-economic revitalization, and
regional approaches continue to proliferate, public-sector
clients become more appreciate of firms providing
one-stop-shopping, meaning that they have the expertise to
restore many forms of built and natural assets under one
corporate roof. Again, the larger the firms are that
are bidding, the less this becomes a differentiator: In
these days of mergers and acquisitions, most of the larger
design, construction, and design-build firms address
most--if not all--of the 12 sectors
of restorable assets.
- Integration: Finally,
we get to the real differentiator. Most
medium-to-large firms competing for significant restorative
development contracts can hold their own in the above three
generic elements of proposals and sales pitches. Where
most of them fall down is in the area of integration, both
internal and external.
- Internal integration
means that your firm's broad spectrum of restorative
expertise is linked effectively throughout the
organization. Here are two ways to judge whether
your firm has effective internal integration:
- Cross-selling:
When your business development people hears of
an upcoming revitalization initiative or
restoration/redevelopment project that encompasses
several forms of restorable assets (such as
wetlands, agricultural lands, transportation, sewer,
catastrophe damage, etc.), are they quickly and
easily able to identify the most appropriate people
in your firm to communicate this lead? Do you
have a web-based or human-based point of integration
for your restorative services in all
12 sectors?
- Team-creation:
Similarly, when one of your offices or professionals
receives an RFP that encompasses several forms of
restorable assets (such as brownfields, historic
structures, fisheries, power, watershed, etc.), are
they able to quickly and easily assemble a top-notch
team of experts from throughout the firm whose
skills don't just generically deal with creating or
maintaining those forms of assets, but whose
specialty is restoring them?
- External integration
means that your firm's broad spectrum of restorative
expertise is linked effectively in both your strategic
plan and your marketing plan:
- Strategy. If
your strategy has been updated to address the rapid,
historic shift from sprawl to restorative
development--which already accounts for almost $2
Trillion annually, worldwide--then you have realized
that most of the growth in land use in this century
is going to be in renewing built and natural
resources, and in revitalizing communities. As
a result, you have a significant R&D budget designed
to develop leading-edge restorative services and/or
products, and you clearly differentiate restorative
development from new development in your planning,
budgeting, and management structure.
- Marketing: If
your marketing plan has been updated to address the
needs of the global
restoration economy, you're no longer simply
selling a large selection of restorative skills.
You've effectively integrated them so as to emerge
entirely new "aggregate" areas of expertise, such as
community revitalization, metro-region
revitalization, military base redevelopment,
watershed or estuary revitalization, rural area
revitalization, coastal revitalization, etc.
Restoration is the means...revitalization is the
end. Communities and regions are increasingly
pursuing integrated revitalization, in order to get
the biggest economic growth "bang" from their
restoration bucks. Can your firm speak the
language of socio-economic revitalization? Are
you positioned to become the public sector's
long-term partner in renewing itself, or are you
doomed to merely being the "hired guns" brought in
to work on a project-by-project basis?
Becoming an Authorized Affiliate
of Revitalization Institute is your most efficient way to
differentiate your firm for this Century of Revitalization,
while your competition labors under the mistaken assumption that
communities and nations can stay in "pioneer mode" forever on a
finite planet. Now, governments everywhere are realizing
that their only path to sustainable economic growth is to
primarily focus on renewing the capacity of what they've already
developed, and on repairing the damage they did to their natural
resources along the way. Is your firm uniquely positioned
to lead this trend, or are you strategically crippled by a
lingering sprawl mentality?
If the company personnel you
volunteer for the Guest Expert
faculty members of our Workshops can
tell a good 'integration story" for your firm, you will almost
certainly impress the community and regional leaders in the
class. By the time they are finished with their training
in integrated revitalization, they'll be looking for a few good
firms they can rely on to understand their needs and goals.
Learn more
about the Affiliate Program. See our current
Affiliate Network.
Download
Affiliate Network application form.
Please
email
info@RevitalizationInstitute.org with any questions, or call 703-348-7878.
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