Agencies Know AI Search Is Coming. Are They Ready for It Themselves
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Professional Services Firms Know AI Search Is Coming. Are They Ready for It Themselves?

In our survey report, Professional Services Firms’ Positioning and AI Search Readiness,  say they’re paying close attention to how AI search works.

60% describe themselves as “very” or “extremely” aware of the emerging standards for AI-mediated search visibility.

That’s an encouraging number. The question is what firms are actually doing with that awareness.

Are Professional Services Firms Optimizing Their Own Sites for AI Search?

Not really, at least not to the degree their awareness would suggest.

Only 11% of firms rate their own website as “very optimized” for AI-mediated search, the kind of search now happening on platforms like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.

The largest group, 63%, land at “somewhat optimized.” Another 20% say their site isn’t optimized at all.

Much like new business development itself, firms know the standards exist, but haven’t gotten around to applying them to their own site.

Why Isn’t Awareness Turning Into Action?

Because clients come first, understandably.

That pattern is familiar to us, and it’s a big part of why RSW/B2B exists.

Firm leadership rarely has the bandwidth to treat their own firm like a client.

Between managing client work, staffing, and running the business day to day, optimizing the firm’s own site for how AI reads it tends to fall to the bottom of the list, even when the awareness is there.

Does AI Search Visibility Actually Matter for New Business?

Yes, and we’re seeing it firsthand.

Several of our most recent conversations with firm leadership started with them finding us through an AI search.

That’s becoming a more common path to getting discovered.

Older, once-reliable sources of new business, like networking and referrals, have been softening industry-wide, while outbound outreach has held steady, and search has been on the rise.

Roughly 20% of firms report new business coming from prospects finding them online.

That’s not an overwhelming share on its own, but it’s moving in one direction while older sources move in the other.

Google has also published its own guidance on optimizing for generative AI search, and the core message lines up with what the broader SEO community has been saying: the fundamentals still matter, because generative AI features on Google Search are built on top of its existing search ranking and quality systems.

Being ready for AI-mediated search largely comes down to doing the SEO fundamentals well, then building on top of them.

What Should Firms Do About Their Own AI Search Readiness?

Start by looking at the site the way an AI system reads it, not the way a person browsing on a laptop does.

A generative engine isn’t scrolling a homepage top to bottom, it’s pulling specific, well-structured answers from wherever they live on the site, whether that’s a services page, a blog post, or an about page.

If your firm’s expertise and positioning are buried in dense paragraphs with no clear structure, there’s less for a system like that to pull from and cite.

The same consistency that matters for a human prospect matters here too.

Over 80% of firms in our survey said their positioning shows up “usually” or “always” across touchpoints like their website, LinkedIn, and proposals.

That consistency should extend to AI search readiness as well, since a generative engine forming an impression of a firm is likely pulling from more than just the homepage.

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Your Firm Thinks It Stands Out. Your Industry Doesn't Agree.
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Your Firm Thinks It Stands Out. Your Industry Doesn’t Agree.

Most professional services firms believe they’ve built a distinct position in their market.

Interestingly, most of those same firms will tell you their industry as a whole looks mostly interchangeable from the outside.

That contradiction showed up clearly in our 2026 survey of engineering, technical, and professional services firms across North America (The State of Professional Services Positioning and AI Search Readiness: What Our 2026 Survey Found).

More than 80% of respondents described their own firm as “somewhat” or “very” differentiated from their competitors, but when asked about their industry as a whole, over 75% called it “somewhat” or “very” undifferentiated.

Which is why so many firm websites, proposals, and capability decks start to blur together after you’ve looked at more than two or three.

Is Positioning in Professional Services Actually as Similar as It Looks?

In our experience working with firms across engineering, technical services, and B2B professional services for over two decades, yes, it is.

Leadership teams tend to be confident their positioning is unique: “We bring deep technical expertise,” “Our senior people stay on the project,” “We understand your industry because we’ve worked in it”.

These statements are typically true, but  they also appear, often word for word, on the websites of firms competing for the same work.

There’s a default vocabulary that professional services firms use, and once a prospect has read it on the fourth or fifth site in a row, it stops acting as a differentiator.

Why Does Positioning End Up Sounding the Same?

Because most of it gets built inside the firm, without being checked against how the market perceives the industry.

Professional Services Firms' Positioning and AI Search ReadinessOur survey found 85% of firms developed their current positioning using only internal staff.

Just 15% brought in outside help to shape it.

Only 20% tested their positioning statements with actual prospects, and 22% tested them with existing clients.

Testing with current clients counts for something, at least that step gets feedback from outside the building.

But that kind of testing tends to bear out the same handful of compliments: responsive, knowledgeable, easy to work with, a strong partner.

Those are good things to hear, and they matter for the relationship, but they’re not useful signals about what sets your firm apart from the next one on a prospect’s list.

What Should Firms Do Instead?

Get specific about what you do best, and say it in a way competitors can’t easily or credibly copy.

The biggest opportunities for small and mid-sized professional services firms rarely come down to raw capability.

Most competitors in a given space can point to solid technical work or a strong project history.

Where firms separate themselves are in the less obvious areas: how they communicate through a project, how they handle the parts of an engagement that don’t show up in a capabilities deck, and whether they can back up their claims with real data and a track record instead of general reassurance.

Specialization doesn’t require narrowing to one single niche either.

A firm can build authority around a broader theme, an industry vertical, a type of project, a regulatory environment, that spans several related sub-markets while still giving the firm a clear, ownable point of view.

It’s also worth remembering that winning doesn’t always mean going after the largest, highest-profile clients.

Plenty of firms build strong, durable books of business by consistently serving mid-sized or regional clients who aren’t chasing headlines.

How Should Firms Actually Test Their Positioning?

Against outside perspective, not internal consensus.

Prospects evaluating firms like yours aren’t comparing your internal sense of what makes you different against each competitor’s internal sense of what makes them different.

They’re looking at websites, proposals, and first impressions side by side, and from that seat, a lot of firms look identical.

It’s not that the people inside don’t know the business, it’s that they know it too well.

That’s part of why we built an AI Brand Compass, a diagnostic we run at the start of every new client engagement.

Paired with two decades of experience working exclusively with professional services and technical firms, it gives us an outside, benchmarked read on how a firm’s positioning lands, before we start representing that firm to prospects.

Firms that aren’t yet working with RSW/B2B can also request this assessment directly. (Contact Mark Sneider, CEO of RSW/B2B here.)

The real test isn’t whether your positioning sounds differntiating to the people who wrote it, but whether it would still sound distinct next to multiple competitors saying almost the same thing.

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The Right Prospecting Stack for Your Stage (Not Everyone Else's)
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The Right Prospecting Stack for Your Stage (Not Everyone Else’s)

Part 4 of a 4-part series for engineering and technical services firm leaders. 

This series pulls from our B2B Prospecting Handbook for Engineering & Technical Services Firms, a working guide for civil, structural, MEP, environmental, industrial, and technical consultancy firm leaders who are running new business work on overtime and want a more predictable way to fill the pipeline. 

Brought to you by RSW/B2B. 

Here’s the first post in the series: Your Outreach Isn’t Working. It’s Probably a Positioning Problem

Here’s the second: Your Prospect List Is Already Out of Date

And here’s the third: One Channel Won’t Get You In. Four Will

The Right Prospecting Stack for Your Stage (Not Everyone Else’s)

A scenario that plays out more often than it should:

A firm principal decides it’s time to get serious about outbound, spends an afternoon researching tools, and signs up for ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a CRM, and two or three other subscriptions.

Six months later, they’re using maybe 20 percent of what they’re paying for, the list hasn’t been cleaned since the day they imported it, and the outreach program they envisioned still isn’t running consistently, or at all.

The problem here isn’t necessarily the tools, but that the tools came before the process, and before any real-world accounting of how much time the firm could actually commit to prospecting every month.

There’s no universal stack of course.

There’s a stack that fits your stage, your budget, and the hours you can realistically put toward it.

Pick that one, commit to it, and invest the difference in clean data and a CRM you’ll keep using.

Let’s talk your options broadly.

Lean Start: Prospecting Tools for Engineering Firms at $0 to $20 Per Month

If you’re testing outbound for the first time, or if budget is tight and you want to prove the model before spending real money, this is your tier.

Google, free LinkedIn, free ChatGPT or Claude, and a Google Sheet can get a prospecting program off the ground.

It won’t be fast, and it won’t scale without effort, but it forces something that bigger budgets sometimes skip: rigorous thinking about your ideal client profile.

When you don’t have a database to lean on, you have to be specific.

  • Who are you actually trying to reach?
  • What types of firms, in what sectors, at what stage of growth?

Free tools make you answer that question before you do anything else, which is a useful discipline.

The tradeoff at this tier is time.

Expect to spend 10 to 20 hours a month or more on list building, research, and outreach management.

That’s a real cost in your time, even if the tools are free.

This tier makes sense when you’re still deciding whether outbound is worth building into the firm’s growth plan.

Once you’ve decided it is, move up.

Committed: $160 to $250 Per Month

This is the right level if you’ve decided outbound is not a side experiment.

The stack here includes LinkedIn Premium, Apollo or Wiza for contact data, ChatGPT Plus for research and copy assistance, ZeroBounce or a comparable email validation tool, and an entry-level CRM.

At this tier, you’re getting verified contact data, which matters more than most firms realize until they’ve sent a batch of emails and watched the bounce rate climb.

You’re also getting a CRM that lets you track touches, set follow-up reminders, and stop running your program out of a spreadsheet.

The time commitment drops to roughly 6 to 10 hours a month because the tools are doing more of the heavy lifting on data sourcing.

That’s a manageable number for most firm principals or a designated business development person.

The key is using the tools you’re paying for.

LinkedIn Premium doesn’t help if you’re not using it to research prospects, nor does Apollo if your ICP is still vague.

The tools don’t replace your process.

The Right Prospecting Stack for Your Stage (Not Everyone Else's)

Gold Standard: $700 to $900 Per Month

This tier is for running a real outbound program with the data coverage and efficiency to match.

The stack includes ZoomInfo plus Wiza for contact sourcing and enrichment, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a full CRM with workflow automation, website visitor tracking so you can see which firms are already looking at you, and ChatGPT Plus alongside Perplexity for research (or whatever AI platform makes the most sense).

The time commitment at this level is 3 to 6 hours a month on active management, but that number assumes someone owns the list, not “sort of owns it” or “checks it when they have time”, but a dedicated list owner who’s cleaning, updating, and segmenting on a regular schedule.

Without that, you’re paying enterprise prices for data that will stale.

The payoff for the investment is measurable: highest data coverage, lowest bounce risk, and the ability to know when a prospect firm is on your website before you’ve made contact.

But this tier only makes sense if the rest of the program, positioning, outreach cadence, and follow-up process, is already in place.

What the Tiers Won’t Tell You About Prospecting Tools for Engineering Firms

A few things are true regardless of which tier you’re in.

Data is never perfect.

ZoomInfo is the most comprehensive B2B database available, and it still has gaps and stale contacts.

Apollo is more affordable and covers a lot of ground, but coverage varies by sector and firm size.

No platform is going to hand you a clean, current, ready-to-send list.

You’re going to find wrong emails, outdated titles, and contacts who left the firm six months ago.

Recleaning matters more than most firms think.

A list that was accurate when you built it isn’t accurate five months later.

Clean every five to six weeks at minimum if you’re actively sending from it.

Your email domain reputation is a firm-wide asset, and bounces damage it.

If too many of your outreach emails bounce, your domain starts landing in spam, and that’s not just a prospecting problem, it affects every email your firm sends, including to existing clients.

Email validation isn’t optional at any tier.

And three things are non-negotiable regardless of what you’re spending:

  1. Email validation before every send
  2. A CRM that you’re keeping current (not a spreadsheet),
  3. An automated follow-up triggers so touches don’t fall through the gaps because someone got busy on a project.

As our RSW List Operations Director put it at RSW Conference 2026:

The two things keeping most firms from building a real prospecting program are time constraints and finding accurate data. The good news is the tools exist to solve both problems. The question is which ones make sense at your stage.

 

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One Channel Won't Get You In. Four Will.
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One Channel Won’t Get You In. Four Will.

Part 3 of a 4-part series for engineering and technical services firm leaders. 

This series pulls from our B2B Prospecting Handbook for Engineering & Technical Services Firms, a working guide for civil, structural, MEP, environmental, industrial, and technical consultancy firm leaders who are running new business work on overtime and want a more predictable way to fill the pipeline. 

Brought to you by RSW/B2B. 

Here’s the first post in the series: Your Outreach Isn’t Working. It’s Probably a Positioning Problem.

And here’s the second: Your Prospect List Is Already Out of Date

One Channel Won’t Get You In. Four Will

Chad Dils, one of our New Business Directors at RSW/B2B, puts it plainly: “There’s just so much saturation. I get twenty to thirty prospecting emails per day, most of them completely irrelevant. People are inundated. Spray and pray doesn’t work.”

If you’re selling into engineering and technical services firms, your prospects are in the same inbox.

The instinct a lot of firms have is to keep pushing on email because it’s fast and scalable, but fast and scalable has made it harder to use as a standalone channel.

The answer isn’t fewer touches. but the same number of touches spread across more surfaces, working in a sequence that builds recognition over time.

That’s what a four-channel model does.

Start Where the Mailbox Isn’t Crowded

Why is physical mail a strong contender? Almost no one’s doing it.

Your prospect’s inboxes are slammed, of course, but their mailbox is pretty much empty.

A well-produced firm overview that arrives on someone’s desk doesn’t get deleted.

Yes, sometimes it gets tossed, but in our experience, it gets picked up, set down, picked up again and/or gets passed to someone else in the room.

Brandon Buttrey, our other RSW/B2B New Business Director, describes a situation that’s stayed with us:

Physical mailers sit on desks. We had a meeting where their leadership team had our overview on the table with a sticky note that read: ‘Partner?’ We hadn’t even made the first call yet.

That’s what happens when you show up in a channel that isn’t saturated.

Mail also gives you something that cold outreach rarely provides: a natural, non-awkward reason to call.

“I wanted to check that the overview we sent reached you” is a legitimate first sentence.

Not a true cold call, but a follow-up, which is a different conversation with a different starting temperature.

RSW/B2B Prospecting Handbook for Engineering and Technical Services Firms

Email Still Works. Just Not the Way Most Firms Use It.

Email is (obviously) overused in the wrong ways.

Two or three short paragraphs to a specific person about a specific thing can still cut through, especially when the person has already seen your name on something physical that landed on their desk, for example.

The discipline here is in the specificity.

Reference a publication they’ve been cited in, a project type their firm is known for, or a challenge that’s particular to their sector.

Always skip attachment on cold sends, because attachments in cold outreach read as bulk.

And vary when you send, since batches that go out at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday read like batches, and people have learned to recognize the pattern.

What you’re not trying to do with email is close anything.

You’re trying to get recognized, and then get a response.

Phone: The First Fifteen Seconds 

A lot of firms that are serious about business development still underinvest in the phone, not because they think it doesn’t work, but because it’s harder to systematize than email and requires a level of preparation that’s easy to skip when you’re also delivering on active projects.

But the phone is where relationships can, and do start.

Email opens the door, but a conversation is where you start to earn trust.

And the first fifteen seconds of that conversation are make or break.

If you don’t have a clear, confident opening that connects to something specific about their firm or their world, you’re going to spend the rest of the call recovering.

Block time for outreach the way you’d block time for a client deliverable.

If it doesn’t have dedicated space on the calendar, it gets squeezed, and squeezed outreach is the kind that feels frantic and performs accordingly.

And do not underestimate voicemails.

A thirty-second message (or less) that references the mailer you sent or a specific trend in their sector is a touch, and those compound.

LinkedIn: The Layer That Keeps You Visible

LinkedIn works best as a warm channel, not a cold one.

If you’re sending connection requests to people you’ve never touched in any other channel, you’re going to get ignored most of the time, because there’s no context and no reason for them to say yes.

But LinkedIn is a different tool when it’s layered on top of the other three channels.

Use it to research before you reach out and engage with their posts in a way that’s genuine and specific.

Send a connection request only when there’s something to anchor it to, whether it’s the mailer you sent, a mutual connection, or something they published that you can reference directly.

What LinkedIn gives you that email and phone can’t is visibility between touches.

It keeps you in their peripheral view in a way that’s low-pressure and non-intrusive.

You want to be the name they recognize when they finally have a need.

But The Channels Are Only as Good as the Message

If you read the first post in this series, you already know where this is going.

Channels carry the message, but the message still has to be specific enough to be relevant.

A four-channel approach built around a vague value proposition is just saturation delivered in more formats.

The engineering and technical services firms that get traction in outreach are the ones that can say, clearly and quickly, who they work with, what they understand about that world, and why that matters to the specific person they’re reaching.

The channels are the delivery mechanism and positioning is the foundation.

The Combination Is the Key

No single channel in this model should work alone.

  1. Mail opens the door.
  2. Email gets read once they recognize the name.
  3. The phone earns the conversation.
  4. LinkedIn keeps you visible between touches.

Pattern recognition is what turns a cold contact into a warm one, and that pattern only exists when all four channels are running together.

Run these channels consistently and commit to them.

Inconsistency is the enemy here.

To be fair, running four channels while you’re also delivering on active projects is the part that tends to break down in practice.

That’s what we do for engineering and technical services firms.

If you want to talk through what that looks like, we’re easy to reach. (lee@rswus.com)

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Your Prospect List Is Already Out of Date 
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Your Prospect List Is Already Out of Date 

Part 2 of a 4-part series for engineering and technical services firm leaders. 

This series pulls from our B2B Prospecting Handbook for Engineering & Technical Services Firms, a working guide for civil, structural, MEP, environmental, industrial, and technical consultancy firm leaders who are running new business work on overtime and want a more predictable way to fill the pipeline. 

Brought to you by RSW/B2B. 

Here’s the first post in the series: Your Outreach Isn’t Working. It’s Probably a Positioning Problem.

Your Prospect List Isn’t a Project. It’s a Program

Most engineering firms hit a wall about six weeks in with their outbound prospecting because their list is already stale.

This happens because data in technical industries changes quickly, with engineering professionals changing jobs frequently and titles shifting.

A prospect database can’t be a project you finish and check off your list, but rather something that requires continuous maintenance to stay useful.

As Ellen Jung put it at our 2026 new business conference: 

Your prospect list is not a one-time project. It’s a long-term system. The firms that win at new business are not the ones with the fanciest tools — they’re the ones with the most consistent execution.

What a working list should look like 

If you’re handling internally, our handbook is specific about this (p. 9): a functioning prospect database should grow by roughly 40 new target companies every five to six weeks, although at RSW/B2B, we build out 100, and should get cleaned on that cycle.

Review the title targeting assumptions every six to twelve months, because what drove outsourcing decisions at an industrial manufacturer two years ago may not be the same role making that call today. 

That cadence sounds manageable until a project deadline hits, and then list maintenance is one of the first things to get pushed.

That’s how firms end up six months into an outbound program working from data that’s aged out. 

Who you’re trying to reach, and where they sit 

The right contact varies by vertical, which is one reason a generic list rarely converts.

The handbook maps this out by sector (p. 8)

At an industrial or heavy manufacturing company, your primary targets are the VP of Engineering, the Director of Manufacturing Engineering, and the COO.

At a medical device firm, you’re more likely working toward the VP of Engineering, a Director of R&D, or a Director of Product Development. 

Secondary contacts, the engineering managers and program managers, are worth including because they’re often more accessible and advocate internally for firms they trust.

The goal isn’t to single-thread an account through one contact, it’s to have a primary and a secondary mapped for every company on your list. 

Three tiers of list-building, depending on where you are 

Not every firm is ready to invest in enterprise data tools, and not every firm needs to be. The handbook lays out three investment levels (p. 9)

If you’re testing outbound for the first time, you can get started with Google, free LinkedIn, and a spreadsheet.

It takes ten to twenty hours a month, and you’ll have data gaps, but it forces disciplined ICP thinking and costs almost nothing. 

If you’re running a consistent program on a managed budget, a combination of LinkedIn Premium, Apollo or Wiza, and an entry-level CRM gets you faster output and better organization for around $160 to $250 a month at six to ten hours of effort. 

If you’re building something predictable at scale, you’re looking at ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Wiza, a CRM, and website visitor tracking, which runs $700 to $900 a month but drops the time requirement to three to six hours once the system is set up. 

The right level depends on your bandwidth and how seriously you intend to run this over the next twelve months.

What doesn’t work is treating list-building as a one-time exercise at any of those tiers. 

The thing most firms skip 

The handbook flags two technical issues that tend to get overlooked (p. 18).

First, email domain reputation: too many bounced emails can push your domain into spam filters, which affects deliverability across your entire firm, not just your outbound sequence.

An inexpensive email validation tool catches dead addresses before they cause that kind of damage.

Second, moving from a spreadsheet to even a basic CRM makes a real difference once your outreach volume starts to grow.

Up next: once the list is right, the message still has to land. 

We’ll get into what outreach actually looks like when it breaks through, and why four channels work better than one. 

If building and maintaining a prospect database isn’t where you want to spend your time, that’s part of  the work we handle in our outsourced business development programs.

Reach out to Lee McKnight Jr. at lee@rswus.com or Mark Sneider at mark@rswus.com. 

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Your Outreach Isn't Working. It's Probably a Positioning Problem
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Your Outreach Isn’t Working. It’s Probably a Positioning Problem

Your Outreach Isn’t Working. It’s Probably a Positioning Problem.

Part 1 of a 4-part series for engineering and technical services firm leaders.

This series pulls from our B2B Prospecting Handbook for Engineering & Technical Services Firms, a working guide for civil, structural, MEP, environmental, industrial, and technical consultancy firm leaders who are running new business work on overtime and want a more predictable way to fill the pipeline.

You can grab the full handbook here.

Over the next five posts, we’ll dig into the sections we think carry the most weight.

Brought to you by RSW/B2B.

We’re an outsourced new business development firm for professional service firms, helping engineering and technical services firms move past referral pipelines and RFP portals to build something more predictable.

We handle the list-building, the multichannel outreach, and the follow-up, so principals can stay focused on delivery instead of trying to wedge BD work into their evenings.

Why Most Firms Blame the Wrong Thing

When you’re a principal at an engineering firm and your outreach keeps falling flat, your first instinct is almost always to blame the channel.

You start wondering if your subject lines need work, if you should be leaning into LinkedIn instead of email, or if it’s finally time to bring in a new BD hire to shake things up.

We’ve watched so many firms run themselves ragged in this exact loop.

They tweak the channel, rewrite the message, change up the timing, and when the conversion rates still don’t budge, they usually just throw their hands up and conclude that outbound marketing doesn’t work for technical services.

Sometimes it is the outbound, but it’s almost always the positioning underneath it.

Here’s how our CEO,  Mark Sneider put it at our 2026 conference:

If your firm is struggling to get traction, chances are you don’t have a capability problem. You have a positioning problem. No matter how strong your technical expertise, if your messaging doesn’t clearly communicate your value or connect with the priorities of the right clients, you’ll get overlooked.

Before you change a single subject line, you need to be able to answer three questions about the people you’re trying to reach and it starts with your ideal client profile (ICP).

The Three Questions Your ICP Needs to Answer

A clear ICP answers three things:

  1. what sector your best clients come from
  2. what the right-fit company looks like, and
  3. who at that company makes the call to bring in an outside engineering firm.

Start With Sector, and Go Narrower Than You Think

Start narrower than you think you should.

Firms that go after ten sectors at once will have a harder time, generally.

Instead, focus on one to three verticals where you have project history, know the language, and can point to actual results, in other words, where you have the right to win.

If you’re not sure where to start, pull up your last ten best-fit projects and look for patterns.

Which industries are most prevalent, which client sizes felt like a natural fit, and which problems did you solve well enough to solve again, that’s where you should be focused.

What the Right-Fit Company Actually Looks Like

Size shapes opportunity: too small and they can’t justify the engagement, too large and you’re buried in procurement processes that can  drag on for a year before you see a purchase order.

The sweet spot we see for engineering and technical services firms sits between 50 and 500 employees, or roughly $20 million to $300 million in annual revenue.

Big enough to have real project budgets and organized engineering functions, small enough that decisions happen at the executive level instead of through a procurement committee.

How Much Does Geography Matter for Your Firm?

It matters more for some service models than others.

If you send teams on-site, geography matters and your reach has limits, if you’re delivering embedded software, simulation work, or analysis, you can work nationally, so decide which one you are before you build your list.

Your Outreach Isn't Working. It's Probably a Positioning Problem

Who Actually Makes the Call to Hire an Outside Firm

Engineering work usually gets scoped at the project level, but the decision to engage an outside firm happens across multiple roles at once.

Knowing who holds which role tells you who to reach first.

At smaller firms, the economic buyer (the president, the COO, or the VP of Engineering) is usually your fastest path.

They’ve got the budget authority and they set the strategic direction.

At larger firms, the functional buyer (the Director of Engineering or the Chief Engineer) is the one who initiates the search and runs the evaluation.

Influencers like engineering managers and program managers are warmer points of entry, and they advocate internally for vendors they
trust.

The takeaway: don’t single-thread an account.

Map the primary decision-maker and a secondary influencer for every target.

Why “On Time and On Budget” Isn’t Differentiation

Once your ICP is clean, the next question is the one your prospects are already asking when your outreach lands: why would I call your firm back instead of the ones I already know?

That answer is your differentiation, and it has to be concrete.

“Collaborative approach” and “On time and on budget” doesn’t cut it.

Those phrases describe every engineering firm, which means they describe none of them.

Your firm stands out when you can point to three uniques backed by evidence:

• A track record of solving a specific, complex technical challenge.
• At least five years of documented project history in a niche sector.
• A specialized capability your competitors lack the team to support.

This is where the work gets harder.

You have to take a clear-eyed look at your project history, your margins, your delivery model, and your team’s actual depth, then translate that into a position competitors can’t easily claim.

A reminder from our positioning framework:

Your positioning must be provable. A firm that claims to specialize in industrial automation needs to show automation project outcomes, not just list automation as a service capability.

Your project history and case studies are your proof of positioning.

If you can’t show examples, the claim won’t hold. If everything is a core capability, nothing is.
~ RSW/B2B positioning framework, 2026

A Quick Test You Can Run This Week

If you want to know whether your current positioning is effective, try this.

Pull your last ten projects.

For each one, write down the sector, the company size, the buying title you sold into, and the technical challenge you solved.

Look at the list, does a pattern jump out? If yes, that pattern is your ICP, whether your website says so or not.

Write it down. Compare it to the way you talk about your firm publicly.

If the two don’t match, you’ve found the gap.

One Thing to Do Before You Send Another Email

The temptation is to keep running outbound while you “work on” positioning in parallel. (Understandable, the pipeline doesn’t fill itself.)

Sending more outreach into a fuzzy ICP doesn’t get you more meetings, though.

But, we’ve also seen firms go into analysis paralysis, and wait far too long.

Do the work now.

Pick the lane you’ve earned the right to win in, name the sector, company size, and title.

Then write the outreach to that person, about that problem, with the proof that says you’ve done it before.

That’s what gets a Director of Engineering to pick up the phone.

Up next: why your prospect list is already out of date, and what to do about it.

If you’d rather spend the week delivering on current projects than reworking your positioning, that’s the work we do.

Reach out to me (Lee McKnight Jr.) at lee@rswus.com or Mark Sneider at mark@rswus.com and we’ll walk through it together.

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Six Months to Close: What Professional Services Firms Should Be Doing in the Meantime
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Six Months to Close: What Professional Services Firms Should Be Doing in the Meantime

You Finally Get the Meeting. Then… Nothing.

It goes well. And then… silence.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

According to our Professional Services New Business Survey, 78% of firms say it takes up to six months to close a deal after the first meeting.

That number is higher than it’s ever been.

Six months is a long window between “great meeting” and “let’s move forward.”

But it’s also a window of opportunity, a chance to reinforce your expertise and stay relevant while your competitors go quiet.

You’re Not Closing in That First Meeting

Many professional services firms assume a strong initial meeting will naturally carry momentum forward on its own.

It won’t, at least not right now.

Prospects are more cautious and dealing with more internal noise than ever.

Why Prospects Go Quiet

It’s not always about interest, sometimes it’s bandwidth or internal delays.

And sometimes it’s just this: you didn’t give them a reason to keep engaging.

What most firms do after a first meeting:

  • Send a proposal and wait
  • Follow up once with a “just checking in” email
  • Effectively disappear, either to avoid being a bother, or because they’re not sure what else to say

What prospects actually need:

  • Relevance

  • Reassurance

  • A signal that you’re thinking about their business

Six Months to Close: What Professional Services Firms Should Be Doing in the Meantime

Keeping the Momentum: How to Stay Top of Mind Without the Pressure

The period between your initial meeting and a signed contract is a critical window. To keep the relationship moving forward without sounding desperate, you need to focus on delivering continuous value.

Here are four practical ways to maintain contact and demonstrate what it is like to partner with your team:

  • Send relevant insights: You don’t need a formal corporate newsletter to stay in touch. Instead, pass along a industry trend, a sharp point of view, or a piece of news that directly impacts their business.

  • Expand on your last conversation: Review your notes from the initial meeting and find a point to build upon. Sending a quick note to say you have been thinking about their specific challenge, along with a potential solution, shows you are already invested in their success.

  • Provide proof of concept: Share a brief example or a case study detailing how you solved a similar problem for a different client. This reinforces your expertise and makes your capabilities tangible.

  • Vary your communication methods: Relying solely on email can quickly become repetitive. Consider changing your approach by connecting on LinkedIn, sending a brief video message, or mailing a traditional handwritten note.

Every interaction during this phase should serve as a preview of your working relationship. By focusing on helpfulness rather than pushing for a sale, you remind the prospect of your value before they ever sign a contract.

The Takeaway

A six-month sales cycle can feel incredibly long, but you must be equipped to handle that timeline, or sometimes an even longer one.

Winning the business requires more than just making a great first impression during your initial presentation.

The firms that succeed are the ones that consistently reappear with meaningful, concise insights.

When a promising conversation suddenly stalls, don’t panic. It simply means you need a structured plan to keep the dialogue alive.

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When a Prospect Goes Silent A Follow-Up Roadmap for Professional Services Firms
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When a Prospect Goes Silent: A Follow-Up Roadmap for Professional Services Firms

For professional services firms, few things in new business development are more maddening than a prospect who simply stops responding, especially after what felt like a productive conversation.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it does seem to be happening more frequently. And it’s particularly disorienting when you walked away from that meeting feeling like you’d built real rapport.

So here’s a practical roadmap, with suggested messaging at each stage, to help you navigate it.

Before We Get to the Schedule: One Thing to Do Before You Leave That Meeting

Set the next touchpoint before you walk out the door.

This sounds obvious, but it gets skipped constantly. At the end of a solid first meeting, when there’s genuine momentum in the room, ask directly for a follow-up date. Something simple works fine:

Really appreciate your time today. It sounds like the timing on this is fairly near-term for you. Would it make sense to put a date on the calendar now to reconnect, just so we stay on track?

You won’t always land a firm commitment, but asking puts a marker down and makes the first follow-up feel expected rather than intrusive.

Why They’ve Gone Quiet (It’s Probably Not What You Think)

Before you start questioning your pitch or your proposal, consider this: most of the time, a silent prospect isn’t a disinterested one.

Your contact is juggling internal approvals, shifting priorities, or something entirely personal that has nothing to do with your firm.

I’ve had situations where I was all but certain I was being ignored, and then the prospect called from a hospital waiting room. (Fortunately, everything turned out fine.)

The silence is frustrating but often temporary.

That said, you do need an answer eventually.

Here’s how to pursue one without burning the relationship or looking desperate.

The Follow-Up Schedule

This assumes no firm follow-up date was set after the meeting, and that the work discussed was described by the prospect as near-term.

When a Prospect Goes Silent A Follow-Up Roadmap for Professional Services Firms

5 Business Days Post-Meeting: Soft Re-Entry

Send an email, not asking about timing or next steps directly.

Instead, find a reason to be in touch that feels natural: something that came up in your conversation (a shared interest, a company announcement, a piece of content relevant to something they mentioned), or a resource from your firm that’s worth sharing.

The goal here is to stay visible without adding pressure.

Hi [Name], saw [relevant item tied to something you discussed]. Thought of our conversation.

Looking forward to staying in touch on potential next steps. I’ll plan to circle back mid-next week, but if there’s a better time, just let me know.

[Your name]

8-9 Business Days Post-Meeting: Phone Call or Voicemail

If there’s been no response, shift channels.

You said you’d follow up in that email, so a call is expected.

If it goes to voicemail, keep it brief and make it easy for them.

Reference something specific from your last conversation and show some flexibility on timing.

Hi [Name], [Your name] at [Firm]. I know you were looking to move forward on [project/initiative] in the near term, so I wanted to check in. If timelines have shifted, totally understand. Just let me know what makes sense. Look forward to talking.

13-14 Business Days Post-Meeting: Direct Email

At this point, light touch has run its course.

Time to be more direct, while still keeping the door open.

Hi [Name],

I want to make sure I stay on your radar without becoming a nuisance. If this project has been pushed back or put on hold, completely understood. An update whenever you get a chance would be helpful.

[Your name]

This is measured, not aggressive and signals you’re paying attention and that your time has value as well.

19-20 Business Days Post-Meeting: The Final Note

If you still haven’t heard anything, it’s time to redirect your energy.

Send a closing email with a gracious tone.

You’re leaving the door open for the future, but you’re moving on.

Hi [Name],

At this point, I’m guessing the project has shifted or circumstances have changed. That’s completely fine.

It was great getting to know you and the team at [Company]. If this comes back around, we’d love to reconnect.

Thanks again for your time.

[Your name]

In most cases, this note will get a response when nothing else did.

People tend to reply when they think the conversation is ending.

If you still hear nothing, accept it and move on.

Continued follow-up at this stage works against you.

Best Practices for Professional Follow-Up

The timing and messaging above will need to flex depending on the situation.

A longer sales cycle, a larger deal, or a more complex decision-making process may mean adjusting the cadence.

Use these as a starting framework, not a rigid script.

The underlying principle, though, stays constant: be persistent, be professional, and don’t let silence make you look desperate.

In professional services, your reputation in a sales process often outlasts the deal itself.

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The Panic Prospecting Trap
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The Panic Prospecting Trap: Why Your Pipeline is Empty

We see way too many professional services firms treat outbound outreach like a spare tire, only pulling it out when they’re already stuck on the side of the road with a flat pipeline.

By the time you realize things are getting “a bit slow,” you’re already three to six months too late.

In our experience, panicked outreach smells like desperation to a prospect, and it rarely results in high-value work.

Here’s the reality: if your business development is driven by financial panic, you don’t have a growth strategy. You have a series of happy accidents.

The High Cost of “Winging It”

Consistency is the hardest part of business development because client work has to come first.

It’s easy to let prospecting slide when you’re billable and the team is at capacity.

But when that major project ends, you’re left starting from zero.

You haven’t nurtured a list, you haven’t tested your messaging, and you have no momentum.

It’s not just luck that keeps the top 5% of firms growing during a downturn, they have built an engine that runs regardless of how busy the delivery team is.

Have an Outbound Game Plan

If you want to stop the feast-or-famine cycle, you need a repeatable process that doesn’t rely on “feeling like” prospecting.

Start with these three non-negotiables:

  • The Daily Minimum: Set a “floor” for outreach that happens every single day, even if it’s just five personalized LinkedIn messages or three follow-up emails.
  • The 90-Minute Block: Block out two 90-minute windows on your weekly calendar specifically for high-level prospecting. Treat this time as sacred as you would a client meeting.
  • A Single Source of Truth: Stop using spreadsheets and “mental notes.” If the activity isn’t logged in a CRM with a clear next step, the outreach didn’t happen.

The Panic Prospecting Trap Why Your Pipeline is Empty

Trust the Process

Take these three questions to your next leadership meeting and if the answers are vague, you have a process problem, not a talent problem.

Who is the single point of accountability for outbound volume each week? (If it’s “everyone,” it’s no one!)

Does our outreach list grow every week, or are we just calling the same twenty “warm” contacts over and over?

If our biggest client left tomorrow, how many qualified leads could we realistically move to a proposal within 30 days?

The Firms That Win Build Momentum Early

Outbound business development is an engine, not a faucet.

You can’t expect it to flow the moment you turn it on if you’ve let the pipes rust for six months.

Success requires leadership to value the process as much as the billable hour.

Consistency is the only thing that creates predictability in a professional services firm.

Remember: do the right things daily and results follow.

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20 Years, 20 Lessons: How a Leap of Faith Built RSW/US
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20 Years, 20 Lessons: How a Leap of Faith Built a Professional Services Growth Firm

I started RSW/US in 2005 with no clients, three young children, and a love of marketing, and sales.

Today we are the #1 outsourced new business firm in the country.

I’ve learned a lot over the years…about running a business, about myself, and about the value of great employees and clients.

Here are 20 insights I’ve gleaned from the past 20 years that might prove of help/value to you.

Thanks to all our clients, our employees, and my family for making this one great ride!

20 Years, 20 Lessons: How a Leap of Faith Built a Professional Services Growth Firm

1. Sometimes you just have to go for it and hope for the best

I believed in this business when I started it 20 years ago.

I had three young kids and figured if it didn’t work out, I could always find my way into another job.

Here I am, 20 years later with a 32, 30, and 27 year “child”. If you believe in it, you have to go for it!

2. Thought leadership built this business before thought leadership was a thing.

I always was and still am a huge proponent of “giving it away”.

If you’re afraid to give away your ideas, no one will see you and you’ll go nowhere.

And if you don’t create valued content, you’ll just look like everyone else.

20 years ago, nobody was doing much of anything in the world of value-added content. We were trailblazers and we didn’t even know it!

3. Good guys may not finish first, but they don’t have to finish last.

I’m a big believer in treating people the same way you’d want to be treated.

And I am not interested in steamrolling my way to the top.

I think employees, clients, and prospects all recognize that. I may not be in first place, but I’m certainly not in last.

4. Sticking true to our values shields us from much of the noise.

We have a very solid set of Core Values that we live by every day at RSW/US.

There’s a lot of garbage out there in the marketplace, and a lot of people that run amuck with over-promises and false claims.

The high-road has always been the best road for us.

5. History repeats. First there was Flat Iron. Today it’s (name your AI platform).

When I first started RSW I felt like I was competing with a bunch of used car salespeople.

Flat Iron, a NY-based firm, hired ex-actors because they sounded good on the phone.

Today, it’s all the same. Still feels like the used car world I encountered in 2005…only difference is it’s not actors, it’s AI.

6. There are definable buckets. personality profile 101 for agency owners.

Over the years, I have seen that while every leadership team is different, personalities often fall into a few familiar categories:

  • High energy and sales engaged

  • Barely paying attention and needing constant reminders

  • Hard-nosed and always questioning

  • Passive and always needing a push

It keeps things interesting and challenging, that’s for sure.

7. Persistence, politeness, and potpourri are the keys to success.

Yelling, telling, and selling doesn’t work these days.

Our people have to be polite, persistent, and they need to use a wide range of platforms to succeed in breaking through to the prospects our clients want to meet with.

It isn’t easy anymore and one-trick ponies (e.g., email-only or LinkedIn-only) aren’t the way to go.

We have to hit prospects in as many places as we can.

8. When the walls go up, the team has to respond.

The world we operate in has changed a lot over the last 20 years.

Back then, you could pick up the phone or send an email and not worry much about filters, blocks, or crowded inboxes.

Investing in the business has been the best way to stay ahead of the curve.

Not being tied to one platform or one tool, and staying flexible, has proven to be the smartest approach.

9. Balance, calm, and a recognition that you can only control so much, brings peace.

Being a small business owner in a changing economy can feel like a constant roller coaster.

If I let everything worry me, I would not last very long.

I will admit that my faith grounds me and keeps me focused. It helps smooth out the bumps and keep things in perspective.

10. Business books can bring value. I wish I wasn’t so proud two decades ago.

I used to think I didn’t need peer groups or outside input.

Looking back, I wish I had opened myself up to more outside perspective earlier.

Today, our team is going through a structured operating system process, and getting out of my own head has been both liberating and energizing for the business.

20 Years, 20 Lessons: How a Leap of Faith Built RSW/US

11. Mentors come in many forms, but you need them

While I never had formal CEO groups early on, I did have business friends who acted as mentors.

Most people who start small businesses face similar challenges. Having someone to talk things through with matters, even if that someone is just one person.

Find that person and use that sounding board.

12. Surrounding yourself with great people makes all the difference

Finding great, loyal talent is not easy. But when you do, it changes everything.

Smart, dedicated, fun, and hardworking people make the workday better and the business stronger.

13. Move faster on tough people decisions

In the early days, I held on to underperformers for too long.

I believe in second chances. But I have learned that if the second chance does not work, the third or fourth probably will not either.

If a change is needed, make the change.

14. Proactive outreach still works, despite what the platforms say

Despite what many claim, proactive outreach still works.

The key is blending calls, emails, and some limited social outreach.

Another key is being polite and persistent, not aggressive.

15. Direct mail still works

We have used direct mail as part of our outreach mix for many years.

It’s still a very effective way to enter a prospect’s world in a less cluttered environment.

We continue to see real meetings come from it, and prospects often remember the piece when we connect with them later.

16. Email can work when it is done well

Email works when it is managed with intention and discipline.

That means smart messaging, reasonable frequency, relevant content, and strong list hygiene.

When email is treated as a system and not a blast tool, it can be a very effective part of business development.

17. The phone is still incredibly powerful

The majority of the meetings we set still come from phone outreach.

When it is used correctly and combined with other channels, the phone remains one of the most direct and effective ways to start real conversations with decision makers.

18. This has been a roller coaster of love

Despite the ups and downs of running RSW/US, I genuinely love the work and the people we do it with.

Our team and our clients are what make all of this worth it.

19. I would not trade it for anything

As much of a risk as it was to start this business, the experience has been incredible.

The freedom, the friendships, the support of my family, and the opportunities along the way have made the last 20 years more rewarding than I ever expected.

20. It is not about reinventing. It is about evolving

Looking ahead, I know we have to keep evolving and staying a step ahead for our employees and our clients.

We do not need to reinvent everything.

We do need to pay close attention to changes in the market and the opportunities they create, and stay ahead of them.

Thanks for 20 great years. Here’s to the next 20.

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