Who are the right decision makers for an architecture studio to build relationships with?

Once a studio has worked out which companies it would genuinely like to work with, there is another question that sounds relatively straightforward but often isn't: who inside those companies should the studio actually be getting to know?

The obvious answer is usually the most senior person with responsibility for development, design or whatever part of the business seems closest to the work. Sometimes that will be right, but organisations rarely make important appointments through one person alone. There may be somebody who first identifies the need, another person who has considerable influence over which practices are considered and somebody more senior who eventually approves the appointment. Depending on the organisation, there may also be consultants and advisers outside the business whose opinion carries a surprising amount of weight.

I became very aware of this after leaving architecture and spending the following years working much more closely with clients and organisations from the other side. Titles can tell you something, but understanding how a business actually works usually tells you considerably more.

Start by understanding how the appointment might happen

Rather than beginning with a list of job titles, I find it much more useful to think about the kind of work the studio wants to win and work backwards from there.

If that organisation were going to appoint a practice for this kind of project, where might the conversation begin? Who is likely to be closest to the problem? Who would be involved in deciding which practices are considered? Who has experience of appointing architects or designers and whose opinion is likely to be trusted internally?

The answers will be different from one organisation to another. A small founder-led developer may have a very direct decision-making structure, while a larger property company could have development, design, asset management, procurement and senior leadership involved at different points. A hotel operator, retailer or private client will have a completely different structure again.

This is why I am cautious about generic advice that tells studios to target a particular job title. It can be a useful starting point for research, but it shouldn't be mistaken for understanding the organisation.

The most senior person isn't always the most useful relationship to start with

There is a natural temptation to go straight to the person with the greatest authority because they are ultimately capable of saying yes. In reality, somebody closer to the day-to-day problem may have far more reason to engage with the studio and may eventually become the person who brings the practice into the conversation internally.

I think this is particularly relevant in architecture because appointments rarely happen in isolation. There can be project managers, development managers, planning consultants, cost consultants, agents and existing professional teams around a project, all of whom may influence which practices are considered even if they never formally make the appointment themselves.

For me, the aim isn't to identify one perfect decision maker. It is to understand enough about the organisation and the people around it to know where a relationship could realistically begin.

Before approaching someone new, understand who you already know

This is one of the areas I think studios can easily overlook, particularly as they grow.

A company can look completely new when somebody searches for it in a database, while another director in the practice may have worked with one of its senior people five years ago. A consultant the studio knows well may already be advising them. Someone who worked with the practice at a previous client may have moved there without anybody noticing.

Individually, those relationships are often sitting in people's heads, inboxes and LinkedIn networks. The difficulty is seeing them collectively.

Before starting a completely new relationship, it is therefore worth understanding what already exists around the organisation. Sometimes there is no connection at all and a new conversation genuinely needs to begin from scratch. At other times, what initially looked like a cold company turns out to be surprisingly close to the studio's existing network.

That context can completely change how the relationship should be approached.

People move, and that can make existing relationships more valuable

This is another reason I don't think business development should be organised entirely around companies.

People move jobs all the time. A client you worked with several years ago might join a developer the studio has wanted to know for a long time. Someone you met while they were relatively junior can eventually take on a much more influential position elsewhere. A consultant can move client-side. Someone the studio already knows can suddenly become responsible for exactly the kind of work the practice wants more of.

If the relationship has been maintained, it doesn't become a cold relationship simply because the company name next to that person's profile has changed. In some cases the move makes the relationship considerably more relevant than it was before.

Architecture has long project cycles and long professional careers, which means relationships can develop over years rather than weeks. A good new-business system needs to understand that history rather than treating people as contacts belonging permanently to one company.

This doesn't mean mapping everybody

There is a point where research becomes another form of procrastination. A studio does not need a detailed map of every employee inside every organisation it wants to work with.

What it needs is enough understanding to make better decisions about where relationships should develop.

For one potential client, there may be one obvious person. For another, several people may influence the kind of appointment the studio is interested in. The important thing is knowing why those people matter and what relationship, if any, already exists around them.

That is a very different exercise from downloading hundreds of contacts because their job titles matched a search filter.

For a relationship-led business, I think the more useful objective is quite simple: understand the organisations you genuinely want to work with, understand the people around the work you want to win and gradually get closer to the ones who matter.

By Richard Hall, Founder & CEO of Grand House.