QSIC 2008 - A great opportunity to network!

The Quantity Surveying International Convention 2008 was a great opportunity for me to meet up with contacts from previous seminars and make new friends with both academics and practitioners from KL and around Malaysia. This was my first major event since taking up my post in Malaysia and the response to my presentation seemed to be positive with a number of people speaking to me about it afterwards. The key messages that I wanted to get across was that marketing for QS practices was more about building and maintaining long-term relationships with clients and potential clients than advertising or promotion. The results of our research with firms so far shows that QS businesses in Malaysia have recognized the importance of marketing, with this being part of the role of partners, directors or senior practice managers. However, our data does not confirm how well developed marketing plans are, or if these are part of the strategic business planning of these practices. The backbone of marketing should be intelligence or market research. Again, we are not sure to what extent firms are investing in good quality research to support their activities. Practices put great emphasis on the use of the traditional company brochure, even though this has little or no influence on clients decision-making. Possibly no more than information on the company website. It would seem that it has never been more important to examine the cost effectiveness of marketing activities. Perhaps practices should be spending more on training their staff in networking and selling skills, appropriate corporate hospitality and events management. Increased competition and diversification of QS services means that practices need to look at how they are communicating their “uniqueness” and being able to differentiate themselves from their competitors.