THE BUYER SHIFT DECODED
Bring the new buyer into focus for your whole revenue team. One program that aligns your leadership, marketers, BD professionals, and seller-doers around how today's buyer finds you, qualifies you, and selects you — before the RFQ ever exists.
The buyer has shifted. Where they find you, how they qualify you, and how they select you is new.
MOST FIRMS ARE SELLING TO THE BUYER THEY KNEW TEN YEARS AGO
The decision is largely made before your firm is ever contacted, during a research phase you cannot see. Your leaders, your marketers, and your BD team each own a piece of that phase, and most firms have never aligned them around it.
When today's decision-makers use new lenses to find, qualify, and choose a firm, the advantage goes to the firm whose whole team knows how to show up for them. That alignment is what this program builds.
ONE PROGRAM. YOUR WHOLE REVENUE TEAM.
The Buyer Shift Decoded is delivered inside your firm as a coordinated set of working sessions. Everyone starts from the same research-backed foundation, then each team builds a plan for their part of the buyer's journey, shaped around your firm. Your teams leave pointed in the same direction, not holding four separate opinions.
RESEARCH-BACKED
Grounded in current buyer research and the neuroscience of how decisions are made.
FIRM-SPECIFIC
Working sessions use your real data, channels, personas, and pursuits.
ON YOUR TERMS
Delivered on-site or virtual, across three to four sessions.
BUILT FOR EVERY SEAT AT THE TABLE
Each team goes deep on its own part of the buyer's journey and leaves with a plan it can act on.
LEADERSHIP
See where your firm is visible and trusted to the new buyer, and where the opportunity is worth the most.
MARKETING
Build for the research phase where the shortlist is built, in the channels your competitors ignore.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Invest where the decision is forming, before the RFQ exists, so you are shortlisted before the pursuit begins.
SELLER-DOERS
Turn your expertise into visible presence that earns trust before you ever have the first conversation.
IT STARTS WITH ONE SHARED SESSION
Every team begins from the same foundation: the four measurable ways the buyer has shifted, how the buying decision is made in the brain, and where your firm shows up in the new buyer's journey. One starting line, one shared language, before each team goes to work on its own plan.
New expectations and research habits shape every evaluation.
The buyer researches independently and shortlists before contacting you.
What earns trust has changed. Firms that build toward it are shortlisted early.
AI screening and peer networks decide who makes the early shortlist.
THEN EACH TEAM BUILDS ITS PLAN
Audit the firm through the new buyer's eyes and build the business case for where to invest.
Map the channels where the new buyer decides and build content that earns trust in the research phase.
Shift BD investment toward pre-positioning and adjust the pursuit for a buyer who arrives pre-educated.
HOW IT WORKS
SHARED FOUNDATION SESSION
All teams start together with the research and the neuroscience of the new buyer.
TEAM WORKING SESSIONS
Three to four sessions per team over six to eight weeks, built around your firm.
PLANS BUILT ON YOUR FIRM
Each team works with your real data, channels, personas, and pursuits.
ALIGNED DIRECTION
Leadership, marketing, and BD leave pointed the same way, not four ways.
WHAT YOUR FIRM WALKS AWAY WITH
SARAH KINARD, HEAD BIRD
With over 20 years of experience leading growth strategies and new market development, Sarah Kinard is the driving force behind The Flamingo Project, a research, strategy, and growth-focused firm. She specializes in research-driven growth strategies and market positioning to help AEC firms thrive.
Sarah is heavily involved in SMPS. She served as Dallas president from 2021 to 2022, and during her presidency she worked with Fort Worth to re-envision how SMPS serves the market, which led to the SMPS North Texas chapter. She is SMPS Foundation President 2026.
QUESTIONS WE GET
WHO IS THIS PROGRAM FOR?
Your whole revenue team: leadership, marketing, BD, and seller-doers. It's built to align everyone who touches how a client finds, qualifies, and chooses your firm.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
Three to four sessions per team, spread across six to eight weeks — a shared foundation session first, then each team's working sessions.
IS IT DELIVERED ON-SITE OR VIRTUAL?
Whichever suits your firm. Sessions run on-site or virtual, and can mix both across the engagement.
WHEN CAN WE START?
Whenever you book it — the program is scheduled around your firm's calendar, not a fixed cohort date.
CAN WE SCOPE IT TO ONE OFFICE INSTEAD OF THE WHOLE FIRM?
Yes. The Buyer Shift Decoded can be scoped to one office or one region.
BRING THE BUYER SHIFT DECODED TO YOUR FIRM
Align your leaders, marketers, and BD team around the buyer who decides before you know they are looking.