Part of the Geospatial Growth Series
Right, let’s talk about something that’s been rattling around in every geospatial WhatsApp group and LinkedIn comment section this year: uncertainty. Budgets wobble. Clients go quiet.
Projects that were “definitely happening in Q2” mysteriously vanish into Q4, or just… don’t happen. And somewhere in a portacabin on a windswept site, a survey business owner is looking at their diary and wondering if they should panic.
Don’t. Or rather… panic if you must, just don’t let it steer the boat.
Because when times get wobbly, you absolutely need to remember: your next client isn’t deciding to hire you in the moment they call you.
They started deciding weeks, sometimes months, before that. By the time they call you, a big chunk of their decision has already happened. But the call isn’t the finish line. What happens next – how well you listen, qualify, explain, price and follow up, can still win or lose the work.
If you don’t understand that journey, and what actually earns you a place in it, you’ll spend uncertain times doing exactly the wrong things: slashing prices, going quiet on marketing and hoping the phone rings anyway.
Consider this article your homework. Fun homework. Promise!
The journey started long before they called you
Let’s bust the biggest myth in surveying sales: that the customer journey begins when someone rings you for a quote.
It doesn’t. By the time a prospective client picks up the phone, a huge chunk of their buying decision is already made. 6sense’s Buyer Experience research found buyers are already roughly 70% through their journey before they engage a seller directly, and Gartner’s research puts the figure even higher, suggesting 75% of the B2B buying journey now happens before a buyer ever speaks to a sales rep or, in our world, the Survey Manager.
During our latest GMA Live Panel, Stewart Ward, Dioptra Geomatics said prospective clients are arriving far better informed than they were five years ago. They’re researching the process, asking more detailed questions and, increasingly, finding firms through search and social content before making contact.
Tim Burch, NSPS, made another important point: buyers aren’t only Googling anymore. AI tools are scraping the information survey businesses publish too. If useful, credible survey content isn’t coming from professionals, something else will fill the gap.
And it’s not just that buyers research early.
Increasingly, they’ve already picked a favourite before they’ve even started “properly” evaluating anyone. Forrester’s 2024 Buyers’ Journey Survey found 92% of B2B buyers start their shopping process with at least one vendor already in mind, and 41% already have a single preferred vendor selected before formal evaluation even begins.
Translate that into uncertain times, and the stakes go up, not down.
When budgets are tight, buyers do more research, not less. They can’t afford to get it wrong, so they lean harder on trust signals (think case studies, visible expertise, recommendations, reputation, etc.) before they’ll risk a penny. If you went quiet the moment things got shaky, you’ve disappeared at exactly the moment your buyer started paying closer attention.
We dug into this “invisible research phase” properly in Hidden Costs: When Survey Companies Don’t Understand Marketing and Sales.
Worth a read if you want the full, slightly terrifying picture of how invisible most survey firms are during that critical research window.
Confidence is a buying signal (panic is too)
Here’s something that doesn’t get said enough… your confidence is part of your product.
Buyers can’t directly assess the quality of your last topo survey before they hire you. They’re not surveyors. What they can assess is how you show up. Do you sound like a firm that knows exactly what it’s doing and where it’s going? Or do you sound like a firm that’s one quiet month away from a breakdown?
This matters enormously in uncertain markets, because uncertainty is contagious.
If your website hasn’t been touched since the last recession, if your LinkedIn presence goes silent the second cash flow tightens, if your pricing suddenly gets wobbly and discount-happy… buyers read all of that as risk.
And in uncertain times, risk-averse buyers do the one thing that costs you the work: they go with whoever looks the most stable.
Firms known for strong positioning and consistent communication build the kind of trust that survives a downturn, because the client isn’t just buying a service – they’re buying certainty from you, in an uncertain world. (Mic drop 🎤)
Storm Geomatics is a great example close to home: by getting genuinely clear on positioning, buyer understanding and consistent visibility (*cough* by using methods and blueprints from the Geospatial Marketing Academy) rather than panicking or discounting, they grew the business by 50%.
Proof that clarity and consistency beat cold feet, even when the market’s jumpy.
We talked about the psychology behind why technical experts often undersell their own confidence in Why Your Next Big Investment Isn’t the Tech – It’s You.
If “confidence” feels like a soft, fluffy word to you, that article will change your mind.
Why panic-halting is the worst strategy in the book
Let’s talk about the classic uncertain-times reflex. Things go quiet, so marketing gets cut. The website update gets shelved. The LinkedIn posts stop. The webinar sign-up gets ignored because “there’s no point spending time on that when we’ve got no work coming in.”
I understand the instinct completely. It feels responsible. It feels like battening down the hatches. It is, in fact, one of the most expensive mistakes you can make, and the data on why is genuinely stark.
Marketing has a lag, and in B2B services, that lag is long. Dreamdata’s analysis of hundreds of real B2B companies found the average buyer journey runs to 192 days from first marketing touch to closed deal, involving over 60 touchpoints across more than 3 channels.
Smaller companies (under 50 employees) tend to see slightly shorter journeys of around 147 days, while larger companies can stretch well beyond 240 days.
Here’s what that means in plain English…
If you stop marketing the moment things get uncertain, you’re not saving a few weeks of effort. You’re deleting revenue that was due to land in three, six, nine months’ time. The famine doesn’t start when you panic. It starts after, when the pipeline you starved finally runs dry.
This is exactly the feast-and-famine cycle we broke down in Why Marketing Keeps Failing in Survey Businesses (And It’s Not Who You Think It Is).
Busy periods kill marketing, quiet periods trigger panic marketing, and the cycle repeats forever because nobody breaks the loop. Uncertain markets simply turn the volume up on a pattern that was already there.
There’s also a harder truth in the wider research on small business resilience.
Cash-flow volatility is one of the strongest predictors of small business fragility, with JPMorgan Chase Institute’s landmark analysis of over a million small business bank accounts finding that businesses with the most volatile cash flows carry meaningfully higher risk of running out of cash reserves during a downturn than steadier ones.
That instability isn’t bad luck. It’s usually the direct result of a marketing tap that gets turned on and off depending on how busy the diary looks this month.
Consistency is how you come out the other side
If panic-halting is the trap, consistency is the way out. And I don’t mean “post on LinkedIn every day and hope.”
I mean understanding where your buyer actually is in their journey and showing up for them at every stage of it, uncertain market or not.
Think of it like the classic buyer awareness pyramid popularised by sales trainer Chet Holmes: at any given time, only around 3% of your total market is actively ready to buy right now, roughly 6-7% are open to it but not urgently looking, and the overwhelming majority aren’t thinking about hiring a surveyor at all today.
In an uncertain market, that “ready now” slice often shrinks further, and more of your audience sits in “not yet, but watching.”
That’s precisely why consistency matters more, not less, during uncertain periods.
The clients who aren’t ready to buy today are still watching. Still forming an opinion. Still deciding, quietly, who they’ll call the moment their project gets the green light. If you go dark during the wobble, you’re invisible at the exact moment they’re paying closer attention than usual.
If you stay visible, consistent and calm, you’re the firm they already trust when the budget finally gets approved.
Consistency also does something else: it de-risks you as a buyer decision. Even Dreamdata’s research on buying committees shows sales conversations only make up a fraction of the full customer journey. The vast majority happens through content, research and word of mouth long before a rep is ever looped in.
A visible, consistent content and marketing presence is the thing that keeps working when your referral network goes quiet. It’s the insurance policy you take out before you need it, not after.
| Want to see where the commercial gaps sit in your own business? Our Revenue Growth Starter Kit helps you look at your client mix, where your work comes from, sector dependency and the areas that may need attention – then turns it into a simple action plan. |
It’ll help you see where your work currently comes from, where the commercial gaps sit and what you might need to tackle next.
This free tool was built to support our recent webinar/panel discussion, where Stewart Ward, Stacey Pollock, Tim Burch, Michael Royce, and I got into how geospatial businesses keep winning work when the market won’t sit still.
Your next opportunity might already be a client
Here’s the bit we often miss when talking about customer journeys: not every journey starts with a stranger.
In our revenue panel, existing relationships came up again and again. Stacey Pollock said around 80% of PEA’s current revenue comes from existing clients. Stewart Ward estimated Dioptra’s current split at roughly 60% existing and 40% new.
And those relationships weren’t producing work because someone had devised a clever sales sequence.
They were producing work because people talked to their clients.
Stacey gave a brilliant example. A client was venting about difficulties getting something through a municipality. She listened, recognised that her team could help and simply said so. That conversation opened another opportunity.
That’s farming in its simplest form: listen closely enough to notice where else you can help.
Watch the replay here: Leading Through Uncertainty: How Geospatial Businesses Keep Winning Work. Part 2 Revenue Edition
What the journey actually looks like, stage by stage
So if the buying decision happens mostly out of sight, what can you actually influence?
Quite a lot, as it turns out, you just need to know which lever to pull at which stage.
Unaware stage
The client doesn’t know they have a problem yet (an ageing asset that needs monitoring, a project that’ll need topographic data eventually). Your job here is visibility and education, content that makes them think “oh, I hadn’t considered that” long before they’re comparing quotes.
Aware-ish stage
They know they’ll need a survey company at some point, but haven’t defined what “good” looks like. This is where case studies, clear positioning and a specific niche (rather than a generic equipment list) start doing the heavy lifting.
Research stage
They’re actively comparing options, reading case studies, checking credentials, forming a shortlist. Forrester’s vendor-preference research shows how much of the shortlist is already locked in by this point. If you’re not visibly demonstrating expertise before this stage, you never make the list at all.
Decision stage
By now, the client may already have a preferred firm, but don’t assume the work is won.
This is where good opportunities still leak away.
Poorly understood scope. Slow responses. A proposal nobody follows up. Pricing that doesn’t match the value. Or simply quoting work you should never have chased in the first place.
Stacey Pollock described how PEA uses a go/ no-go process to assess whether a new opportunity is genuinely a good fit before investing in the proposal.
That’s a useful reminder:
The aim isn’t to win every quote. It’s to win more of the right ones.
More leads won’t fix every revenue problem
It’s very tempting when the pipeline looks thin to conclude:
“We need more leads.”
Maybe.
But the panel highlighted several places revenue can disappear without lead volume being the problem at all.
Stacey identified scope creep as a genuine profitability problem. Michael gave an example where simply being included in an internal client meeting uncovered topo, boundary, site-plan and construction-staking work that might otherwise have been missed. Stewart talked about learning to say no to low-price, high-hassle work rather than keeping crews busy at any cost.
So before turning the marketing tap up, ask:
Where are we actually leaking revenue?
The customer journey in surveying starts long before the sales call – but revenue can still be won, lost or leaked in everything that happens afterwards.
What To Actually Do About It (Without Losing Your Mind)
You don’t need a marketing department, a rebrand, or a six-figure ad budget to work with this. You need five unglamorous things done consistently:
- Stay visible and educate
Help buyers understand the process and your value before they compare price. - Talk to your existing clients
Don’t just ask “Any more work?” Listen for problems, plans and opportunities. - Qualify before you quote
Not every enquiry deserves a proposal. - Follow up
A proposal sitting in someone’s inbox is not a sales strategy. - Protect your margin
Watch scope creep, understand your costs and stop assuming cheaper means more competitive.
| A slightly uncomfortable question… When did you last increase your prices? Stewart’s answer when I asked what a survey business could do tomorrow to improve revenue was wonderfully simple: “Raise your prices.” If wages, vehicles, insurance, software and overheads have all increased but your rates haven’t, being “busy” may be hiding a profitability problem. |
Stewart Ward didn’t do any of this by hiring an agency or a big team. He learned the system through GMA 2.0 and applied it consistently, and describes his business revenue as now “probably three times as much” as when he started. Not from panic bursts of activity. From showing up, steadily, even when things were uncertain.
The Real Takeaway
Uncertainty doesn’t reward the firm that panics fastest or discounts hardest. It rewards the firm that stays visible, builds trust and then handles the commercial side properly when the opportunity arrives.
That’s genuinely the whole game. Not tricks or gimmicks. Just understanding where your buyer is, and having the nerve to keep showing up for them when it feels easiest to disappear.
If you’re running a survey or geospatial business and you’re recognising some of this in your own company, book a GMA Growth Diagnostic with me.
We’ll look at where your work currently comes from, what’s making your pipeline unpredictable and where your biggest commercial gap sits.
If GMA can help with what we uncover, I’ll show you how.
FAQs: The Customer Journey in Surveying
Q: Do I automatically need more leads if my pipeline is unpredictable?
Not necessarily. Your gap may be lead generation, but it could also be poor qualification, proposal follow-up, pricing, client concentration, scope creep or not developing existing accounts. Find the leak before adding more activity.
Q: Should survey firms compete by lowering their price?
Sometimes price will decide the work, particularly in competitive bidding. But the panel repeatedly stressed the value of trust, reputation, responsiveness, clear scope and choosing the right work rather than simply trying to be cheapest.
Q: What is the customer journey in a survey or geospatial business?
It’s the full path a client takes from first realising they have a problem but not sure who to contact or what to do next, digging around and finding out they might need a survey, to ultimately actually hiring a firm. The journey includes the large portion of that decision which happens before they ever contact you, through research, comparison and referral checking.
Q: How much of the buying decision happens before a client contacts a survey firm?
Research from 6sense and Gartner suggests buyers are roughly 70-75% through their decision-making process before they ever engage a seller directly, and Forrester found 92% of buyers already have at least one vendor in mind before formal evaluation even starts.
Q: Should I stop marketing during uncertain economic times?
No. Marketing has a lag of several months in B2B services. Dreamdata’s benchmarking shows an average buyer journey of 192 days, so pausing activity now removes revenue that was due to land later, not revenue you’re currently earning.
Q: If buyers have already researched me, does the proposal stage still matter?
Absolutely. Research and visibility may get you onto the shortlist, but poor scope, slow responses, weak follow-up or pricing the wrong work can still lose the opportunity. The job isn’t won until it’s won.
Q: How do I build client trust during a downturn?
Stay visible and consistent, keep existing client relationships warm, and demonstrate expertise through case studies and content rather than competing purely on price.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake survey firms make when things get uncertain?
Panicking by cutting marketing and discounting heavily. Both signal instability to buyers and remove the trust-building activity that would otherwise carry the firm through the wobble.
Q: How can I find out where my client base is most exposed to uncertainty?
Use a structured resilience audit, like the free Predictable Revenue Starter Kit, to map client concentration, referral dependency and pipeline visibility in one sitting.