By Judy Sparks
Walk into any design firm today, and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: “We’ve built our reputation on relationships and doing great work.”
And it’s true. Architecture, at its best, has always been a relationship business built on trust, craft, and collaboration.
But here’s what’s changing: trust now begins long before the first handshake.
For years, firms have invested tremendous energy in curating the perfect image—the photograph that captures the light just right, the angle that makes the building sing. And while visual storytelling will always have a place, today’s decision-makers are no longer choosing partners based on a gallery of beautiful work. There are simply too many firms producing beautiful work.
What separates one great design firm from another is not the picture of the outcome, but the perspective behind it—the thinking, the values, and the alignment that shape how that outcome came to be.
Clients want to understand your point of view. They want to know why you design the way you do, how your process connects to their mission, and whether your definition of success matches theirs—whether that’s sustainability, social impact, community value, or return on investment.
The truth is that great design is the expectation. Alignment is the differentiator. And the firms that communicate that alignment early—through consistent messaging, authentic thought leadership, and the voices of their people—are the ones earning trust before the RFQ hits the streets.
Why This Matters Now
We’re in the middle of one of the most profound generational shifts the AEC industry has ever seen. While Gen X still occupies many leadership roles today, the next decade belongs to Millennials and Gen Z. And they’re already shaping the market in ways we can’t afford to ignore.
According to McKinsey & Company, over 70% of B2B decision-makers now prefer a “sales-rep-free” purchasing experience, relying instead on independent research and peer content to guide their decisions. Gartner’s research echoes this trend, showing that the average buyer completes more than 80% of their decision-making journey before ever engaging with a potential provider.
Think about that for a moment.
Your clients are educating themselves—researching projects, understanding delivery methods, and identifying potential partners—long before they ever issue an RFQ or RFP. If you believe they aren’t researching during that process, you’re kidding yourself.
And if your firm isn’t showing up in those early moments to shape how owners think about the services they need, who provides them best, and what “value” really looks like, then someone else is. By the time the formal procurement process begins, buyers have already formed an imaginary shortlist of firms they trust. And if you haven’t been visible during their research journey, chances are—you’re not on it.
For firm leaders, that’s both a challenge and an opportunity.
The challenge: the old “word-of-mouth” model can’t reach buyers who are making decisions online.
The opportunity: design firms that invest in communicating their expertise, values, and point of view early—long before procurement—can influence how clients define value and become the trusted name on that shortlist before the first proposal is ever written.
From Marketing to Management
For decades, this industry has run on relationships. The seller-doer model built financial empires for some, and it still matters. But relationships alone are no longer enough.
Today’s buyers are meeting you long before you ever meet them. They’re learning, comparing, and forming opinions while your firm is still unaware there’s even a project coming. That means marketing can no longer operate as a collection of independent activities or “nice-to-have” communications. It must be managed like any other system in your practice—with intention, structure, a proper budget, and measurable outcomes.
Here’s the truth: most firms don’t have a marketing problem; they have a strategy and alignment problem. The story your website tells rarely matches what your proposals promise. Social media may highlight design awards, while your clients are searching for partners who understand their business goals. Pursuits at the bottom of the funnel aren’t connected to the content at the top or middle of the funnel that should be fueling them.
Modern practice management requires orchestration—a continuous cycle in which what you pursue at the bottom of the funnel informs what you publish, what you share, and how you position your firm at the top and middle of the funnel. Every message, touchpoint, and conversation should work together to help your highest-value clients move through a straightforward journey: become aware of you, believe in you, hire you, and stay with you.
When marketing and business development functions operate in sync, you’re not just chasing projects—you’re building predictable, sustainable growth. That’s when marketing stops being a cost center and becomes a management discipline and revenue driver.
The Next Shift: Level Up Your People and Your Platforms
Here’s the elephant in the room: most internal marketing teams in architecture firms have lived at the bottom of the funnel since the beginning of time. They’re excellent at pursuits: coordinating RFQs, producing proposals, and supporting interviews—but those same teams have never been asked to drive awareness or nurture demand at the top and middle of the funnel.
That’s not a capability problem. It’s a training problem.
The skills needed to create visibility, build digital engagement, and generate demand are entirely teachable. Yet most firms have never budgeted for top- or mid-funnel training—much less the tools to support it. The result? Marketing remains reactive, while competitors who have invested in training, automation, and digital infrastructure quietly outpace them.
Now is the moment to level up your humans. Teach your teams how the full funnel works—how strategy connects to execution—and then invest in technology to bridge the production gap as those teams move into more strategic roles. CRMs, automation platforms, and data tools are no longer optional; they’re the modern infrastructure for client development.
If that feels like a heavy lift, remember this: you once had to figure out how to budget for BIM. You once had to justify your first CRM or your project management system. You adapted, and your firm is better for it. This is no different.
Without a digitally enabled demand-generation system in place, your competition will have a head start in every pursuit that matters. The firms that figure this out first won’t just win more; they’ll win smarter, faster, and with greater predictability.
The future of practice isn’t just about design excellence. It’s about building the systems and the people that sustain it.
Trust Is the New Differentiator
Design excellence will always matter. But in a transparent world, where buyers are shaping their opinions long before the shortlist, clarity and consistency build credibility faster than credentials.
The firms that will thrive in the decade ahead are those that treat trust as a system, not a sentiment. They align their message, methods, and culture with the same precision they apply to drawings and documentation. They invest in people and platforms that allow them to show up early, educate often, and communicate with purpose.
In practice, that often starts with the smallest things—like your team’s LinkedIn profiles. In a world where clients research long before they reach out, inconsistent or outdated profiles can quietly chip away at credibility. When every person in your firm shows up online with clarity, professionalism, and alignment to your brand story, it reinforces trust before a single proposal is exchanged.
When your digital presence reflects the same integrity you bring to your projects—when your marketing, business development, and client experience all speak the same language—you’re not just marketing your firm. You’re managing it for growth. And you’re earning the kind of brand trust that makes every next project easier to win.
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Judy Sparks is the CEO and Founder of Smartegies, a strategic growth consultancy that has helped more than 300 AEC firms across the U.S. and Canada grow smarter, build stronger brands, and train their people to think more strategically about marketing and business development. A frequent speaker and co-host of the AEC Marketing for Principals podcast, Judy is known for her candid, practical insights that bridge the gap between marketing, business development, and firm leadership. She also serves as a part-time lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Design, where she developed and taught marketing curricula for both the School of Building Construction and the School of Architecture.
(Return to the cover of the January 2026 PM Digest)