The question of the questions

Presented at another conference, where the delegates only just outnumbered the speakers and one presenter went twice over his allocated timeframe.

A practice that annoys me immensely, more than the offending should reasonably warrant...

The range of teas on offer was sadly, also pretty ordinary...

Still, something profound was said.

Can’t quote the ‘gem’ verbatim, went a bit like this:

“when our clients ask the questions, it is much easier to give them the answers”

Even in my ‘straight’ architectural days, I realised that some services needed two-layers-of marketing to sell, while others only one.

Promoting architect-services to residential clients involved a ‘create-a-need’ stage, despite most clients ‘knowing-what-they-wanted’.

Contrast this with a person suffering from a sore-tooth.

As a dentist you wouldn’t need to sell him he ‘needed’ to see one.

Nor to a bride-to-be, the importance of wedding-cakes, give her a choice of good cake-makers instead.

BIM is like architecture, a two-tiered service: first you need to create the ‘need’,

then you sell yourself as the best one to fulfil that necessity.

These days, some potential BIM clients ask ‘questions’ unprompted, as opposed to have to place them in their minds first.

I still rate them as ‘first tier’ questions and judge their BIM awareness:

The Dumbest is ‘What software do you use in your organisation?’ and the

Smartest: ‘Who BIMs within your organisation?’