Marketing in Business Development: How to Actually Drive Revenue

Tracy Kapteyn: There are a lot of People that work in marketing, but they have no concept of the reality — the feet on the street.

I spent a lot of time on the street in the trenches. if you will, with clients. And so when I went to marketing, I immediately had an understanding.

Neil Barrow: Welcome to I Hope This Email Finds You Well, A business development podcast for professional service firms. I'm your host, Neil Barrow. I'm the founder of EnabledBD, a business development consulting firm, and UndergroundBD, a community for business development professionals. I'm joined today by Tracy Kapteyn, the chief growth Officer at Duffy Kruspodin.

She spent 25 plus years helping businesses across industries get out of the weeds, connect the dots, spot real growth opportunities, and turn ideas into action. These days, she's bringing AI into that work and practical ways to help move things forward. Tracy, thank you for joining me today.

Tracy Kapteyn: Hi, Neil, Nice to be here.

Neil Barrow: Yes, awesome. Well, I can't wait to get in to the all the great stuff that you're working on at Duffy. But we're going to get into the combo meal, which is our new segment to kind of bring some of those takes around business development and growth to the forefront of the conversation. And so you'd sent me these.

And so I just want to read them and then we'll kind of go back and forth. three ideas in five minutes. And the first item on the menu is the basics. So what do you mean by just BD basics?

Tracy Kapteyn: Like when you think of when you asked me about the combo meal and you want to think about what's hot or what's new. But some things are foundational and maybe aren't necessarily hot and new. And so the basics are you can't grow what you can't see, right? And so it's tracking your.

Leads its visibility. And seeing those leads, it's your pipeline. Like, if you don't, if you can't see that, how do you know? What to grow?

Or where you are growing.

Neil Barrow: Yeah. That's a great point. And I, and it kind of resonates with me because I'm a, I'm a back to basics kind of guy, like call your clients, manage your relationships that you already have before you chase new ones, right? When I, when firms come to me and they ask me, hey, Neil, we need more leads.

Like can you help us get more leads? I'm like, well, how many do you currently have? How many are coming in? And most can't answer that.

And so I love your BD basics and I want to talk to you about how you've helped your firm with some of the basics a little bit later. OK, second menu item, you can't scale growth alone. Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that.

Tracy Kapteyn: Well, you can't do it alone. It needs a team and it's not about building a team necessarily. It's about different areas of the organization or different people in different positions working together. And so I'll.

Give you 2 specific. Examples one is marketing and. Sales or BD if. You if you want.

To call it that is. When they're working in silos, you know you can get some things done, but when they work together, it really elevates results. Typically. So that's one.

The other is internally amongst team members and so. For sales and BD people. To know when to bring in a specialist, don't sit at the table alone if you can't answer all the questions, because when you have the expert and the support, you can move things forward. And so in professional services, an example of that is partners tend to want to do it all themselves.

But now I heard of this term called call the gang in the industry. And it's and I've seen it work where one partner brings in another partner or another that has specialty in different areas. And you can get a lot more accomplished in a meeting with a client and identify more opportunities when you can do. That together.

Neil Barrow: Yeah. No, I think you bring up two really good points. It's how is our growth team structured, right, to provide maximum value to the firm. And then also business development is a team sport.

So even if you have business developers out there, they're still going to need the subject matter experts, the partners, the technicians, the people that are doing the work, doing the deliverables for the client. They're still going to need to have them in the process somewhere. And what is appropriate timing to bring in those people, right? And so like it's thinking through some of those, but it's first, it's acknowledging that it is a team sport ultimately.

So I love that. Third, AI is the Super size. So everybody wants to talk about AI. So tell me a little bit about your perspective on AI.

Tracy Kapteyn: It's like I say it super sizes because. When I look at enablement for example. Is there's a lot of. Different things you can do with AI today and when you look.

Across sales across. All industries there's a number of initiatives or activities or applications of the if you want to call it the technology, but I'm most. Excited about how it's, I said. I use the term.

Combo meal super size because I really do believe if you do it right. Then you're going to elevate enablement, which is really going to. Progress or if you're the successful BD. Person is just going to take it to another level, but it's also going to allow us.

To spread. It more across the firm and so I'll talk more probably through this conversation about a prospecting agent for example.

Neil Barrow: Wow, prospecting agent. OK, well I'm excited to talk about that because I get asked all the time like Neil, like tell me the AI tools that I should use for BD. And I'm like, what I would do if I were you is just use it for the basics, which is better Pre call planning, like helping identify opportunities, right? It's like, how are things connected in our system already to source things to the surface, like data, like different data, CRM, billing, whatever it is, right?

But how do we use that to source information about the people that we're going to be talking to about our relationships? And so AI for prospecting. I'm, I'm very interested in that. OK, So thank you for sharing those.

I can't wait to dive a little deeper into those 3 subjects. But let's back up a little bit. Tell me about, you know, your career before Duffy, like maybe before you got into professional services. What did that look like?

Because you haven't been in professional services your entire career, have you?

Tracy Kapteyn: No. Just the last few years.

Neil Barrow: Just the last few years. OK, cool. So tell me a little bit about what you were doing before you jumped into professional services.

Tracy Kapteyn: OK. So if the a number of industries I've worked in a number of industries and when I look at my career really I kind of went back and forth from sales to marketing, some hybrid roles and that's how it kind of got me to growth today. And so, you know, I grew up, I started in customer service and for people and then move to sales and then to marketing and that's. Kind of how I started.

Neil Barrow: Most people, I would say, don't necessarily go from sales to marketing. They usually go from marketing to sales if they're going to make that move. And so your transition was really interesting because I've never had that perspective. You know, I'm a dumb sales guy, and so I've never had that marketing perspective.

And so I've had to learn from people, right, that are doing it. And so tell me a little bit about maybe what you were doing and what you learned about how marketing and sales and even customer service, how that all works together.

Tracy Kapteyn: OK, the you know, there's one thing that's stuck with me over the years, and it's this concept. Of the ivory tower. And so when I left. Sales years ago.

And jumped into marketing is somebody said to me, oh, you're going to the ivory tower. And I was like the ivory tower and I had to look it up. Maybe I Googled it at the time, but it's this concept of. There are a lot of.

People that work in marketing, maybe some of those. That you described that started there, but they have they. Have no concept. Of the reality, the.

Feet on the street and so where I'm really happy the way. I did it because I. Spent a lot of time on the street in the trenches. If you will, right?

With clients. And so when I went to marketing, I immediately had an understanding and I think that's also what helped me over the years. I've always had a really good. For the most part, working relationship with sales.

We're in sales and had that concept of the conversations like what our prospects are needing, what our clients are needing, what problems we're solving, why they hired us, what they're buying, what they're needing. And then you're able to translate that into marketing.

Neil Barrow: And so you went from maybe 1 to one in sales to like now you're 1 to many and how you attract those people. So what did that look like? I'm just curious.

Tracy Kapteyn: I mean, marketing is broader, marketing can be more strategic. The, you know, digital marketing has really. Evolved like there's. There's a lot of things going on, right?

But the thing today that why I love marketing is all of the data-driven decisions, but how that also enables sales most of the marketing all. I do today is to drive growth, so. You want to grow the brand, but that's secondary for me. I'm looking when we're going to invest time in a campaign or go to an event is I'm looking for leads, I'm looking to and I'm looking for ROI.

Neil Barrow: OK. No. And I love that perspective. And so now like now we're at the firm.

And so how long have you been at your firm?

Tracy Kapteyn: Almost a year. I worked with them consulting before that, but yeah, so say a year and a half.

Neil Barrow: OK, a year and a half. And so tell me, tell me why did they, so you worked with them at a fractional capacity, right. So why did they say, OK, we're ready full time? Like what were some of the things that you did maybe as a fractional or the things that you were working on?

Because I think that's one of the things that's challenging is for leadership to get aligned on what they actually need. Yes.

Neil Barrow: And so how did you help? Like what were you doing initially? Like what were some of their pain points or opportunities that they felt like that they needed somebody to help them with?

Tracy Kapteyn: When I initially joined, helping them do some fractional. Work. It was a couple of specific. Projects One was to transform marketing.

Neil Barrow: OK, what does that? Mean it's move,

Tracy Kapteyn: it's kind of bringing for me, it's bringing it forward to like, I don't like to use the word modernize and not all groups are the same. But you know, yes, you can go to an event, yes, you can network, right, you can do those things. But for me that's more traditional marketing or what marketing crossed over with BD right, 10 years. Ago or more Today it's.

Like when you think about what's happening digitally, like why wouldn't we do things where we can track it? For example, on the sales and BD front, the my, what I've been focusing on more is visibility and enablement.

Neil Barrow: Yeah. And we talked about that a little bit today, but visibility is, you know, for the first time ever, the firm has a pipeline. Yeah, basics. Back to what you.

Tracy Kapteyn: Were talking about yes. So we can see what's in the pipeline. And so one of the challenges though is getting because it represents change, right? And it's.

New is. Getting others to embrace that. Let's just call it a process, right? Let for now it's just let marketing know like we'll manage it we'll.

Track it well.

Neil Barrow: That's what I was going to ask is like how did like so how did you structurally set that up to get pipeline like obviously you can, you can see inbound, right. But like when they get referrals which is the majority of our channels right, of where our business comes from at professional service firms, how are you getting them to report to you? What did that structure look like?

Tracy Kapteyn: It's, I mean, it's still a little manual, sure. It starts with a spreadsheet.

Neil Barrow: As all good things do.

Tracy Kapteyn: Yes, and I've done that a number of times over my career. Over my career is the pipeline tracking your leads and your opportunities. But it's not new right to. Do it on a spreadsheet first.

And then when you have a platform or a CRM, right then you can easily import it. But anyways. It's the it's. Tracking that and.

So to get the data. It's a manual. Process right is we have. Online forms to try and make it easy.

You know there's a It's surprise, not surprising. But the there's a whole. Bunch of calls they come into accounting firms today and if you're if you don't have a process or a mechanism set. Up to track that.

How do you know right and? So there's there's a process. With the admins that take the calls and how we track that on the opportunity side, I mean it's all. Together right is.

A few months ago I started sending out a weekly reminder email on Tuesday. Basically, don't forget you got new leads, you got new deals. Send it to us so we can track it. And just the other day somebody was saying your reminders are useful, right?

And so are we capturing everything? No on the. Referral side as well. We're starting to track.

Who? Is giving the referrals because that was one for me that was really interesting coming into the industry was learning about and it makes sense, right, the human. Referrals, that's where the. Business comes from that was really interesting for me because every time I ask the question, well, how much?

Like you had said earlier. Nobody knows the answer and so we're starting to track it. The firm is starting to. See the visibility.

But there's still, you know what, we still. Have a lot of. Work to do because and I keep saying the firm because that's the change also that I bring is a firm approach not just a partner that. Approach right like it's.

It's in their heads, it's in their inbox, but we need to like pull it out of there and bring it up to the company level.

Neil Barrow: Yeah, I totally agree. I think one of the challenges you know as I talk about business development really it's how are we enabling our people to go generate and execute effective conversation like boiling it down, right. But part of the change when you look at BD just in general is like inbound management, which includes centralization, qualification, pipeline management. And that's really difficult change because that's not, that's not how we're used to operating as professional services where I get a referral as a partner, I just take care of it and I can take care of it in my own way, right?

And we just assume that everybody's really good. I've never met a partner that said I'm not good in front of clients, right? I've said, I've heard them say I'm great in front of clients, get me more meetings, right? Which I think is, but we need to back up and say, OK, well, where is our business coming from?

Most firms are not tracking referrals and referral sources and where it's coming from. And those are hard changes to make, but they're the most impactful because if we can say, hey, 80 percent of our referrals are coming from these 12 organizations, like, OK, we know where to spend our time.

Tracy Kapteyn: Exactly. And that's why I think we're obviously on the same page here, right, Because. That's what the data or the? Tracking or knowing where your referral business is coming from.

If you don't know that, how do you know where to double down?

Neil Barrow: Yeah. Right, and it's all about doubling down. Yeah, exactly.

Neil Barrow: It's I don't need to chase a bunch of different stuff. I need to double down on a couple of things that are already working right. And so you can do this at the firm level, but it's also important at an individual level, like their own book and their own practice or their own service line or the industry group or whatever that is. And so you can slice and dice it how you need to.

But the first step is what you're doing, which is just collecting. How do we get the information? And as you can see, there is no, you know, talking to y'all. There is no silver bullet tool like I've got to get somebody to put in something somewhere.

Tracy Kapteyn: Exactly. And even if I had a tool that pulled it all together, I would still have to have somebody go check it and edit it and manage it.

Neil Barrow: And so it is a change that we're trying to make for behavior. And we've got to get those folks to have the reps at it. Like I got to get you to go do a, a set of this to get the muscle memory that you need to then where it becomes integrated into how we do business. And that's challenging.

And so you're on your way to doing that. So you're kind of building the basics. So I understand why you shared that as one of your menu items, right? Is like, hey, we got to get back to basics.

So tell me a couple of things that you're working on today that you're that you're excited about, right?

Tracy Kapteyn: 11 initiative I'm working on right now is the you know you have, you have a handful of service line leaders, everybody wants to talk to the partner, right, Everybody wants to get at the partners clients. Well, that's not sustainable to have 1234 and more. As we go forward. Trying to book meetings with the partner to talk about their clients.

And so you talked about centralization. And so one of the things that I've done is we're investing the time upfront to go through client lists with partners for me this. Is the basics it's. Account planning really, right.

And so it's, it's just kind of going through The Client List, having them intentionally, even if it's for two minutes, think about their client and just ask the question, do you think there's an opportunity for this? Service or this service? And so from those like 30 minute conversations, I created a pipeline. And when we have a pipeline, then the service line leaders can, you know, we're kind of opening it up to teach the firm that the partners aren't the only ones, you know, we got to do.

The three-by-three-by-three thing with clients and relationships well.

Neil Barrow: Explain that for people that might not know that.

Tracy Kapteyn: So it's the. It's just going deeper really with clients and so you want to have three relationships between the firm and the client at its. Basic level. That's really what it is.

And you know, if the partner or a senior manager is the only one with the relationship, if that senior manager leaves the firm, 9 times out of 10, the clients end up going with them. And so it's kind of it's about deeper relationships and stickiness, really retention.

Neil Barrow: And so, well, what you're describing is one of the first things that I help firms do, which is like tearing your clients, right? Like I need, I need to know who are slam dunks, Who would we clone, right? Who are good clients that might not, we're not sure, but we like them, right? But they're not necessarily our highest revenue in our, in our personal book.

They're not necessarily, we're not necessarily doing our best work, right. We could be doing more for them. And then we all have the Tier 3 which need to be moved down to managers or out of the firm. And those are challenging conversations because we need, because I don't want to hear we don't have capacity whenever we have $500 ten 40s that we're doing right.

So what? So what can we do to help them understand what their book looks like through a relationship lens rather than just a deliverable work to do lens? And so like what you're providing them was with that context and centered around cross selling really, but it's also retention. And so one of the one of my favorite questions that when we work on a project like this and we're like building the activity plan for our tier ones, right?

And that's not going to be more than 5 to 1012 companies people. And I love your three by three by three analogy or the system that you're, you're referencing, because I think it's important to think about it in those metrics of retention opportunities and then relationship ultimately. And so whenever I think about the relationship piece. I'm reflecting on our best clients and my question is do we know what their business priorities are for this year?

Tracy Kapteyn: Do we? Exactly.

Neil Barrow: And the answer is no, we do not. Most of the time, that's the answer, yes.

Tracy Kapteyn: Almost all the. Time.

Neil Barrow: Almost all the time. And that's not a knock on anybody, but what that is, it's like I've never thought to understand that or ask that question really truly to my clients. And so if I can do that, then that creates some of the opportunities that you're talking about, right? And so can we bring in other people in this meeting?

Can we talk about different things that are going on with your business? And so I love that you're taking that kind of basics approach right to that.

Tracy Kapteyn: Yeah, like it seems, I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, right? And it's it's kind of funny how much time we can spend on the. Basics still today, but it's so key to. Being able to scale and grow and so.

The that exercise. That I just kind of talked about the reason why. I brought it up was because this is where AI super sizes. Things.

Neil Barrow: OK, tell me.

Tracy Kapteyn: Because the partner knows their client right and you can't. One day we'll get there right where they. Sit down and they do their account plan. It's like I would have done or you would have done years ago, right with our clients and identified the opportunities for the year.

But the I've. Created an agent that I call a client. Discovery agent and so it's. Not, I mean, it's not the bullseye just yet, but the reality.

Is if you know the business, so. It's more B to B. But when you know business names, industries and entities that you can let's just say the client discovery agent basically is you enter the list of companies and it's. Built to look.

For, you know, look out in the market, look at the companies, see if there's any history there, but essentially identify potential opportunities that might exist around advisory services, accounting, HR, IT. Wealth management. Estate planning and so having a tool like that in place helps service line leaders even if it's just kind of high level better understand the client situation, know where maybe more. To prioritize their efforts.

Ask the partner a couple of pointed questions, but it allows them to move forward with the client. A little quicker to towards. Opportunity.

Neil Barrow: No, I love that. I think, I think there's a lot of tools that are coming out that are helpful and kind of surfacing that information for the partners to use and utilize. You know, I think about our friends at Propense or Intapp or like these softwares that are out there. And then I also think about just the innate tools that we have with AI meeting recorders right there, like Vinyl and Navi and like specialty accounting ones.

And then also just fathom and all the other, all the other just generic note takers, but then using that with AI, right, like Claude or chat or Copilot, right? And so how did you think about building that for them? The challenges is OK, we can build this thing that's going to help you, but I need you to use it and that's a problem. Sometimes it's getting people to use the thing that you built.

So tell me a little bit about what like how you built it and then what are you?

Tracy Kapteyn: So in this particular use case, the partner's, not the user, the service line leader.

Neil Barrow: Is service line leader.

Tracy Kapteyn: It's the person that wants the partner's time to learn more about their client.

Neil Barrow: I see. It's oh, it's an internal, it's an internal mechanism tool back to your cross selling opportunities. Interesting. OK.

Tracy Kapteyn: And so it's to instead of them, they're instead of. If it was a BD. Person or a salesperson, same thing right is instead of trying to schedule time with the partner to have a 30 minute conversation about a client and ask a bunch of questions is we can make some assumptions about these businesses, right, based on the industry they're in, based on their size, based on their annual revenue and so. It's really at that level.

Because, again, it's not finite, and it's still always going to be better when you can. You had talked. About right, what the partner knows about the client and their situation and their challenges this year, those questions still. Have to be asked though, and so it's really just.

It's enabling that, it's enabling other members of the team. To take a step. Forward and have a conversation with the client and open the door and start there instead of having to always go through the partner. Keep them in the.

Loop, but that's, so it's. Kind of that team approach.

Neil Barrow: OK. So tell me, I want to, I want to ask a question around that. So are is kind of the structure process that you're building in the hopes of where a service line leader, let's just say a CAS leader can do the research internally notify the tax partner who's his client and then that service line leader is reaching out to that client. Is that what I'm hearing?

Tracy Kapteyn: That's what I envision.

Neil Barrow: OK, well I can't wait to hear how that goes because I find that it's very challenging. Like that's why cross selling is a challenge is because our people rightfully so, like there's ego involved. Like this is my relationship and hey, I don't want you calling this client because they know what we do and if they needed us, they would call us, which we know is not true. Like that is not the truth because they have that client has other CPA firms calling them, has other BD firm, they have other relationships in their network and it's, it's they don't know.

And so that's one of the common challenges that I see whenever we do a client survey or something like that is I didn't know you did that right. And so I love this opportunity, if you can create this kind of team approach and it's centered around well researched information that we can then feel more comfortable about taking that mindset of, hey, we want to solve problems for our clients and we want to remove the friction to doing so.

Tracy Kapteyn: And don't get me wrong, I know it's not going to happen overnight. I mean, I've been, I know they're going to hold their clients close to their chest. But it's just, I mean, I've done it before in other industries in a different capacity, you know, when you move to centralization and pull stuff away from sales. But that's where trust and relationships and we.

We have a couple of successes.

Neil Barrow: Initially, that's great.

Tracy Kapteyn: The one thing I can tell you though, that last. Year we started by. Looking at our top 20 clients right and so. We very purposely.

Scheduled a number of meetings and brought the groups so the managers and the partners on the clients were invited. All the service line leaders sat at the table and all we. Did was ask? The partner and the manager.

To. Talk about their client and I might have. Like led the facilitated the. Conversation with a few questions.

And so that was one way of identifying potential opportunities right for the service line leaders then to they were following up with the partners though at the time not the client. And so that was one way to. Start it but that. We'd still be doing that like next year if we continue to take that approach.

And so I do look forward to telling you more. About how this goes.

Neil Barrow: It's a super exciting initiative and I like how you're using some of the tools to make it easier, but also helping facilitate that conversation and teamwork. And it's more firm like you were saying, like how do we help? How are we taking a firm approach rather than an individual approach. What I think is really cool what you're working on.

So tell us a little bit about, OK, so you're working on that project. Is there anything else that you're working on that you're pretty excited about for this year?

Tracy Kapteyn: So there's two things this year that I'm excited about. So one is hitting our numbers. We have. Some pretty assertive targets.

Neil Barrow: OK, are y'all independent? Yes.

Neil Barrow: OK, cool.

Tracy Kapteyn: Yeah. And so we have some pretty assertive growth goals.

And so I'm really excited about hitting those and. How we hit those is. Some of the things that we kind of talked about today is because we have a number of plans, initiatives, so. Let me use baseball, Sure.

So I like to use. Baseball analogies and so Do you know what a spray chart is?

Neil Barrow: Yes, OK, So I actually used to coach boys baseball, so that's. Why I know what a?

Tracy Kapteyn: Spray chart is. But anyways is you know since I joined the firm and if you talk. Over the last 6 to. 12 months right is I think.

Of a spray chart is because. I've been hitting. A lot of balls, right? We've been watching.

Where the balls go right? So and that's the initiatives that we're trying and this. Year I just see right is the ball is. Like, we got to make the play.

To hit the targets if you will, right? And so last year I was, you know, hitting a lot. Of balls. This year I can see how we're starting to make the plays right.

Like you use the word facilitator, I use the. Word orchestrator sometimes is but, and that's where I say enablement is, I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for the partners ultimately to do what they need to do. And so whether it's the pipeline leaders in the client discovery agent and helping the firm. Like just create the.

Pipeline, so we have something to go after, right? And so then you got a portion of the team like working on that. Play, if you will, right?

Neil Barrow: And I love that. And I think what you're describing when we talk about enablement, we're trying to reduce the friction to action. Yes. For our people.

And so when we look at probably the biggest disconnect that I see and maybe you're hearing it and I want to, you know, maybe key in on that. But whenever we talk about business development activities like I need them to go and do BD activities, but they might not necessarily know what BD activities to do or they might have not. Might most of us have a the concept of what BD actually or what we think BD is, which is going to happy hours talking to people we don't know and we'll never talk to again and wasting our time versus calling our clients manage like looking at who sent us referrals and just creating a small group, right. There's there's initiatives that we can take writing a piece of content, right?

So there's ultimate, there's ultimately things that you can do, but it's like, how are we helping enable them to select right. And I look at it like, Hey, here's the menu. Like you get to, you get to choose your own adventure. But we've created guard rails around what good looks like.

Because you've done the work with the spray chart, we know where we need to spend our time. Yeah, exactly.

Neil Barrow: I love it. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for joining. This was an awesome conversation. I loved how we kind of talked about my soapbox a little bit, which is the basics like let's get back to bases like centralized inbound, let's and I love the story about the initiative you're working on with cross selling and the client development agent.

Like I think that's going to become more and more expanded at firms across the country. I think that's where everything's moving towards is how do we surface information to remove friction. And so I love those things and it's a team sport, which is, that's what you're trying to create like from a remove, not necessarily removing it. It's always going to be partner based, individual based, but how are we thinking more as a firm rather than individual book of business owners or practices, right.

And so do you have any final thoughts for us before we wrap up?

Tracy Kapteyn: I am going to. Talk about AI and. Because I do play in that sandbox a lot and so I look forward to some updates. But prospecting agent is what?

I call it today. It's not going to be that. Tomorrow. You know there are.

Different providers out there that. Can do it, but why wouldn't we do it ourselves? Do I need to do it in HubSpot? No.

Can I build something and Copilot that makes it more immediate and accessible to others within the firm? Yes, but I'm really excited. I'm more excited about that is you talked about information, I heard it on a. Podcast the other day is a lot of people use AI for chat.

But what I'm talking about, though, is going beyond. Chat because. That's when the game changes and so. That's where I get really excited about AI.

I've. You know, I've done a number of things in marketing and I'm starting to spend a little bit more time on the sales side. And I really think that there's some things that we're going to do that are going to make it easier for partners to use what we give them to ultimately, I don't know, close more deals, grow the firm, you know, identify organizations, other firms. To merge with or acquire.

But yeah, I'm, I'm really. Excited about that?

Neil Barrow: So where are you playing around with it? So obviously that's an initiative you're looking at. So like what? What are some of the things that you've found or learned or focused on, like when you think about building something like that or looking at other tools?

Tracy Kapteyn: Yeah. So I'll give. You a couple of quick. Examples of what I like within the last.

Week, last couple of weeks. What I've been doing so the prospecting agent, the skinny is it's basically leveraging the engagement data for prospecting with B to B clients and HubSpot, right And so, but using the agent so lead scoring. Right lead hits the score. Agent looks at the data and researches the external market.

Drafts the email from the partner for outreach. Partner reviews hit send.

Neil Barrow: That's removing a lot of friction.

Tracy Kapteyn: That's removing a lot of friction. So that's one another one. Just last night I was looking at building my own agent to go out and scrape various. Broker sites so that.

I get more immediate visibility to when new firms. Are listed for sale.

Neil Barrow: That's really cool.

Tracy Kapteyn: Yeah. Like on the M&A discovery. Side I've built a research. Agent and a scoring rubric.

To go. Out and at least take an initial look and tell me is that firm or even worth looking at because. Otherwise you have to like. Go do the research 1 by 1.

So anyways. Those are just like 3. Little things that are going to really help me propel forward quicker, I think as it. Relates to a lot of.

The growth initiatives we're working on.

Neil Barrow: Yeah. And I think that's really interesting around the corporate development or M&A side that y'all are working on, which is like how do we identify potential opportunities, right, for acquisition and especially if that's part of y'all's growth plan, because I think for most firms, it is somewhat of a part of their how we're going to grow. Yeah, is we're going to acquire firms. Absolutely.

Neil Barrow: Well, Tracy, again, thank you for joining. It was a lot of fun conversation and thank you for listening or watching and we'll see you next time on. I Hope This Email Finds You Well.