The professional services snapshot

Professional services firms usually run their practice management system well and their sales process on memory. The result is a partner who cannot say where last year's work came from and a proposal that sat unanswered for a month because nobody owned the follow-up.

The configuration below is the smallest set of objects that fixes that without asking anyone to change how they do the actual work.

1. Pipeline stages

• Enquiry received (10%), Fit or conflict check (20%), Consultation booked (40%), Consultation held (55%), Proposal sent (70%), Engagement signed, Declined, Not a fit.
• Two loss stages rather than one. Declined by them and refused by you are different outcomes and mixing them ruins the numbers.

2. Fields and dispositions

• Referral source, as a controlled list rather than free text. Existing client, professional referrer, directory, website, event, other.
• Matter or engagement type, at the level your firm actually reports on.
• Consultation outcome: engaged, thinking, not a fit, referred elsewhere.
• Decline reason: fee, timing, conflict, capacity, not our area.

3. Segments

• Proposals sent more than five days ago with no reply.
• Consultations held with no decision after two weeks.
• Professional referrers with no contact in ninety days.
• Existing clients using only one service line, for the cross-sell conversation.
• Past clients whose matter closed more than a year ago.

4. Cadences

• Enquiry response, three steps over five days, starting immediately.
• Proposal follow-up, four steps over twenty-one days, ending with an easy no.
• Referrer nurture, quarterly, four touches a year, none of them a pitch.
• Cross-sell, two steps, sent only outside your busy season.
• Past client re-engagement, two steps timed to the anniversary of the closed matter.

5. Channels

• The enquiries mailbox connected over IMAP, shared rather than sitting with one person.
• The website enquiry form pointed at the inbound endpoint.
• The consultation booking link connected so bookings become meetings with the source recorded.
• SLA timers on the shared inbox, because an unanswered enquiry is the whole problem in this sector.

6. Knowledge base

• Service lines and what each covers, in the words a client would use.
• Fee structure at the level you are willing to state before a consultation.
• What you do not do, which prevents drafts from promising work you would refuse.
• Jurisdictions or geographies you practise in.

7. Agent policy and access

• Inbox agent in review, drafting acknowledgements and scheduling replies only.
• No matter detail in the knowledge base, so drafts cannot repeat something confidential.
• Access scoped by area, so a fee earner sees their own enquiries rather than the whole firm's.
• MCP tokens scoped the same way and revoked when someone leaves.
• Every tool call in the audit log, which is what makes a confidentiality question answerable rather than debatable.

Keep the boundary explicit: enquiry and scheduling information lives here, and case, matter or client detail lives in your practice management system. That is a configuration decision made once rather than a judgement someone makes under time pressure.

Professional bodies also regulate how firms advertise and solicit, and the rules differ by jurisdiction and profession. Read the ones that apply to you before running outbound. This page is not legal advice.