Most people walk into a conference wondering one thing:
Who should I meet?
I’ve started asking a different question.
What can I learn about my clients before I ever have to compete for their work?
Last week I attended my first Design-Build Forum on the Washington State University campus in Pullman.
I expected presentations about procurement, project delivery methods, and construction trends. Maybe I’d hear about upcoming capital projects or where the market was headed.
Instead, I spent the day listening.
Not for opportunities. For clues.
Throughout the day, university leaders invited architects, engineers, and contractors into an unusually candid conversation. They spoke openly about construction costs, artificial intelligence, stakeholder management, lessons learned, small business engagement, and the future of higher education.
Then one question stopped me.
“Are we getting in the way?”
Think about that for a moment.
An owner stood in front of the very people they hire and asked how they could become a better partner.
That question wasn’t about project delivery.
It was about leadership.
It told me this was an organization willing to challenge its own assumptions instead of defending them. It told me they valued honest feedback. It told me they weren’t looking for firms that would simply agree with them. They wanted partners who would help them make better decisions.
As the day continued, I noticed something else.
The conversations weren’t really about buildings.
They were about the people responsible for building them.
When they talked about cost certainty, they weren’t simply talking about budgets. They were talking about the confidence to stand in front of university leadership and say, “We know where this project is headed.”
When they discussed stakeholder management, they weren’t asking for better meeting agendas. They were describing the reality of balancing faculty, researchers, finance, operations, students, donors, and executive leadership, all with different priorities.
When they debated whether to renovate instead of build new, they weren’t simply discussing facilities. They were talking about stewardship.
Even the conversation about artificial intelligence wasn’t really about technology.
It was about accountability.
Who owns the decision when AI is wrong?
That question has very little to do with software and everything to do with leadership.
By the end of the day, I realized I wasn’t taking notes on what they were saying anymore.
I was writing down observations.
Not observations that would help me “win WSU.”
Observations that would make me a better business developer regardless of who was sitting across the table.
Because here’s what I’ve learned after years in business development.
Clients rarely tell us how to win their work. But they constantly reveal how they make decisions.
They reveal what creates stress. They reveal what success looks like. They reveal what kind of partner they trust.
The challenge is that most of us are so busy thinking about what we’re going to say next that we miss what they’re already telling us.
The best client conversations aren’t interviews.
They’re opportunities to understand how another person sees the world.
And once you understand how they think, your conversations, proposals, interviews, and relationships naturally become more relevant.
