Prospecting, the necessary evil?

Prospecting is often the least enjoyed and most ignored element of pipeline management.  It’s laborious, can be thankless and generates lower immediate returns than marketing to existing clients.

It’s also critical. Many firms face stagnant or even shrinking markets which can lead to a decline in fees, as clients and referrers consolidate or shift advisers.  Here are some tips that professional services firms can follow to maintain a healthy addressable market. While inbound and outbound activity is equally important, I focus on outbound to emphasise the importance of direct outreach and fee earner involvement, an area occasionally neglected.

• Define and research the market, who are you targeting – housebuilders for example, or the housebuilding sector?  Scoped thoughtfully, there will rarely be more than 200 companies, often much fewer that are relevant to your specific campaign – a manageable number to target personally. Big budgets buy you fantastic targeting and intelligence platforms. Smaller firms might repurpose the compliance or onboarding database to filter. Geography, sector, work type, index, ownership and regulatory exposure are all great means of segmenting your targets and tailoring your message. 

• AI and Google are also a great start, see below for a prompt example: sub, amend or remove the square brackets where appropriate. 

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Compile a table of UK [housebuilders] [companies that service the housebuilding sector (suppliers, main contractors, sub-contractors, consultancies, and specialists)]. For each company provide: UK revenue (latest FY, GBP); HQ location (town/city); number of UK employees (latest); recent transactions / milestones (last 3 years); areas of focus within housebuilding (e.g., housebuilder, groundworks, roofing, timber frame, M&E, offsite manufacture, aggregate supply, civil engineering); other sectors they operate in; and ownership structure (highlight overseas ownership or private-equity ownership).
Also produce a contactable legal list: named UK legal contact (title), email (only public/corporate addresses), LinkedIn profile link. Finally, list law firms, auditors and banks that have publicly advised the company on recent transactions. Output: Excel (.xlsx) and CSV, with a source URL for every data field, and a confidence score (High/Medium/Low) per cell. Use only public, verifiable sources (Companies House, company accounts, press releases, filings, LinkedIn, reputable press). Mark unavailable data as “N/A” and give the Company House filing reference when applicable. Data current as of XX/XX/202X.

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• Define your expertise, narrow focus works better than broad. I’ve had more success for example with “mid-market carve outs” than with “M&A”.  It’s critical to be able to evidence the expertise – clients might trust you to help with a new problem, prospects will need concrete evidence, case studies are most powerful, and impressive content is the minimum.

• When stretching your addressable market, ensure you’re still credible - if you’ve no demonstrable expertise, engagement will be poor.  Build and evidence credibility beforehand and if you’re late to the private capital/crypto/AI party you might leverage related experience.  

• Any targeting database will be incomplete if you are targeting execs outside of the board. You might need to manually review Linkedin, trade associations, companies house or Google to complete contact names and email addresses if you don’t have access to a lead intell platform. Don’t buy contact lists, build them through research, forms and sign ups.

• Hustle for connections – warm is always better. Nurture referral networks: advisers, alumni, NEDs and leavers can all eliminate the need for a cold approach.

• Keep your personal approach short with a clear benefit, DM me for examples that have worked. Send as many personally as you can, what you lose in measurement you gain in engagement, and you can still link to content that might flag an open. Include a friendly opt out, partners might remove this but BDers should include it for both compliance and air cover.  Consider a request to add them to relevant, infrequent mailings unless they would prefer not, else you’re limiting your engagement opportunities.

• Mix up your outreach channels. Email works best for me, others prefer LinkedIn.

• A great case study with a tangible and commercial outcome is the most effective proactive approach, use the STAR or similar approach to frame the result. Don’t send a legal update or similar as your opening effort, wait for a punchier opportunity.

• Reactive efforts can also work well, with platforms such as Passle making this ever easier. Media reports on fraud, cyber, investigations, consolidation and similar are all issues that generate great reactive opportunities. More mischievously, the media can also highlight challenges to the incumbent team you might exploit.   You may be better placed to support a move into a sector or geography or a shift in strategy which might not favour the incumbent firm. Additionally, big partner moves or awkward press can occasionally be leveraged.

• While single issue campaigns work best, multiple issues can be very effective when you have them. “We have been helping clients with similar issues including X&Y” often increase your conversion rate when all issues resonate.

• Integrated marketing is critical and can happen less than it should when resource is tight.  Forms, direct outreach, referrals, SEO, relevant web copy, classy thought leadership, LinkedIn posts and advertising all combine to increase visibility, capture interest and maximise return on effort.

• Conversely, in person events are occasionally over-indexed as the medium of choice and are often best once you have more traction. Time spent filling a room or table in response to an avoidably low turnout is demotivating, as is a lack of follow up. Remind partners that the event is the start of the BD effort, not the end.

• Webinars are less personal but much less risky and deliver both engagement and follow up opportunities early in a campaign.

• Consider joining forces. Your friends in the other professional services firms are also prospecting. You often make each other’s BD efforts more engaging, and the effort is shared.

• Industry associations and trade journals can accelerate your efforts across speaking and content opportunities. Paying to play can be an effective shortcut when your target list is short – but remember to focus on outcomes, not outputs.

• Measure what you can – engagement, views, clicks, replies, signups.  Do more of what’s working and change what isn’t. Look to fix/update your CRM if it doesn’t deliver adequate analysis across fees, engagement and activity, there are lots that will.

• Focus on efforts alongside results – immediate work is very rare and meeting a new contact is actually a great win.

• Accountability is critical: What does BD own? Did the partners do what they needed to? Being ignored is no fun for partners but a necessary evil so ensure expectations are managed.  Any cold target will be well served by existing advisers, so the reality is 50%+ of their emails will not get a reply. Where that has time or ego implications, access their inbox for an agreed hour to blitz through them.

• Share results and don’t shoot the (BD) messenger. Wins encourage more activity; knock-backs are useful feedback.

And finally...don’t forget clients! It’s very likely the same issues will resonate with current, lapsed and ex-clients.  Have a plan, each partner sends 5 client emails for example. RoE increases and the feedback is priceless whether it might be: thanks for this, call me; you’re a little late to the party; X does this work for us; or indeed silence – which in turn might signal disengagement.