Track 2: Proposals & Marketing
Proposals & Marketing (Track 2)
Share processes, procedures, tools, and resources relevant to roles and responsibilities of the modern marketing team, including strategic and integrated marketing and communications. These sessions also cover research (the foundation of any solid marketing plan), proposals, interviews, and promotional activity.
The Spark that Wins: Interview Insights from Evaluators
Date: Tuesday, 12:45 PM - 2:00 PM
You've ignited enough interest to make the shortlist--now it's time to spark selection! Great qualifications and a polished proposal may have gotten you in the room, but we all know that interviews often determine who gets the work. Join a panel of owners, selection committee members, and industry leaders for a candid conversation about what separates winning teams from everyone else. Discover what evaluators are truly looking for, what interview mistakes they see over and over, and how your team can create confidence, build connections, and stand out when it matters most.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the unwritten nuances of what selection committees are evaluating during shortlist interviews.
- Recognize common interview pitfalls that negatively affect rankings to improve interview prep strategies.
- Apply techniques for creating more authentic and persuasive presentations.
- Improve Q&A performance and audience engagement.
Wendy Simmons
Wendy Simmons is the founder of Middle of Six, where she helps A/E/C firms win through stronger marketing, business development, proposals, and interviews. With 20 years of industry experience and several hundred clients supported, she has coached everyone from nervous superintendents to larger-than-life CEOs on how to show up with confidence and make a connection. Wendy has seen firsthand what separates winning teams from the rest. In fact, she's spent so much time thinking about shortlists that she hosts The Shortlist, an award-winning podcast covering all things A/E/C marketing.
Coaching the Coach: How to Prepare Winning Presentations
Date: Tuesday, 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM
This high-impact session equips marketers with the tools to transform engineers and technical staff into confident, client-focused communicators. Learn how to shape powerful stories, elevate delivery, and lead rehearsals that actually drive results. Walk away ready to coach with intention, build trust, and help your teams deliver presentations that stand out—and win work.
Learning Outcomes
- Turn expertise into impact: Learn how to coach technical professionals to communicate clearly, connect with clients, and deliver messages that score.
Shiloh Swanson, FSMPS, CPSM
Shiloh Swanson is the Owner of Top Shelf LLC, serving the A/E/C industry across North America. An SMPS Fellow and CPSM, she brings more than 30 years of expertise in strategic growth planning, leading high-performing teams, sales training and mentoring, major campaign management, and coaching winning interviews. She has led pursuits for four ENR Top 10 firms and helped secure over $4 billion in engineering fees in the last decade while maintaining an 80%+ capture rate over the past five years. She specializes in strategic planning, account management, and coaching, and is a sought-after mentor and trainer in capture planning, storytelling, and interview excellence.
Visual Persuasion in Proposals: Graphics, Branding, and Readability
Date: Tuesday, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Proposals are not read the way we write them. Evaluators skim, compare, judge, and score under time pressure, looking for compliance, confidence, differentiation, and reduced risk. This session explores how visual communication can make proposals easier to navigate, understand, believe, and evaluate. Attendees will learn how branding builds trust, photography creates familiarity, and graphics provide proof. Through A/E/C-specific examples, we will examine how proposal teams can use layout, imagery, captions, diagrams, tables, charts, and visual hierarchy to clarify complex information and connect proposal requirements to client outcomes. The session will also cover practical tools and habits for improving proposal visuals, including style systems, photography standards, action captions, AI brainstorming, and ethical use of visual inspiration. The goal is not decoration. It is designing toward the evaluator’s decision.
Learning Outcomes
- Prepare proposal presentation materials - Participants will learn to choose visual formats that make proposal messages easier to find, understand, believe, and score.
Ryan Schulze, MBA
Ryan Schulze is an Account Strategist/Pursuit Manager with Jacobs, where he supports account planning, client intelligence, and pursuit strategy across the A/E/C industry. With more than a decade of experience spanning marketing, business development, proposal management, and sales leadership, Ryan has worked across construction, interior design, architecture, and engineering, giving him a broad perspective on how different firms pursue work, position value, and build client relationships. SMPS has played a meaningful role throughout his career, first as a peer network and source of education while he was a solo marketer in construction in Southeast Louisiana, later as a leadership platform as part of the founding board of SMPS Idaho, and now as President-Elect of SMPS Hawaiʻi. Ryan is passionate about helping A/E/C marketers build confidence, move upstream from production support to strategic influence, and lead with greater impact inside their firms and local professional communities.
Human in the Loop: Why AI Can't Win Your Proposal (And What Sill Can)
Date: Wednesday, 9:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Everyone's using AI to write proposals now. Which is exactly the problem.
When your competitors are all running the same prompts, "AI-assisted" stops being an advantage and starts being table stakes. Worse, evaluators can spot it... the flat tone, the generic win themes, the technical answer with zero technical insight. And it's not just proposal writers using AI to draft. Agencies are using it too, scraping your website and past performance to check whether the story in your proposal actually holds up.
Learning Outcomes
- Pinpoint exactly where AI belongs in your proposal process, and where it needs to stay out.
Krystn Macomber, CP APMA Fellow, LEED AP
Krystn isn't here to follow the rules… she's here to rewrite them. As the founder + CEO of Summit Strategy, she leads a win studio that helps A/E/C, GovCon, and professional services firms win more work through better strategy, systems, and skills.
Beach Please! How to OWN Your Pursuit Schedule!
Date: Wednesday, 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM
If you've ever chased resumes, waited on "just one more edit," or wondered why "final" versions multiply overnight....welcome! You're among friends.
In A/E/C, you can't control shifting deadlines, last-minute client requests, or the SME who disappears right before submission. What you can control is your process, your communication, and how you lead the pursuit.
Join proposal pro and self-proclaimed "Chaos Coordinator" Briana Carter as she shares practical strategies, battle-tested systems, and real-world lessons from leading pursuits across architecture, engineering, and construction. You'll learn how to stay ahead of deadlines, build accountability, manage stakeholder expectations, and confidently navigate the curveballs every pursuit brings.
In A/E/C, you can't control shifting deadlines, last-minute client requests, or the SME who disappears right before submission. What you can control is your process, your communication, and how you lead the pursuit.
Join proposal pro and self-proclaimed "Chaos Coordinator" Briana Carter as she shares practical strategies, battle-tested systems, and real-world lessons from leading pursuits across architecture, engineering, and construction. You'll learn how to stay ahead of deadlines, build accountability, manage stakeholder expectations, and confidently navigate the curveballs every pursuit brings.
Learning Outcomes
- Differentiate between the factors they can control and those they cannot during a pursuit, allowing them to proactively manage risk, reduce stress, and maintain momentum.
Briana Carter, CPSM
Briana Carter, CPSM is a Pursuit Team Manager for Stantec's Buildings Division, where she transforms pursuit chaos into winning strategy. A self-proclaimed "Chaos Coordinator," storyteller, and proud mom of twins, she leads multidisciplinary teams through complex pursuits, helping technical experts turn their expertise into client-centered stories that build trust and drive business growth. Since joining the industry in 2017, Briana has worked across architecture, engineering, and construction, giving her a unique perspective on connecting disciplines, aligning teams, and navigating the fast-paced world of pursuits. Drawing on a background in art, architecture, and marketing, she brings creativity, strategy, and a human-centered approach to every challenge. An active leader in SMPS (Chair Emeritus of the HXB Committee (2024) and board member for SMPS Research Triangle), Briana is a sought-after speaker who blends humor, practical insights, and real-world stories to inspire audiences to lead with empathy, embrace innovation, and turn complexity into clarity.
250 Milliseconds: The Real Deadline for Your Proposal
Date: Wednesday, 1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
A reviewer’s visual system decides where to look in less than 250 milliseconds, before conscious thought and before a single word is read. That is the real deadline every proposal faces.
This session explores how the brain processes visual information and how the six pre-attentive visual channels help reviewers find your most important messages instantly. Learn how color, size, contrast, white space, borders, and orientation work together to reinforce win themes and create a visual hierarchy that survives the skim.
Through proposal before-and-after examples, practical InDesign techniques, and production-ready workflows, you'll see what captures attention and what gets ignored. You'll leave with the skills to intentionally guide a reviewer's eye and the InDesign tools to build proposals that communicate faster, clearer, and with greater impact.
This session explores how the brain processes visual information and how the six pre-attentive visual channels help reviewers find your most important messages instantly. Learn how color, size, contrast, white space, borders, and orientation work together to reinforce win themes and create a visual hierarchy that survives the skim.
Through proposal before-and-after examples, practical InDesign techniques, and production-ready workflows, you'll see what captures attention and what gets ignored. You'll leave with the skills to intentionally guide a reviewer's eye and the InDesign tools to build proposals that communicate faster, clearer, and with greater impact.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain how pre-attentive processing works, under 250 milliseconds and upstream of conscious decision-making, and why those first seconds decide whether differentiating content gets seen or skipped.
Julie Shaffer, FSMPS, CPSM
Julie Shaffer has spent 25 years in professional services marketing, shaping long, high-stakes pursuits where consistency and clarity win the work. A strategist, trainer, and Adobe Community Expert, she works primarily in InDesign, with a soft spot for proposals and a low tolerance for inconsistent formatting.
How Storytelling Gives A/E/C Firms a Competitive Advantage
Date: Wednesday, 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM
Every successful A/E/C project has stories worth preserving, yet many valuable client experiences, project insights, and lessons learned are never captured. In this interactive session, attendees will learn why storytelling is a strategic marketing tool that helps firms build trust, strengthen stakeholder relationships, and stand out in a competitive marketplace.
Leslie Blaize will share a practical process for identifying story-worthy projects and interviewing clients, seller-doers, and project managers to capture authentic stories before they are forgotten. Participants will practice asking open-ended questions in a guided role-playing exercise, then learn how interview recordings and transcripts can be organized into a searchable library of project stories.
Leslie Blaize will share a practical process for identifying story-worthy projects and interviewing clients, seller-doers, and project managers to capture authentic stories before they are forgotten. Participants will practice asking open-ended questions in a guided role-playing exercise, then learn how interview recordings and transcripts can be organized into a searchable library of project stories.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify projects with strong storytelling potential and determine which clients, seller-doers, and project managers should be interviewed to capture meaningful project stories.
Leslie Blaize, CPSM
Leslie Blaize, CPSM, is the owner of Blaize Communications, where she helps A/E/C organizations transform completed projects into compelling case studies, articles, and stories that build trust, strengthen relationships, and support business development. Before starting her business, she worked as a corporate communications professional for a multidisciplinary A/E/C firm and as a newspaper journalist and co-publisher.
Leslie currently writes feature articles for an industry association magazine and has developed case studies, thought leadership content, and marketing communications for A/E/C firms. She specializes in interviewing clients and technical professionals to uncover the authentic stories behind successful projects. She has presented for SMPS chapters, was selected to speak at the SMPS Women + A/E/C Virtual Symposium, and has appeared on numerous industry podcasts. A Certified Professional Services Marketer, Leslie holds bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism and shares practical storytelling strategies through her LinkedIn newsletter, A/E/C Connect.
