Professional services client acquisition: meetings with the accounts you want to win

Referrals bring good clients, but they bring them at random. You don't choose the sector, the size or the timing. A firm that wants to grow a practice area, enter a new region or move up to larger clients needs conversations with companies it picked, not only with the ones that happened to be introduced.

There's also a concentration problem. When most new work comes through a few partners' networks, the pipeline depends on those partners' time and relationships. When they're busy with client work, new business stops. Account-based outreach spreads that load and turns new business into something the firm runs, rather than something that happens to it.

Start with a short list, not a market. Look at your best current clients and ask what they had in common before they hired you: sector, size, ownership, the moment that made them need you. Then find more companies like them, and sort them.

• First tier: a short list of named accounts you'd most like to win, each researched in depth.
• Second tier: a wider group that fits the profile, approached personally but with lighter research.
• Out: companies you don't want, such as conflicts of interest, sectors you don't serve or work too small for your rates.

Then watch for the moments a company is most likely to need a new adviser.

In professional services the buyer is usually senior, and the decision is often shared. A CFO may choose the audit firm together with the audit committee. A general counsel picks outside counsel but answers to the CEO. An IT director may need sign-off from finance.

Reach the person who owns the problem first, and widen from there. On LinkedIn, Sales Navigator lets you search by function and seniority inside an account list, so you can map the few people who matter at each target company. For people who rarely use LinkedIn, the business email address is often the better door. See finding business emails and phone numbers and InMail or connection request.

Professional buyers are wary of being sold to, and rightly so. The first message should read like a note from a knowledgeable peer: something specific about their situation, a relevant point from your experience, and an easy question.

Professional services work rarely comes from a single conversation. A company may be happy with its current firm today and open to a change next year. Treat each target account as a long relationship, not a campaign.

• Keep one record per account, with every conversation and every person you've spoken to.
• Follow up when something changes at the account, not on a fixed timer: a new leader, a deal, a regulation.
• Share useful thinking regularly, so the account sees your name between conversations.
• Turn engagement into conversations: people at target accounts who comment on your partners' posts are warm leads.

When an account says not now, ask when, note it and come back then. Being remembered as the firm that was useful and patient counts for a lot on the day the incumbent slips. For the broader outbound playbook, see how to get more B2B clients.

A first meeting with a target account deserves real preparation, because there may not be a second one if it goes badly.

1. 1Send the invite straight away, with a short agenda in the prospect's terms.
2. 2Remind them before the meeting, from the same conversation they've been having with you.
3. 3Give the partner a brief: why the account was chosen, what was said, what the prospect asked about.
4. 4Follow up the same day with a short summary and a proposed next step.
5. 5If the meeting is missed, rebook it without making the prospect feel bad about it.