SMPS salutes engineer's efforts to grow his business

Real Estate Weekly, June 15, 2005

Mike Lee, President and CEO of AKRF, has received the Marketing Champion Award from the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS).

The award recognizes Mike's strong leadership at AKRF, a multidisciplinary environmental, planning, and engineering firm that has grown dramatically in the last three years.

Mike will be honored at a ceremony on June 15 at the Millennium Hotel in Manhattan sponsored by SMPS.

SMPS is a strategic organization that provides education, information and resources in marketing professional services in the architecture, engineering, and construction (A/E/ C) industry. The award salutes a principal who demonstrates commitment in at least three of the five following areas: supports marketing; encourages professional development; fosters marketing culture; actively participates in the A/E/C community; and includes marketing in the management team.

Mike exemplifies all five, and has presided over a new chapter in AKRF's growth.

"Mike knows that marketing is a core component of the firm's vitality, and has championed a new company culture that gives everyone a stake in that vitality," said Marcella Diaz, the firm's Marketing Director, who nominated Mike for the award.

One of Mike's first initiatives when he became President and CEO of AKRF in January of 2003 was to strengthen the firm's recently established marketing department and start a bold plan to reach into new markets.

For many years, AKRF has been widely acknowledged as a leader in its core business area of environmental planning.

By using marketing as a transformative tool, Mike is building the firm's name recognition--and its revenues--in its emerging divisions such as engineering, hazardous materials, and sustainable design, and creating new practice areas in industrial compliance, natural resources, and Clean Water Act consulting for utility clients.

Since starting the new business plan, AKRF has opened two new offices and increased revenue by 25 percent. "This growth would be impossible without a marketing strategy that's integrated into every aspect of our business," Mike remarked in an interview. Mike is so confident about the marketing department's capabilities that he has successfully pitched their services to clients. This means that marketing's role in the firm's growth is now two-fold: marketing promotes the firm's wide array of services, and becomes a new service in its own right.

"When I found out Mike got the SMPS award," Marcella recalls, "I called him to congratulate him. Instead, he congratulated the marketing team for helping him make such a great presentation.

"It's exactly this kind of recognition and teamwork that shows why he deserves the award."