Last night my phone lit up with a group text.
The BD director in Nashville: “Can’t wait to see you all this week! Don’t forget your safety shoes and safety vests.”
The BD director in Portland: “Just checking the weather. Your low is Portland’s high.”
The BD director in Miami: “Your high is our low!”
That’s my BD peer group. People who do exactly what I do, for my company, in markets I’ve never worked in. They’ve been my sounding board and my mentors. And this week in Nashville, I’m finally meeting most of them in person.
Some of the most valuable relationships in your career will never show up in your pipeline. This group is proof.
Not everyone has a group like this. Think about how your week usually goes. You talk to your local team every day. You talk to clients, partners, and prospects as often as you can. But the people who sit in your exact seat, in another office, at another firm, in another city? Most of us go months without a real conversation with any of them. We see them on a video call, maybe, or wave at them across a ballroom once a year.
Those people are a resource you should be tapping into.
What you are missing out on
Most of us treat relationship building as something that points outward, toward clients. We map owners, owner’s reps, design partners, and trade partners. We track who knows whom and which relationships need a touch before year-end. If you ran the relationship map from a couple of weeks ago, you know exactly who’s on your list.
But look at who isn’t on it.
The BD director at the firm across town. The marketing lead at an engineering firm you’ve teamed with twice. The principal who runs your firm’s office in another city. The person in your exact seat at a firm in Denver, Atlanta, or Nashville who’s dealing with the same problems you are, six months ahead of you or six months behind.
Peers don’t make the list because they don’t fit the model. They aren’t prospects. Some of them are competitors. There’s no project attached and no obvious next step. So the relationship stays at a wave across the room at the chapter event, and it never goes further.
Here’s what that costs. Most people in AEC, whether you lead a firm, lead BD, or lead projects, operate inside one market. You see the same thirty people at every event. You hear the same read on the economy, the same rumors about the same owners, the same theories about why the last pursuit went the way it did. It feels like information. Mostly it’s an echo.
And when things get hard (a market slows, a key client walks, a role disappears), the people best placed to help you are often the ones who have nothing to sell you and nothing to buy.
Three kinds of peers
When I say peers, I mean three groups. Most people have one of them covered, at best.
Peers inside your own firm. The people in your role in other offices, other markets, and other service lines. If you work at a firm with more than one location, this is the most underused network you have. They know clients you’re chasing. They’ve already solved problems you’re stuck on. And they’re one internal email away.
Peers in your seat at other firms. The BD lead, marketing director, PM, or principal at firms like yours, in your market or another one. Some of them are competitors. All of them are dealing with the same owners, the same economy, and the same pressure you are.
Peers across the table. People at your level in a different discipline. If you’re an architect, it’s the engineers and contractors you see on every project. If you’re a contractor, it’s the design firms. If you’re a consultant or owner’s rep, it’s everyone. These are the people who decide who they want on the next team, long before anyone writes a proposal.
Each group gives you something the others can’t. Together, they’re a network that sees far more of the industry than you ever could from one desk.
Four things your peers give you that clients can’t
1. A look around the corner. What’s happening in another market often shows up in yours later. A sector that’s slowing in one region. A delivery method owners are starting to ask for. A new way agencies are scoring proposals. A shift in how private developers are financing projects. Your peers in other cities are living through things that haven’t reached you yet. Ten minutes on the phone with someone in another market can be worth more than a quarter of reading industry reports.
2. The honest answer. Clients are polite. They’ll tell you the interview went well and then hire someone else. Your own team is often too close to the pursuit to see what went wrong. A peer will tell you your pursuit strategy has a hole in it, your proposal opens with your firm instead of the client’s problem, or that what you’re calling a relationship sounds a lot like a contact. Send a peer in another office your last losing proposal and ask what they’d change. You’ll learn more in twenty minutes than in most debriefs.
3. Doors you can’t open yourself. Clients move. A healthcare system expands into a new state. A developer starts building in a city where you know no one. A national client wants a team that can deliver in three regions at once. The peer who already has those relationships, inside your firm or outside it, is the fastest way in. The same goes for teaming. The architect, engineer, or contractor who brings you onto their next pursuit usually starts as someone you compared notes with, not someone you pitched.
4. A network that outlasts your job title. Roles change. Firms merge. Markets turn. The clients you serve today know you through your firm. Your peers know you as you. When your title changes, those are often the relationships that carry over. They’re the people who forward your name when a role opens, vouch for you when a client asks around, and call you first when they need someone they trust.
For me, the value of a peer group comes down to three things: perspective, insight, and insider knowledge. Not secrets. Knowing where to find the information I need: who to ask, where to look, and what someone else has already figured out so I don’t have to learn it the hard way.
And it’s not just my company’s BD group. I’m part of an SMPS BD roundtable and the AEC Filipino Breakfast Club, and every one of them gives me something different. What they have in common is this: there is something freeing about being in a room where people are open and willing to share their knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned. Nobody is guarding anything. Everyone leaves better than they came.
Any peer group can do this for you. If you don’t have one, I suggest you find one.
“But some of them are competitors.”
Yes. And that’s the part that keeps a lot of people from ever making the call.
Here’s how I think about it. You’re not trading pursuit strategy or client secrets. You’re comparing notes on the work itself: how owners are buying, what’s changing in the market, what’s working with teams and seller-doers, how people are handling the same pressure you’re under. That kind of conversation makes both of you better, and it doesn’t cost either of you a project.
Plenty of the firms you compete with today are firms you’ll team with tomorrow. AEC is a small industry with a long memory. The BD lead at the firm that beat you last spring might be the one who calls you next year because their client needs a partner with your expertise. That call is a lot more likely if you’ve had coffee in the meantime.
And if a peer relationship ever starts to feel like a fishing expedition, you’ll know. Just like with clients, the good ones go both ways. (Thursday’s paid piece covers exactly where the lines are.)
For firm leaders and emerging leaders
If you lead a firm, this is your reminder that you need peers too. The higher you go, the fewer people you can be candid with inside your own building. Owners and principals who build a small circle of peers at other firms, in other markets or other disciplines, make better decisions because they’re not making them in an echo chamber. And if your firm has more than one office, ask yourself when your leaders last spent real time together, not on a quarterly call, but in a room. The connections between your offices are only as strong as the relationships between the people in them.
If you’re an emerging leader, start your peer bench now. The project managers, project architects, and engineers you came up with at other firms will be the principals, owner’s reps, and decision-makers of the next ten years. The relationship you build today, with no agenda, is the one that turns into a teaming call later. And don’t wait for an invitation to connect with your counterparts in other offices. A short note to the person in your role in another city is how you stop being a name on the org chart and start being someone they call.
Find your people
I’ll come home from Nashville this week with no new projects and no new prospects. What I will have is something better: a group text that finally has faces in the room behind it, some ideas I wouldn’t have had on my own, and a much better sense of what’s coming toward my market.
The relationships that win you work matter. The relationships that make you better at winning work might matter more.
Your clients will tell you what they need. Your peers will tell you what you’re missing.
Thursday’s paid piece turns this into action: the Inside Track. How to map the peers you already have inside your own firm, inside your client’s organization, and inside your competition, what to ask on the first call, how to find or start a peer group, and the lines you never cross.
P.S. I’ve been thinking about hosting small, virtual roundtables for AEC leaders who want a peer group like this. If that’s something you’d join, hit reply and tell me. It’ll help me decide whether to build it.
