How can an architecture studio win work more consistently?

There is something slightly strange about the way architects are expected to build a practice. You can spend years learning how to design buildings, manage increasingly complex projects, coordinate consultants, navigate planning, deal with clients and eventually lead teams of your own. Then you decide to start a studio and discover there is another part of running a practice that very few people ever taught you: where is the next project actually going to come from?

I know this because I came through architecture myself. I spent nearly ten years in the profession, including at Foster + Partners and WilkinsonEyre, and I don't remember business development ever really being part of the education. You learned how to become a better architect. If you eventually built a practice of your own, somehow you were also expected to know how to build the business around it.

For many studios, that business grows naturally at first. A former client comes back, somebody recommends you, a consultant makes an introduction or a conversation with someone you've known for years suddenly becomes a project. This is one of the things I actually love about the architecture and design industry. Relationships matter enormously, and I don't think that is going to change.

The difficulty comes when those relationships and referrals are doing almost all of the work.

When the studio is busy, that can be very difficult to see as a problem. There are projects on the board, everyone is delivering and another opportunity usually seems to appear from somewhere. It becomes much more obvious when a project is delayed, a long-standing client goes quiet, a particular sector slows down or the founders decide they want the practice to move somewhere different.

Suddenly, being remembered by the right person at the right time doesn't feel like much of a strategy.

Consistency doesn't mean turning architects into salespeople

This is where I think a lot of the advice around business development gets architecture and design studios wrong.

The answer isn't simply to do more outreach, fill a CRM with thousands of contacts or start treating every person who could potentially commission you as a lead. Architecture doesn't work like that, particularly when the work is complex, high value and dependent on trust.

Someone appointing an architect, designer or creative partner is making a very different decision from somebody buying a piece of software. They are buying expertise, judgement and ultimately people. They may be working with that team for several years, so reputation, chemistry, experience and confidence all matter.

A more consistent approach to winning work therefore needs to strengthen the relationship-led nature of the industry rather than trying to replace it with a conventional sales process.

For me, that begins with being much clearer about where the studio actually wants to go.

Before finding clients, decide what you actually want to win

“More work” isn't a useful new-business strategy, and in most cases neither is “we want to work with more developers”.

What kind of work does the studio genuinely want more of? Which markets are interesting? Where does the practice already have experience that gives it a credible advantage? Where is it trying to move next? Which projects have been particularly successful, not just creatively but commercially and in terms of the client relationship?

These conversations can be surprisingly difficult because there is often a temptation to keep the answer broad. Nobody wants to close the door on an opportunity. The result, however, can be a practice trying to speak to everybody and becoming particularly relevant to nobody.

This is one of the first things I work through with a studio because everything else becomes much more useful once there is some focus. The companies you research become more relevant, the people you want to know become clearer, the way you talk about the practice becomes sharper and even the relationships already sitting inside the founders' network can be looked at differently.

A market is made up of companies, but companies are made up of people

Once you know where you want to go, you can start working backwards.

Which organisations are actually capable of commissioning that kind of work? Which are a particularly strong fit for the practice? Where might there already be a relationship, introduction or connection? Which organisations are worth understanding properly rather than simply adding to a database?

Then you need to go another level down, because knowing that you want to work with a particular developer, operator or brand still isn't enough. Somewhere inside that organisation are the people who influence how and when appointments are made.

The most senior person isn't automatically the right person. Depending on the organisation and the work, there may be somebody who owns the problem, somebody who evaluates potential partners, somebody who influences the decision and somebody else who can make an introduction internally. Understanding that landscape makes business development much more human because you stop thinking about an organisation as a logo on a target list and start understanding the people around the opportunity.

The part I find particularly interesting is knowing where to focus now

Let's say you eventually identify 100 companies that would genuinely be good clients for the studio. They fit the market, the work is relevant and there is a credible reason they could one day work with you.

I still don't think those 100 companies should receive equal attention.

One may have just appointed a new development director. Another might be expanding into a market the studio understands extremely well. Somebody you've wanted to know for a while may have started engaging with the practice on LinkedIn. A company may be hiring, changing direction or talking publicly about something that makes your experience particularly relevant. Meanwhile another company on exactly the same target list might be doing absolutely nothing that suggests now is the right moment to focus on it.

None of those things means a project is about to land. I think it is important not to pretend that signals can predict an appointment because they can't. What they can do is give you context and help answer a much more useful question: where does our attention deserve to go now?

For a founder who might only have a few hours each week to spend developing new business, that difference matters.

The relationship should begin before you need the project

There is another reason I don't see this as a traditional sales process. The first time somebody hears about your studio ideally shouldn't be the day you contact them because you need work.

Perhaps they have seen a project of yours before. They may have read something useful from the founder on LinkedIn, met somebody from the practice at an event or heard the studio mentioned by someone they trust. You might have exchanged a message six months ago and stayed loosely in touch since.

By the time a genuine opportunity exists, there can already be familiarity.

That is why I increasingly see positioning, content, LinkedIn, introductions, direct outreach and follow-up as connected parts of the same new-business system. No single interaction necessarily wins the project. Over time, however, they help the right people understand who you are, what you're particularly good at and why you might be relevant when something eventually happens.

The unglamorous bit is remembering all of it

This is where even very good studios can struggle.

A founder can remember ten important relationships. They can probably remember twenty. Once you have dozens of target organisations, several people inside each one, old clients, introductions, conversations, follow-ups and things happening across the market, relying on somebody's memory becomes much harder.

This is where I think CRM, data and automation become genuinely useful, but only when they are serving the relationship rather than trying to replace it.

The system should help the studio remember who it knows, what has happened, what somebody cared about, when it last spoke to them, what has changed and what might be worth doing next. Technology is very good at holding that information together. Deciding what it means and how to respond to it is still a human job.

For me, this is what winning work more consistently really comes down to. It isn't about creating a bigger sales machine. It is about knowing where the practice wants to go, understanding the organisations and people capable of taking it there, becoming more intelligent about where attention should go and then developing those relationships consistently enough that everything doesn't depend on being remembered by chance.

Referrals will still happen. In fact, I hope they always do.

They just don't need to carry the entire future of the studio on their own.

By Richard Hall, Founder & CEO of Grand House.