Editorial

September 24, 2026

The Proposal Craft Question That Matters Most: Would This Only Make Sense to Them

A single test cuts through most debates about proposal quality: could this exact paragraph have been sent to a different prospect without anyone noticing.

September 10, 2026

ROI on Business Development Time, Not Just Dollars

For a professional services firm, the scarce resource in business development is usually partner time, not budget. The scorecard should reflect that.

August 24, 2026

Building an AI Use Policy a Firm Will Actually Follow

Many firm AI policies are written once, filed away, and ignored. A shorter, more specific policy is more likely to survive contact with daily practice.

August 12, 2026

What Public Filings Cannot Tell You, and Why That Still Matters

Filings are a strong starting signal, not a complete picture. Knowing the limits keeps a research-driven BD process honest.

July 24, 2026

The Business-Development Habit That Automation Actually Fixes

The biggest problem in most firms' BD is not skill. It is inconsistency. Automation's real contribution is making the boring parts happen every week.

July 12, 2026

What an Agent Should Never Be Allowed to Do Without Asking

A short, practical list of the actions that should always require a named person's sign-off, regardless of how reliable the agent has proven to be.

June 24, 2026

What Changed in Model Capability Over the Last Two Years, and What Did Not

A grounded look back at which improvements actually mattered for BD work, without overselling the pace of change.

June 12, 2026

Efficiency Gains Compound When the Process Is Consistent

A single fast draft is a novelty. A repeatable process that runs every week is where the real gain lives.

May 24, 2026

AI Governance for Firms: A Practical Starting Point, Not a Framework Project

Firms sometimes delay adopting any AI governance because a full framework feels like a large project. A few concrete starting rules cover most of the real risk.

May 12, 2026

What a Firm Should Stop Measuring

Adding a metric is easy. Removing one that no longer earns its place on the scorecard is harder, and just as important.

April 24, 2026

Confidentiality Across Jurisdictions: A Basic Awareness Firms Need

Where an AI vendor's servers and staff are located can matter for confidentiality obligations that vary by jurisdiction and client type.

April 12, 2026

Building a Weekly Filing Scan That Actually Gets Read

Monitoring public filings for BD signal only works if someone actually reads the output every week. A practical structure for making that happen.

March 24, 2026

Personalization at Scale Is a Contradiction Firms Should Stop Chasing

The phrase promises two things that trade off against each other. A more useful goal is personalization at a sustainable pace.

March 12, 2026

Approval Gates: How Many Is Too Many

Too few approval gates and mistakes slip through. Too many and the process collapses back into manual work. Finding the right number.

February 24, 2026

Cost, Quality, and the Budget a Firm Should Actually Set

A framework for thinking about AI spend that ties cost to the value of the task, not to a flat monthly software budget.

February 12, 2026

The Cost of Skipping the Review Step

Every efficiency gain has an equal and opposite risk if the review discipline slips. A short accounting of what goes wrong.

January 24, 2026

Writing to the Decision-Maker, Not to the Committee

Proposals often try to speak to everyone in the room at once and end up persuading no one specifically. A sharper approach names the actual decision-maker.

January 12, 2026

Turning a Scorecard Into a Quarterly Resource Decision

A scorecard that never changes a firm's resource allocation is just a report. Here is how to connect the two.

December 24, 2025

Review Discipline: What It Looks Like When It Is Actually Working

Concrete signs that a firm's AI review process is functioning, versus signs that it has quietly become a rubber stamp.

December 12, 2025

Material Weaknesses in Internal Controls: A BD Signal Hiding in Plain Text

Companies are required to disclose material weaknesses. Few outreach programs actually read for them systematically.

November 24, 2025

Why the Approval Step Is a Feature of Good BD Automation, Not a Bottleneck

Partners sometimes see the approval gate as the thing slowing automation down. It is actually the thing making automation safe to use at all.

November 12, 2025

Human-in-the-Loop Is a Design Choice, Not a Fallback

Keeping a person in the process is often described as a temporary limitation of current AI. It is better understood as a permanent, deliberate design choice.

October 24, 2025

Choosing a Model per Task, Not per Team

Firms often pick one model and apply it to everything. A task-based approach produces better and cheaper results.

October 12, 2025

A Realistic Week: Where AI Assistance Shows Up and Where It Does Not

Walking through a business-development week hour by hour clarifies which parts change and which stay exactly the same.

September 24, 2025

The Proposal Section Everyone Skips and Shouldn't

Scope and assumptions get less attention than the executive summary, and they are usually where disputes originate months later.

September 12, 2025

Response Rate Is a Useful Metric Only With the Right Denominator

A response rate number by itself can mislead. What it is measured against determines whether it is actually informative.

August 24, 2025

Hallucination Risk Is a Known Quantity, Treat It Like One

A model stating something false with full confidence is a well-documented failure mode, not a rare surprise. Firms should plan around it rather than hope around it.

August 12, 2025

Auditor Changes: What They Signal and How to Approach Them

A change of auditor is disclosed publicly and is one of the more direct signals for accounting and advisory firms specifically.

July 24, 2025

The Difference Between Automation and Mass Outreach

Automating business development is often confused with sending more messages faster. The useful version of automation does the opposite.

July 12, 2025

Planning: Why an Agent Breaking Down a Task Is Worth Watching

A capable agent does not jump straight to an answer. It plans first, and that plan is worth a person's attention before the work begins.

June 24, 2025

Context Windows: Why 'It Can Read the Whole Filing' Is Not the Whole Story

A model's ability to take in a large document is necessary but not sufficient. What happens after it reads matters more.

June 12, 2025

Why 'AI Writes It in Seconds' Is the Wrong Metric

Speed of generation is the least useful number in this conversation. Here is the metric that actually predicts whether a firm benefits.

May 24, 2025

Conflict Checks Before the First Draft, Not After the Handshake

Conflict checks are a compliance requirement, but treating them as a business-development step rather than an afterthought avoids a specific, costly mistake.

May 12, 2025

Doing More of What Works Sounds Obvious. Firms Rarely Do It.

The simplest possible strategy improvement is also the most neglected: identify what is working and do more of exactly that.

April 24, 2025

Client Consent Basics for AI-Assisted Work

Using AI tools on client matters raises consent questions that predate AI but are easy to overlook in the rush to adopt new tools.

April 12, 2025

8-K Filings as an Early-Warning System for Business Development

An 8-K reports a material event within days of it happening. That speed makes it one of the most timely BD signals available.

March 24, 2025

One-of-One Is Not a Slogan, It Is a Process Requirement

Calling every proposal one-of-one means something specific about the process that produces it, not just a marketing claim.

March 12, 2025

Tools Are What Make an Agent Useful, Not the Model Alone

An agent's model does the reasoning, but its tools determine what it can actually do in the world. A short explanation of why that distinction matters.

February 24, 2025

What a 'Reasoning Model' Actually Changes

Reasoning-oriented models handle multi-step problems differently from earlier general-purpose models. Here is what that means in practice for a firm.

February 12, 2025

The Research Bottleneck Before AI, and What Replaced It

Before a partner can pitch anyone, someone has to build the profile. Here is what that step looked like, and what changed.

January 24, 2025

What a CFO Is Actually Reading a Proposal For

A proposal written to impress rarely matches what the person deciding actually needs to see. A short guide to the CFO's real checklist.

January 12, 2025

A Marketing Scorecard a Partner Will Actually Read

Most marketing reports are too long to read and too vague to act on. A scorecard built for a busy partner looks different.

December 24, 2024

Data Ownership: The Question to Ask Before Adopting Any AI Tool

Where does a firm's client data go once it is used with an AI tool, and who can see or reuse it? A basic checklist before signing anything.

December 12, 2024

Reading a 10-K for Business-Development Signal, Not Just Compliance

A 10-K is written for regulators and investors. Read differently, it is also one of the best free sources of BD leads a firm has.

November 24, 2024

Why Templates Lose in Business Development

A templated outreach note is efficient to produce and inefficient at getting a reply. Here is why the math works against templates.

November 12, 2024

Agent or Chatbot: The Difference That Actually Matters

The word 'agentic' gets used loosely. Here is the concrete distinction between a chatbot answering questions and an agent doing a job.

October 24, 2024

Large Models, Small Models: A Practical Distinction for Firms

The size of a model changes what it is good for. A short guide to matching the tool to the task instead of using one model for everything.

October 12, 2024

What AI Actually Saves a Professional Services Firm

A plain accounting of where AI genuinely cuts hours in a CPA, advisory, or law practice, and where it does not.