B2B and B2G Marketing in Construction, with Ayo Abbas
Jeremy Brim is joined by marketing consultant Ayo Abbas to talk B2B and B2G marketing in construction. Why marketing isn't social media posts, the 80/20 client problem nobody spots, why "funnel" is the wrong word for how buying decisions actually happen, and what AI means for construction marketing. Brought to you by Growth Ignition and Bidscript.
The Red Review Podcast, brought to you by Growth Ignition and Bidscript
In this episode of the Red Review, host Jeremy Brim is joined by Ayo Abbas, a marketing consultant who's spent 25 years working with construction and consultancy firms, for a conversation about what B2B and B2G marketing actually is, and why so many businesses get it wrong.
Ayo and Jeremy worked together at Mace, and Ayo has been running her own consultancy for six and a half years, hosting her own podcast, the Built Environment Marketing Show.
Marketing isn't social media posts
Jeremy opened with a problem he sees constantly: most people, especially in construction and engineering, think marketing means social media posts about topping out ceremonies. In reality, comms people often end up leading marketing functions, and while comms is an important discipline in its own right, it isn't marketing.
Ayo's definition cuts straight through it. Marketing is about building relationships with the clients you actually want to work with. For her, it starts with business strategy, not campaigns. She described working back from a target of ten projects to win in five years, and using that as the filter for every marketing decision that followed.
Why B2B and B2G marketing is a different game
Ayo laid out what actually makes business to business and business to government marketing different from consumer marketing:
Sales values are far higher, sometimes running into billions on major infrastructure programmes
It's a far more complex sale. Getting it wrong can cost someone their job and their credibility, not just their money
The sales cycle can run three to five years before anyone buys, which means you're investing in a relationship and building credibility over a long period
The buying group is large and varied. Influencers, buyers, procurement, COOs and CFOs may all play a role, and understanding that ecosystem matters more than any single piece of content
Ayo referenced research often described as the 95-5 rule: at any given time, roughly 95% of your target market isn't ready to buy. The job of marketing, in that context, is nurturing the relationship so that when the 5% are ready, you're the obvious choice.
The 80/20 problem, again
Jeremy shared a stat that's become a running theme on the podcast: across 29 clients over 28 months, every single one is making around 80% of their profit from 20% of their clients. The worst case so far is 86% of profit from just 14% of clients. And in every case, without exception, the chief exec or MD had no idea.
Ayo drew a sharp comparison: even a basic accounting tool like FreeAgent will flag when a small business is over-relying on one client. Scale that principle up across a multi-million pound organisation, and it's the same blind spot, just much more expensive.
Mapping the people who actually matter
One of the most practical parts of the conversation was about audience size. Jeremy described working with a contractor with a three billion pound pipeline, where the total addressable audience of people who would influence that pipeline over three years was just 223 people. Not a huge number for a national business with multiple regions.
Ayo agreed, and pointed out this is a core difference from B2C marketing. In infrastructure, there might only be four or five major clients, each with a handful of key people inside them who actually matter. Building a target list of 250 names for an entire firm is entirely achievable, and far more useful than trying to be everywhere at once.
Jeremy's own story from his time at EC Harris reinforced the point. A senior director used to needle the marketing team by asking why they needed a website at all, if they didn't already know what was on their key clients' scorecards and how to help them hit those targets. The website matters for plenty of good reasons, but the underlying point stands: without knowing your key humans, marketing activity in general is much less effective.
buyer journey, not Funnel
Ayo pushed back on the word "funnel," arguing it's too simplistic and implies a straight line that doesn't reflect how real buying decisions happen. She prefers "buyer journey," recognising that people move backwards and forwards, restart research, and get influenced by things well outside a tidy four or five stage model.
Both agreed the number of touchpoints needed has grown well beyond the "rule of seven" most marketers grew up with. Ayo's own experience researching a mobile phone for her son took her to eleven different sources, websites, conversations, Facebook, ChatGPT and Claude among them. If that's true for a phone, it's certainly true for a multi-million pound infrastructure contract.
What this means practically
Jeremy and Ayo landed on a shared, practical view of what good B2B and B2G marketing looks like in construction:
Map your key clients and prospects, and understand where the money is actually going to be over the next few years
Identify the humans inside those organisations, group them by role (procurement, CFO, COO, and so on) and work out what each group actually cares about
Build thought leadership and content around the genuine, shared themes across that audience, then repurpose it across formats, a podcast transcript becoming an article, for example
Use small, human touchpoints alongside content: a breakfast event, a site visit, a message saying "saw this and thought of you"
Don't neglect the tactical, opportunistic bidding either, but recognise that chasing strangers on price without any of the groundwork above leads to poor win quality, underbid delivery, and unhappy clients
Jeremy connected this back to a theme that runs through his own client work: in the current fight for talent, businesses that keep winning work with clients who never really wanted them will lose their best people. Businesses that focus their marketing and business development on the right clients tend to become a self-fulfilling, positive cycle instead.
The future: AI and digital in construction marketing
Ayo's take on AI and digital disruption was balanced. Construction, she noted, is a laggard when it comes to technology adoption, and productivity in the sector has stayed stubbornly flat. New, fully digital competitors are emerging that don't carry the weight of 150 years of doing things the same way, and it would be a mistake to dismiss the pace of change in AI tools, since capability that looked poor a few months ago can be genuinely useful now.
Jeremy connected this to a skills gap he sees repeatedly: there's still no established, joined-up training path that covers business planning, marketing, capture, key account management and bidding as one connected discipline. People learn it by doing, often inconsistently, and a generation of leaders who came up during COVID missed out on the in-person, osmosis style learning that used to come from being in the room with experienced directors.
Both agreed that key account management remains the most misunderstood and under-invested part of the client journey, and that simple, one-page approaches tend to succeed where expensive, template-heavy programmes usually fail.
Listen to the full episode
Catch the full conversation between Jeremy and Ayo on the Red Review podcast, brought to you by Growth Ignition in partnership with Bidscript.
Transcript
Jeremy Brim 9:37
So hello, welcome to the Red Review podcast with me, Jeremy Brim, having some fun off camera because I've got a good friend on this time, my friend Ayo. Hello, Ayo.
Ayo Abbas 9:51
Hello, Jeremy, how are you?
I know, I know.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 10:14
Up to.
Ayo Abbas 10:15
So my name is Ayo Abbas. I am a marketing consultant and I specialise in working, I guess, with construction and consultancy firms, really. I've done it for, dare I say it, 25 years. I love it. I'm A marketeer, but in a more kind of generalist sense, I'm really into understanding, I guess, what works for clients, what works for growth, that kind of more, I guess,
tangible marketing. So if you want the pretty stuff, probably not me, but if you want the campaign that gets, you know, gets you to where you need to be as a business, that's probably more my kind of bag, as it were. And yeah, obviously I worked, I worked with Jeremy. We were both at Mace for a good few years for our sins. And yeah, and I've been working on my own for 6 1/2 years now.
Jeremy Brim 10:52
Mm.
and doing fabulously. It's always great to see, great to see you around. It was lovely to see you at UK Reef a couple of months ago. So for AO's audience, I guess, who's this guy? So I'm Jeremy Brim. I run a business called Growth Ignition, which is a transformation consulting and training business.
Ayo Abbas 10:59
Thank you very much.
Jeremy Brim 11:18
all in the work winning space. And so we help people figure out how to write better bids, but further up the funnel and some of the discussion today, we work in the capture space, how do you build campaigns to win deals? We work in the key account management space, how do you look after, nurture, land and expand?
with your key clients and prospects. There's A crossover and partly why AO puts up with me is that there's a crossover in the marketing space and the stuff we're going to talk about today and pragmatic B2B, B2G marketing. And then I do do a bunch of work in the strategy space as a non-executive advisor to boards of small businesses all the way up to
Ayo Abbas 11:51
No.
Jeremy Brim 12:00
2 billion turnover contractors in their growth approach, playbook, dream list, you know, who do we target, how do we optimise the business? So everybody makes a bit of money and has fun. So we train people in that stuff, we build their systems, tech, etc, etc. But anyway, that's enough of that. So
The crossover bit AO. So and this comes up twice a week, every week for me. And I always think of you and very often point people in your direction, your content. And I did a podcast episode, actually, probably four years ago or so with a guy called Darren Carter from Morgan Sindall.
Ayo Abbas 12:30
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 12:38
on a similar theme. And I want you to revisit it because I've learned a lot more from you and working with clients and things. So the thing that comes up twice a week, every week is marketing. And the challenge I have, and of course everybody knows my wife's a marketeer,
Well, everyone on my podcast knows, my wife's a marketer, Jules. So I'm kind of allowed to say this, that most people when they think marketing, think social media posts, endless posts about topping out ceremonies or whatever. And in effect, they're mimicking B2C marketing vibes.
Ayo Abbas 12:58
The.
Jeremy Brim 13:17
when actually, and the bit that AO is excellent at, is that B2B and particularly B2G, so business to business, selling to other businesses, and particularly B2G, business to government, selling to government departments and devolved government like local authorities, is a completely different ballgame.
Ayo Abbas 13:33
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 13:36
And what we find with marketeers, so I know you come across this, in construction and engineering in particular, I find that comms people have been promoted up through the business and end up leading marketing functions.
quite often, certainly in my client base. And as the comms people have got a very important role to play internally, externally, etc. in the marketing family, but they're not marketeers.
Ayo Abbas 13:56
Yeah.
And.
Jeremy Brim 14:09
And very often, they are confusing brand and like I say, B2C tactics when actually what marketing for B2B, B2G is about, for want of a better term, it's about sales momentum, ultimately. So what do you, well, you tell me, you're the expert, AO.
Ayo Abbas 14:29
Cake cake.
Jeremy Brim 14:29
So, what's what's marketing mean? I knew you weren't going to agree.
Ayo Abbas 14:31
Right. For me, marketing is, exactly. That's why you brought me on. You don't, no one brings me on to agree. I mean, for me, marketing is about clients and building relationships with the clients that you really want to work with. And that's what it is, right? And I think a lot of the kind of, is it B2C and all this kind of stuff? It's like B2C, I always think is like, it's a lot more kind of broader and mass and all of this kind of stuff. Whereas
Jeremy Brim 14:34
Yeah.
Yes.
Ayo Abbas 14:54
I think honestly, for us, I mean, I think back to some of our May states, and it's like we had 10 projects that we wanted to win in five years. That's what was driving our marketing plans, right? So any plan I wanted to do, I had to be with that in my vision. And I think it's that kind of granularity of having a strategy overall for your business strategy, right?
Jeremy Brim 15:04
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 15:16
and then actually using marketing as a lever to help you to get there along with your sales and your business development. And it's all gearing towards the same thing. And I think for me, it's much more important to understand the conversation between how do you align all of those things so you're all pushing for the same things, right? And that's what we need to be doing. And
I mean, I love social media and all of that kind of stuff, but I've also got an air to how do you get the engagement? How do you get to drive your business goals and are you talking to the right people and actually how you're having two-way dialogue rather than broadcasting? So for me, it's that. But back to your point about the difference between kind of business to business and, you know, business to give
Government marketing, BTG.
as opposed to consumer, the key thing for me is A, our sales values can be way higher. If you're talking about blimming HS2, you're talking billions of pounds, right? And B, I think there's also that thing of it's a much more complex sale. If I make the wrong decision, I might lose my job and my credibility.
Jeremy Brim 16:07
Yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Ayo Abbas 16:16
That's a big ask. It's not just, you know, I bought something, oh, I just won't use it. It's literally, I might lose my job. You know, my reputation's on the line. But also, I also think it's also the length. It could be 3, five years before anyone buys from you. So you're investing in a relationship and building your credibility for that long.
Jeremy Brim 16:16
Yep.
Ayo Abbas 16:35
So it's like, how do you do that? How do you sustain that? And I think for me, it's that kind of stuff. And I think there's a whole kind of research body out now around this, around, is it Ernberg-Bass, which is basically the 95-5 rule, where it's actually 95% of the market you are targeting isn't in the market to buy right now.
Jeremy Brim 16:56
Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 16:56
and that 5% are. So really what you're doing is nurturing a relationship for a long time so that when they're ready to buy, they go, Jeremy, you're there. Great. You know, I've seen all your stuff. I understand you. I buy into you. And I think the other big difference is basically the size of the organisation. So, you know, I remember mapping network routers, so 28,000 people, right?
You're talking, all of these types of clients are big and they've all got different roles. Some people are influencers, some are actual buyers. And I think it's understanding that whole buying group and that ecosystem that you need to kind of influence in some way. It could be the procurement people because they might be the final sign off or the COO or the CFO, you know, and I think that is the stuff that
We don't acknowledge if we're just like, oh, it's just a piece of communication, just a piece of socials, all this kind of stuff. It's a lot more nuanced than that and that's why I love what I do. So yeah.
Jeremy Brim 17:45
Yeah, yeah.
I knew there was a reason I got you on. That's perfect. So I agree. You're absolutely bang on. So to put a little bit of flesh on that with examples, so, and I bang on, my mate Jack takes the mickey out of me because I bang on about this all the time, but it's because it's important and I see it everywhere. So
There's a few building blocks that underpin what you were talking about there. One is that, and we've worked together on some of this, I think I'm on my 29th client in 28 months now, all construction sector, half consultants, half construction firms, ranging from small SMEs with 50 staff all the way up to 5,000 people, global consultancies.
and multi-billion turnover contractors. And every single one of them are making 80% of their profit with 20% of their clients. The old Pareto principle. The worst, which was an update recently, I've got one client that's making 86% of their profit with 14% of their clients. And so they're making a load of money
Ayo Abbas 18:36
No.
Jeremy Brim 18:49
with a small number of clients, a much smaller number of clients that if you asked, so another thing, not a single chief exec or MD of those businesses or business units knew it.
Ayo Abbas 19:00
Yeah, because they're not looking, they're not looking for it. And I think that's the thing, even like, even like I just use free agent for my books, right? And it even tells you a warning, you know, like actually what you're invoicing, you're relying too much on this client. And it's like to scale that up by like a million times, right? And that's it, you're right. They're just not, they're not even aware.
Jeremy Brim 19:00
They didn't know what their balance was. Don't look that way. They don't look that way.
Yeah, yeah.
So then we've done a lot more work in the last 12 months about what's the DNA of the clients and the situation where you're making all your profit and what's the DNA of the ones that are in the tail. So the clients that you're actually probably, if you're accounted for account management and cost of sale effectively, you're probably making a loss on. And I've done lots of talks and there's stuff online on YouTube, et cetera, about unpacking some of that.
Ayo Abbas 19:39
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 19:44
But what that means from a marketing perspective, so the next build, I had an instance with a large multi-billion pound organisation last year in the construction sector where they wanted to grow by a third in three years.
which was cool. Apart from it takes them two years to convert revenue from being preferred bidder to actually invoicing. So I said, well,
Ayo Abbas 20:12
Yeah.
A lot in it.
Jeremy Brim 20:37
So for every bid they were going to submit in a year's time, they should already know who those five people are and how they feel about them. Well, they're probably not going to win.
Ayo Abbas 20:45
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 20:48
But from your perspective, from a marketing perspective.
As part of business planning and targeting at the top of funnel, we should be able to do some market research on who are our current key clients and prospects and what's their pipeline. So where's the money going to be with who? And of that, what works for us? Because the clients that best fit our business happen to be the ones where you make most of your profit, where
Ayo Abbas 21:12
Definitely.
Jeremy Brim 21:13
They fit your business in terms of geography and type and workload. And your staff are happy and the client's happy, that sort of Venn diagram. That tends to be the clients where you make the most money. And they've got a repeatable programme or a mega project that goes on. That's the clients where you make money. So generally speaking, my work with my clients isn't about helping them win more bids in the end game.
although we do work on that because you need to be able to put the ball in the net. It's actually about who are the stakeholders, who are the five people in each of those organisations that are going to read your bid in a year's time? And how do we build a key account plan and then a capture plan, just one pagers to optimise that? But the missing link is always marketing.
And that's why I wanted to have the conversation, because what you're really good at is supporting my tribe in doing that. And what we used to do together at Mace and a lot of the success at Mace was that we realised those five people that were going to read the bid in a year or 18 months time, we needed to engage them at least five times over that year.
Ayo Abbas 22:01
Yeah.
And it's interesting because since we were at Mace and, you know, with the whole kind of COVID and everyone going online and all that and stuff, it's now talking of like, actually the amount of touch points, it's not even 5, it's up to 11. It's gone up. And I think it's, but it's also, you would look at those five people, you'd look at all of the kind of accounts that you want to target.
Jeremy Brim 22:29
Wow.
Ayo Abbas 22:36
And like say you've got a whole raft of procurement people, what are those issues for them? And you'd build out some kind of campaign for them. If you've got the CFOs and COOs, what could you build out in terms of marketing wise that would appeal to them? So you'd actually look at it in that kind of cohesive way. And I always think some of the most interesting stuff is actually looking at, I always kind of look at people in terms of like their job titles.
Jeremy Brim 22:46
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 22:55
and like having to group and then going, actually, what's the CIO going to really give a damn about? And that kind of thing. Because I think that is where you kind of go actually focused. What do they, what do these types of people really need from us and what can we build for them? And I think that's the thing is, and then understanding where those opportunities are and the people like, you know, you need to influence. But yeah, it's a big old job. But I think as well,
Jeremy Brim 23:09
Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 23:16
When you're also looking at those clients and really digging deep into them, it's also who are similar to them, who we could also be targeting, because that's the golden opportunity. When you go, actually, we really make our money from these types of people. How do we find more of those?
Jeremy Brim 23:28
Yeah, yeah, well, you got...
It's not that hard. When you actually, when you actually, but no one does this really, very few businesses do it. But when you take a step back and you look at that market research and your client portfolio and where are there more clients that are like our tribe where we have a good time and we make money and they're happy.
Ayo Abbas 23:33
No, it's not. None of this is rocket science.
Jeremy Brim 23:50
and then you map all of those stakeholders. There's massive overlap.
Ayo Abbas 23:54
Listen.
Jeremy Brim 23:55
So I did that for a billion odd turnover contractor that had a 3 billion odd pipeline. And the total addressable audience of people that would influence their pipeline over a three-year span was 223 people. It's not huge at all. Across a massive national business with different regions and structures,
Ayo Abbas 24:09
That's not massive, is it?
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 24:16
In effect, it equated to each of their sales people, man marking two people.
Ayo Abbas 24:22
And I think that's the thing. I think that's the big other difference. If you're marketing to B2C, you're marketing to literally millions of people, right? Whereas like B2B, really, if you're looking at, you know, who runs infrastructure, there's only four or five clients, they're massive clients, but there's only four or five.
Jeremy Brim 24:32
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 24:42
Right. And I think, and then there'll only be certain divisions within that and certain people who you actually need. So you're right, coming up with a list of like 250 people for the whole firm, that is doable. And I think that's where people get lost because they're like, oh no, we need to be doing this and being out and seeing everywhere. It's like, well, actually, sometimes it's easier just to go, who do we need to take out for lunch next week?
Jeremy Brim 24:42
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 25:03
and after that and report back and just have conversations or pick up the phone.
Jeremy Brim 25:07
Yeah, I mean, I'm always reminded of when I was a lad at EC Harris, when I was half this weight, had a lot more hair and looked a lot less tired. There was a board director who was the past chief exec, actually, top level partner, top three partner, David Sparrow, who I don't think you'll mind me quoting him.
Absolutely, absolute corporate beast, incredible geezer, but everyone was terrified of him. And he liked the fact that I wasn't. We got along quite well. And I almost cried, actually, when I left, someone forwarded me an e-mail saying it's from him to them saying it's a shame Jeremy is leaving.
Ayo Abbas 25:36
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 25:45
So anyway, it was lovely. But I'll always remember he used to wind up the marketing guys all the time. He used to say, why do we need a website?
If we don't know what's on the scorecard of our key clients for their appraisal at the end of the year, and we're not engaging them effectively on how we're going to help them hit those marks, we might as well shut up, shop and go home, lads. So he was taking the **** because obviously you need a website for all of the good reasons, brand and reference ability and blah, blah, blah. That's quite right.
Ayo Abbas 26:03
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 26:17
and to be able to track inbound leads and blah, blah. That's all absolutely correct. But he's not, in base principle, you should be able to run a business without one. And I do actually know consultants like you, bidding consultants, et cetera, who do. Got A LinkedIn page, but they don't need a website because they know who their five clients are. They want a retainer or
Ayo Abbas 26:31
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 26:38
do a bit of work and they're close to their clients, they know what's important to them, they help them win their deals, really successful. So point of principle.
your approach in terms of understanding the humans involved and how to engage them through that funnel towards those deals is super important. The 11 touch points bit that you made, are you referring to Daniel Priestley's 711 poor thing?
Ayo Abbas 27:04
To be honest, it depends on whoever's kind of research we're looking at. There's lots of different stuff. I mean, I was looking at some of the kind of consultancies who've done research on that, but it's just more a case of we have more places of searching. I mean, you think, I mean, at the moment, what am I looking at? I'm looking at getting a mobile phone for my son, right?
Jeremy Brim 27:20
Mm.
Ayo Abbas 27:24
Where am I going? I'm looking online at websites. I am talking to people. I am looking at Facebook. You know what I mean? I've asked ChatGPT, I've asked Claude. You can get to 11 and you start to understand, actually, this is how we search now and that as humans, we search whether or not it's for our work or for ourselves personally.
Jeremy Brim 27:32
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 27:44
We are all doing that automatically now. So you can see how easy it is to get to that 11, because it's way more than five, even just for a flipping mobile phone. So.
Jeremy Brim 27:46
Yeah, yeah.
But again, it's not that sounds massive. But actually, when you look across the data on the people you're looking to influence and the pipeline that they touch, there will be a shed load of common themes. And so you can do some thought leadership.
Ayo Abbas 28:10
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 28:13
which is for a particular group basket of that. Maybe 25% of them are really interested in rack, you know, concrete problems. Maybe 25% of them are education people. And it's about the demographic issue. There's going to be less kids. How do we reduce these schools? So you do some thought leadership on that.
Ayo Abbas 28:16
Yup.
Jeremy Brim 28:32
And then you can cut and carve that content. Maybe you record a podcast, but you take the transcript and turn that into a thought leadership piece. And then suddenly it's touching, it's engaging people a number of times. So you've got to look at it in the rounds.
Ayo Abbas 28:41
Exactly.
But also, but also on the...
Exactly. And that's exactly what you can do now. I mean, it's interesting because I don't necessarily use funnels when I'm working with clients. I tend to talk about kind of buying groups and buyer behaviour and work that way, but it's a similar thing. But I do think the one thing you can do is you can turn around and go, right, okay, we're producing this piece of thought leadership, doesn't matter what the format is. And you might turn and go, actually, we'll put some paid spend behind it and target that client.
with those titles or those types of clients, you know what I mean? You've got your 250 names, you can you can run those ads directly to hit those people in network rail or wherever that client is and get and make sure your message is getting there. And I think with that forward planning, you then have the, you know, the framework that you need to be hitting and you can kind of do that. And I think that's the stuff that people aren't necessarily doing. And it's just getting a lot more strategic with
Jeremy Brim 29:18
Yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Ayo Abbas 29:35
how they kind of use their marketing to drive their business growth, right, and their pipeline.
Jeremy Brim 29:40
Yeah, and there's the organic stuff of being in engineering firms, professional services firms, construction firms, etc, and in other markets, outsourcing, etc. If you look at your pipeline of opportunities and deals out over a three-year span, not only can you skew your thought leadership so it engages those groups and also think through your events,
So do you do a breakfast event where you invent some, you invite some of those people and you sit that prospect between a happy client and their human that will be the number one CV in their bid in a year's time. And they then secure a bit of a workshop and some co-solutioning on a problem that a prospect faces and build trust.
Ayo Abbas 30:07
Yeah.
Mm.
No, I know.
Jeremy Brim 30:40
understanding that big dream list and how you're going to engage them through that journey of into code, you know, sit someone next to them, try and get some co-solution in time, a bit of a workshop, build some trust, take them on a site visit. In the meantime, your, your, is the, is that the...
Ayo Abbas 30:53
It's a buyer journey, Jeremy. It's a buyer journey.
Yes.
Jeremy Brim 30:58
That's the term, that's a that's a better term.
Ayo Abbas 30:59
It is because I funnel is too simplistic, right? To me, a funnel is too simplistic. You got 4 stages or five stages, right? And it's like, it's linear. Whereas we know it's not linear. We know it goes up and down and left and right. And I might suddenly go back and start doing some more research because I'm not sure about the four I shortlisted. You know, and I'll jump in and go, actually, I'll have a call with that one because he knows John.
You know, and that's what it is. It's a lot more random. And I think the funnel does a, I mean, it's great visually because you kind of go, you need to cover all of it. But actually in real life, none of us follow a straight line.
Jeremy Brim 31:32
From henceforth, I will refer to it as a buyer journey.
Ayo Abbas 31:36
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 31:38
So I'll stop winding you up with that and I'll stop winding my mate Jack up with that as well, because he has a go about me using the term funnel incorrectly as well. So buyer journey, it is, I get you, that's super cool. So everybody needs to map out what their pipeline is, who the influencers are, who the decision makers are in that
Ayo Abbas 31:45
But it is right.
Jeremy Brim 31:57
pipeline of opportunities. And then figure out how you're going to talk to AO to build a plan for a year or 18 months in how you're going to engage those people 11 times. Whether it's reading a bit along the buyer journey, so a bit of thought leadership to position, send them some stuff. There's even more BD vibes in there of, you know, I was learning something about little micro asks and shares.
Ayo Abbas 32:08
Long live by a journey.
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 32:22
So you get your number one CV, your project director, or whoever's going to be their human in the end, to start making, you know, to connect with them on LinkedIn and then send them a little message. Oh, I saw this and thought of you. Or, because hopefully they know each other anyway. Or we're thinking about this stuff.
Ayo Abbas 32:34
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Jeremy Brim 32:41
What do you think about that? You know, there's those sorts of things. Sorry, someone was just trying to phone me. There's those sorts of little touch points that make quite a big difference.
Ayo Abbas 32:53
It's basically about how do you build a relationship with someone so they begin to trust you. And it's two way and you can't always be on the ask for yourself. Sometimes it's just sharing things of actually I thought you might find this interesting or we've just done this report, you know, so if you are doing a thought leadership report or you know, a blog or something, there's nothing to stop you directly sending a quick message to these people and going, actually I wrote this, I think you might find it really useful.
What do you think? Or asking for an opinion or we're just about to launch this. Can we can we sense cheque it with you and come and have a quick show it to you before anyone else sees it? You know, and stuff like that. It's all about making that person feel special, important. And yeah, and finding ways to connect with them. Because I think the thing like you want to be is you want to be that trusted advisor. That's the gold standard, isn't it?
You're the one who write, who write, they love you so much, they'll ask you for input into how they put the tender together. That's what you want. And to get that, you have to kind of be there for them. And yeah, it's more of a kind of small, kind of iterative little things that you can keep doing. And yeah, definitely that whole thing around, saw this and thought of you,
Jeremy Brim 33:37
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 33:57
It's nice to be thought of, isn't it?
Jeremy Brim 33:59
Yeah, I mean, and it works, right? I can prove it works because I've done it. I've, you know, I've helped six or seven clients scale between 15 and 30% revenue growth a year, well basically doubled their profits in two to three years by basically following that really simplistic methodology.
Ayo Abbas 34:02
Yeah.
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 34:18
particularly like you say, where we're aligned of just finding more of your tribe, you know, just where is your, who's the next client and the one after that and the one after that, that fit your perfect client sort of sweet spot, your DNA of what good looks like in clients. And you can't help but be more successful when almost no one looks at it like
Ayo Abbas 34:32
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 34:37
at really, they end up bottom feeding hobby bidding stuff with wild cost of sale. And the really dangerous bit is if they keep hobby bidding stuff through frameworks or just in the open market, they're naturally finding more, they're bidding to strangers more often than not, and winning deals with those strangers
Ayo Abbas 34:56
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 34:57
by accident on price or programme or something because you didn't really understand it. And so they never wanted you. So they don't really like you. They wanted somebody else. So you end up winning this work with a client who doesn't never really wanted you, doesn't really like you or know your people. And guess what? No one has a good time. And your birth, but
Ayo Abbas 35:14
And you lose a **** tonne of money.
Jeremy Brim 35:16
You lose money, but worse, the big thing now, Eo, is that we're all in the greatest fight for talent ever. And it's not just a UK post-Brexit thing. I've got international clients that are, you know, 1500 people businesses who've got 400 open vacancies across Europe, the States and Asia.
Ayo Abbas 35:23
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 35:36
and can't fill them. They've got work they can't populate. And so if you carry on winning work with **** clients down in the tail that are strangers on stuff that's uncomfortable, so you've got to want it by accident on price or programme, so the team are immediately under pressure because they realise you've got it wrong in the 1st 100 days.
Ayo Abbas 35:38
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 35:57
I've got to go and deliver this job under pressure one way or another, but it's probably more likely outside their geography, outside their comfort zone of what you're asking them to do. And so if you get your work, your staff to work with **** clients who aren't particularly pleasant to work with, make them uncomfortable, they'll get a job somewhere else for more money now.
Ayo Abbas 36:13
Like, I swear.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 36:17
So you've got to find more of your tribe that everybody's comfortable with and we have a good time with, and your staff see development with, and then you can do some great stuff to help them with the fight for talent, retention, attraction stuff. Look, we're working with this client on this great project. We need more of these sorts of people. And the business becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ayo Abbas 36:30
Yeah.
Yeah, and it grows in a way that you want, right? And I think that's nice. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Jeremy Brim 36:37
But the opposite.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what's the future of B2B marketing look like? AI disruption? What's going on? What's changing at the moment and how do you feel about it?
Ayo Abbas 36:53
Ahh.
I, the future, I mean, if anything, I guess we are getting more digital, which I mean personally I do love. But then I still think actually when you look at B2B and B2G, it's still relationships, we're still human and that is never going away. I think AI and digital has a huge amount because I always think we're
Jeremy Brim 37:10
Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 37:16
especially particularly in construction. We're laggards. We are behind the times anyway, in terms of technological adoption, implementation, investment, all of those we are. And also our productivity is in the ground as well, and still really bad, and it shouldn't be. So I think, you know, digital and all of the kind of systems and processes,
Jeremy Brim 37:20
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 37:36
have a huge amount to kind of improve us. There are going to, we're all going to be facing new competitors who just basically are throwing up the rule book, right? We've built things in the same way for 150 years or whatever, however long. And you're kind of like, there are new competitors coming out who are like, we just completely are digital or whether in this and like,
You look at it and go, these people are good. And I think not everything's rubbish at your peril to ignore any of the kind of what's going on and go, oh, it's just a flash and a ban. I think we've got to kind of be open and these tools are improving fast. So stuff that was rubbish three months ago can actually be quite good right now.
So I think we've got to be more open and look at our overall processes, workflows and systems and realise how we can improve them with what's out there on the market now. And I don't think people are necessarily doing that.
Jeremy Brim 38:27
No, I agree. I think that...
When I was working with that business that wanted to grow a third, it was one thing that was really interesting. I was presenting back to them my findings of a maturity benchmarking workshop. In effect, how mature were they that business planning, marketing, cam, capture, bidding, client experience?
Ayo Abbas 38:50
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 38:51
Because if you join the dots through that stuff, you'll just be more successful. And I turned around and realised that most of the leaders in the room had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and had never heard of capture as a word, which is often the case. No, that's a thing. So I get that. But fundamentally,
Ayo Abbas 39:04
A lot of people haven't, I was going to say.
Jeremy Brim 39:11
I've got a kind of market problem that, and it's no one's fault, that people are not taught how to grow a B2B, B2G business. Everybody learns by doing. There's not a single course you can go on or programme or coaching thing anywhere in the world, apart from my stuff, obviously.
Ayo Abbas 39:30
Yeah.
Ha ha!
Jeremy Brim 39:33
where someone will tell you how to conduct or teach you how to conduct market research, business planning, targeting, marketing. I'd get you to come and do that bit. But particularly cam and capture and bidding
Ayo Abbas 39:45
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 39:49
and then client experience. So there are loads of people who can teach you how to write bids. And AI is obviously changing that game a bit, but that's fine. Some of those people will tell you they can teach you how to do capture. But in reality, their version of capture is long range bid prep. Whereas mine is how do we negotiate this deal?
Ayo Abbas 40:08
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 40:08
different ballgame. But then it's a completely different tribe of people that would want to teach you or help you with key account management, not the same group at all. Academics, management consultants, salespeople, different people, when actually the skill set is quite similar between camera and capture.
or the tools and approach is quite similar.
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 40:43
It's all the same thing, right? It's about the relationship and all of that kind of stuff, right? And I, but I do agree. It's like, we don't teach people, like, especially with COVID, there's a whole, there's a whole crew of people who are now coming into senior level roles who weren't out for a good few years. And like, I look back to how I learned how to do BD and
all those relationship meetings and stuff, it was going along with directors. And you think, if you had a good few years where you were actually just online and you weren't learning through that osmosis by being with people who are doing it. So I think there is a massive skills gap there at the moment where we've got leaders who are coming in and as you go up the ranks, as we know, you are expected to win work.
Jeremy Brim 41:11
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 41:25
from the bids to the going out. And I just think there's a massive skills gap there. And I don't think, I don't think the generation above have necessarily sat there and gone, everything really realised it exists, because they'll be like, oh, you know how to do that. And they'll be like, how? Right? And I think that's where we are right now.
Jeremy Brim 41:25
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, and then...
And the other thing is, there's not really been a burning platform for change, because if you're a leader, you can just bottom feeding, hobby bidding stuff in the bottom, at the tail end of the customer journey, client journey, sorry, in the bidding phase, you're flogging your people to bits, bidding loads of bids.
Ayo Abbas 41:55
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 42:00
There's no personal consequence for you because you're not there late at night working on the bids with them. If you're sensible, you track the cost of sale in doing that, but most people don't. So most leaders haven't realised how, you know, how wildly far off being optimised they are, but the fight for talent thing is changing it.
Ayo Abbas 42:10
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 42:21
or it has to and it will come quite hard and fast. So and the other problem we have is there's been a lot of people hurt by love before on key account management. Been on an expensive course, got a management consultant in to spin up a really expensive cam programme and it all ends up in the drawer within six months because it's a 50 page template you've got to fill in for your top 50 clients.
When, actually...
Ayo Abbas 42:44
It's got to be really simple. It's got to be simple. One page, here's the little bits you can do, here's some ideas. You've got 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, some little things you can do just to show, hey, it's all this, all of you, you know, that kind of stuff. It's got to be easy or else people just aren't going to do it. And I think you're absolutely right. I think the other thing I think as well is like, especially with like older leaders now,
Jeremy Brim 42:47
Yeah, one page, one page in year one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Ayo Abbas 43:07
you're just kind of like their networks are nowhere near as powerful as they once were. Because I also think there is a concept of like ageing out. So like you get to a certain level where you're no chief exec, right? Then you become the chair. That means all your colleagues, your peers have now chairs. If you're a chair, you're not giving out the work anymore. You're kind of, you know,
Jeremy Brim 43:12
Mm.
Yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 43:26
And then you've got that, you've got your net, you know, your network who are going to be leaving the industry and retiring, which is another massive thing. I get a lot of people coming to me going, a lot of my networks retired.
What do you do? How do you, and they haven't been, and I think I think that's another ticking thing where people aren't necessarily acknowledging it.
Jeremy Brim 43:39
Yeah, and you got replenished, yes.
It's 20, I saw, funny enough, it's our old lot base. They did another paper recently, which was basically a reheat of the industry 4.0 one that Matt Goff did like 8 years ago. But they've updated a load of stuff and obviously done loads of research and fair play to them. I can't remember if it's 20 or 25 percent.
of the entire construction workforce are going to retire in the next 5 to 10 years. It's absolutely huge.
Ayo Abbas 44:10
Oh, it's massive. It's I saw it was that it's like 750,000 by like 2035. Like insane. Like massive. Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 44:17
It's insane, isn't it? So you've got to be the best place to work or you're going to be out. So, but in amongst that, so the biggest missing link for me in their client journey and how they optimise their work through that is key account management actually. Who's going to be, so like you say, finding the clients and prospects that are your tribe.
Ayo Abbas 44:21
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 44:37
And then mapping those contacts, et cetera, captures in there. But marketing is the most misunderstood bit. And so how we help people, obviously people should follow you and your wonderful content, listen to your podcast. They can talk to you or me about this stuff and get a bit of a plan. But fundamentally, figure out who your tribe are, who you're going to, where's the money going to be with who?
Ayo Abbas 44:40
Mm.
I agree.
Yes, of course.
Jeremy Brim 45:01
who and of those who suit your business in terms of capability, capacity, geography, service, and where your people will be happy and the clients will be happy. And you probably, yeah, and you probably just need to add one client a year of that type to smash, depending on the size of the business, but on 100 million revenue,
Ayo Abbas 45:11
Yeah, I think behaviours is definitely in the behaviours, yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 45:23
you probably only need to add one client a year and you'll smash your numbers to bids. So you might need to court three. And then, oh yeah, don't turn off the hobby bidding completely. And you know, I'm not saying you should just be focused on just your top three to five clients or something. There's still tactical clients and things that will still have the same sorts of common themes and issues that you can do something
Ayo Abbas 45:26
Yeah, completely is.
Jeremy Brim 45:45
engagement on. But the marketing has got to be integrated with the sales effort is what we're saying here, isn't it? And too often in the construction market, in consultants and contractors and engineering firms, the two things aren't joined. And there's lots of commsy type stuff.
Ayo Abbas 45:52
Yeah, I, I think it does.
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 46:06
thought leader-y staff that isn't as connected to the pipeline and the reality of getting that key human in the prospect organisation, sitting between a happy client for the reference ability and then your number one CV on that bid in a year's time. Everyone will be happier. So any other business and where do people find you, AO?
Ayo Abbas 46:22
I agree.
Jeremy Brim 46:28
and what's your podcast called, all of that stuff.
Ayo Abbas 46:30
You can find me, Io Abbas, on LinkedIn. I am there most days. Yeah, just connect with me. I'm always there. I put out quite a lot of content. My podcast is called the Built Environment Marketing Show. So I mainly kind of, I guess, interview people from the industry about how they do their marketing. It's generally stuff that I really love and
I find is really good and ahead of its time. And yeah, I just want more people to have the right conversations about marketing and that's what I've always wanted.
Jeremy Brim 46:59
Very good. And for AO's audience, because this is a crossover, again, you can find me on LinkedIn, Jeremy Brim, Growth Ignition is the business. My podcast is called The Red Review with Jeremy Brim. And my audience, so I tend to interview or have chats with mates, to be honest, who are from the work winning world. So
Ayo Abbas 47:03
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 47:19
bidding people. So I've had Matt Light on, who's on the board of the UK APNP chapter, for instance, in this new series, or marketing people or sales people. There is, interestingly in my audience, there are a lot of BD people actually.
Ayo Abbas 47:37
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 47:38
which I hadn't thought of, so I need to do more for them in the rest, second-half of this season.
Ayo Abbas 47:43
It's an important role. It really is. It really is. And it's spanning the two. And they're out there quite a lot. They're in the face of people. So I think, you know, they are very important for that relationship point of view.
Jeremy Brim 47:46
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So if you're one of AO's audience and you are interested in that stuff, do follow. Me too. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. It's always great to chat. There's some really valuable stuff in there. Thank you, as always. And, you know, continue to follow and learn from you as I do. And we'll keep talking. Thanks very much, everyone.
Ayo Abbas 47:55
And yeah.
Awesome.
I thank you.
No worries. Thanks, Jeremy. And great. Thank you so much. Take care, you. Bye. See ya.