What are market signals and how can architecture studios use them for business development?

I have become increasingly interested in signals because they help solve a very practical problem I see in new business. Once a studio knows the market it wants to develop and has identified the companies and people it would genuinely like to know, how does it decide where to spend its time?

If there are 100 organisations on that list and they are all potentially relevant, there is very little value in simply treating all 100 in exactly the same way. Things will be happening around those businesses at completely different times, and some of those changes can give the studio useful context about where it might be worth paying more attention.

This is what I mean when I talk about signals. They are pieces of information that help us notice change around a company, a market or a person. The important part is understanding what those changes mean rather than simply collecting more data.

A signal isn't proof that somebody is ready to appoint an architect

I think this needs to be made clear because some of the language around intent data and sales technology goes much further than I am comfortable with.

A company hiring people, appointing a new director, expanding into a market or announcing a change in strategy does not mean there is an architecture project waiting to be won. Somebody viewing your LinkedIn profile or interacting with something the studio has published doesn't mean they are suddenly ready to appoint you either.

Real organisations and projects are much more complicated than that.

What these changes can do is provide context that wasn't there previously. A new appointment might be completely irrelevant, or it might place somebody with a particular remit into a business the studio has wanted to know for years. An expansion announcement might mean very little, or it might connect directly with a market in which the practice has unusually relevant experience.

The useful part is being able to notice that something has changed and then decide whether it is worth understanding properly.

The danger is thinking everything is a signal

There is now an extraordinary amount of information available about companies and people, and technology makes it increasingly easy to collect it. The problem is that once you have access to all of this information, everything can start looking important.

It isn't.

Most of what happens inside a company will have absolutely no relevance to an architecture or design studio, and even something that appears relevant doesn't automatically create a reason to contact somebody.

The useful part is being able to look at a change alongside everything else you know about the organisation. Does it connect with the work the studio wants to win? Does the practice have relevant experience? Is there already a relationship there? Does the change make that relationship more interesting now than it was six months ago?

Quite often the answer will still be no, and that's perfectly fine. The objective isn't to find an excuse to contact more people. It is to become more selective about where the studio spends its time.

Useful signals can come from different places

Some of the changes worth paying attention to happen at a broad market level. Regulation changes, investment moves, sectors become more or less active and new pressures emerge that can alter what clients need.

Other changes happen inside individual organisations. Businesses grow, restructure, recruit, move into new markets, make senior appointments or change direction.

Then there are the people themselves. Someone moves jobs, takes on a different responsibility, reconnects with the studio or becomes increasingly active around something relevant to the practice.

None of these things is particularly useful simply because it exists. What matters is how it relates to the studio's strategy, experience and existing relationships.

This is also why I don't think signals should ever become a completely automated instruction to send a message. Technology can be very good at finding and organising information, but understanding its significance still requires judgement.

Signals are just as useful for existing relationships

A lot of the conversation around this kind of data focuses on finding new prospects, but I think some of its most useful applications are much closer to home.

Someone the studio worked with years ago might move to another organisation. An existing client may start expanding into an area the practice understands well. A former contact may take on a new responsibility. Without a way of noticing these changes, months can pass before anybody in the studio becomes aware of them.

Nothing about the underlying relationship was cold. The context around it simply changed.

For a practice that has accumulated years of relationships across clients, consultants and collaborators, being able to understand those changes can be much more valuable than continuously searching for completely new people.

The real value is prioritisation

Most architecture and design studios do not have a shortage of organisations they could potentially speak to. What they have is a shortage of time.

The people responsible for winning future work are often the same people responsible for delivering today's projects, managing clients, reviewing design work and running the practice. A new-business system that creates another enormous workload isn't particularly helpful.

I think signals become useful when they help narrow that workload. They can help a studio notice where something has changed, investigate it and decide whether one relationship deserves more attention than another at that particular moment.

That doesn't make business development predictable and it certainly doesn't remove the human judgement involved. It simply gives that judgement better information to work with.

For me, that is a much more realistic and useful role for technology in a relationship-led industry.

By Richard Hall, Founder & CEO of Grand House.