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 focusing on existing clients.

It’s also critical and made a little easier by AI. 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 ten tips that professional services firms can follow to maintain a healthy addressable market.

1. Define and research the market, who are you targeting – for example housebuilders, or the housebuilding sector? 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.

   
   

   AI tools have transformed the speed and access to company research. Geography, sector, work type, index, ownership and regulatory exposure are all great means of segmenting your targets and tailoring your message see below for a prompt example, substitute, amend or remove the square brackets where appropriate. You might find AI saved hours of research.

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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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2. Build on strengths: If stretching your addressable market, ensure you’re still credible. If you’re late to the private capital/crypto/AI party with little direct expertise, engagement will be poor; perhaps look to leverage associated experience. Narrow expertise focus works better than broad – for example I’ve had more success with “mid-market carve outs” than with “M&A”.

3. Content matters: Evidence the expertise – clients might trust you to help with a new issue, prospects will need concrete evidence. Case studies are most powerful, with impressive thought leadership the minimum. Don’t send a legal update or similar as your opening effort, wait for a punchier opportunity.

4. Hustle for connections: Nurture referral networks: advisers, alumni, NEDs and leavers can all eliminate the need for a cold approach. If cold, the targeting database will likely be incomplete if you are targeting execs outside of the main board and you might need to review Linkedin, trade associations, filings or Google to complete contact details. Don’t buy contact lists, build through research, forms and sign ups.

5. Short and sweet. 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 signal 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.

6. Marketing is critical: PR, forms, referrals, SEO, punchy web copy, thought leadership, socials and advertising all combine to increase visibility, reinforce expertise, capture interest and maximise return on effort. In-person events are occasionally over-indexed as the medium of choice and are often best once you have more traction. Webinars are less personal but less risky and deliver both engagement and follow up opportunities early in a campaign.

7. Share the effort. Consider joining forces. Your friends in other professional services firms are also prospecting and you often make each other’s BD efforts more engaging while sharing the effort.

8. Sponsor prudently. 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 focus on outcomes, not outputs.

9. Did it happen, did it work? Accountability is critical: What does BD own? Did the partners do what they needed to? Any cold target will be well served by existing advisers, so the reality is 50%+ of the approaches won’t get a reply. Measure what you can – engagement, views, clicks, replies, signups, then do more of what’s working and change what isn’t. 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 a great win. Share results and don’t shoot the (BD) messenger: wins encourage further effort and knock-backs are useful feedback.

10. 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 advisers that 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. Additionally, big partner moves or awkward press can occasionally be leveraged.

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.