To win more deals and grow their business, transaction advisory services (TAS) teams need to successfully highlight their detailed experience to prospective and existing clients. As the market becomes increasingly competitive, TAS teams also need be able to develop and present their pitches to clients more quickly than ever before. It’s a tall order that today requires best-in-class deal and relationship management technology purpose-built to connect the M&A ecosystem and showcase deal experience. Even solutions that were once considered the best CRM software for accounting firms lack these highly specialized capabilities — so without a best-of-breed software approach, TAS teams can fail to highlight successful track records and struggle to accelerate deal flow.
That’s because times have changed. In the past, accounting firms could gain new business by depending on existing clients and sign new engagements by simply staying top of mind. Not anymore.
While managing relationships offline is still very important, today’s elite teams use purpose-built technology to apply a more sophisticated BD strategy. When they go to offline meetings, they come equipped with intelligence about previous deals that the prospective client has participated in, as well as about the other deal participants involved. Using this data, these high-performing TAS professionals can reach out to deal participants they’ve mutually done deals with before to request warm introductions — and even to name-drop to show the client that the team is experienced and well connected.
To adopt this more sophisticated, high-yield approach, firms need to invest in industry-leading deal-tracking technology to improve business development velocity at their accounting firms. Here, we’ll cover three ways that your TAS team can use this leading technology to more effectively demonstrate its experience and win new clients.
Showcase your firm’s collective knowledge of a client’s industry
To build a client’s trust, the most successful TAS teams offer insights and recommendations that demonstrate their comprehensive understanding of the client’s business sector.
When engaging a TAS professional, a client wants to know that the professional has assisted with similar transactions in the past. A health care company, for example, will seek to hire an accounting firm with deep experience in health care transactions. That saves the client from taking on the time-consuming task of educating the TAS team on their business model, competitors, and other industry-specific knowledge. The chance to work with an accounting firm that is already steeped in their industry’s business is a huge boon for clients.
To impress a client even more, top-performing TAS professionals also demonstrate their firm’s collective knowledge of their client’s industry with real-world data. With the help of purpose-built deal and relationship management software, the TAS team can even share specific examples of successful deals they’ve assisted in the past, including key metrics from recent transactions.
When evaluating TAS teams, potential clients will seek out teams with deep experience in their industry and a proven track record in achieving the kinds of outcomes the client desires. To satisfy that need, TAS teams greatly benefit from AI-powered deal and relationship management software that provides actionable, proactive insights and recommendations on how to showcase a strong record of successful transactions.
With the information they’ve gleaned from similar clients and previous transactions, a TAS team can demonstrate how their firm’s accumulated knowledge will help them make the client’s deal a success.
Master the art of networking to strengthen relationships
While a TAS team’s industry experience is unquestionably important, the power of the team members’ relationships — and their ability to connect and manage those relationships — is equally crucial.
The most successful TAS specialists customarily make introductions on behalf of their firms. Whether they’re introducing people internally or externally, these highly skilled connectors always seem to know — as if by magic — exactly who to introduce to whom and the perfect time to do it.
Their secret, of course, isn’t magic at all; rather, it’s top-tier people skills — often combined with powerful technology that helps them manage complex interconnected relationships within the deal-making ecosystem with extra precision and insight. With purpose-built deal and relationship management software like DealCloud, the critical details of an accounting firm’s entire network and industry relationships are at every professional’s fingertips.
If your TAS team includes professionals who are strong networkers, your firm can even benefit by connecting potential clients with advisors outside of your firm. While this may seem counterintuitive, it’s actually a rainmaker best practice to connect clients with advisors who can provide services that your own firm can’t. By offering these helpful introductions, your TAS team can strengthen your firm’s reputation as a valued partner for future business, as well as create a reciprocal referral relationship with other advisors and firms.
Identify internal skills, networks, and deal experience
To distinguish itself from competitors, a TAS team needs to be able to produce deal-winning information quickly and accurately.
With the right deal and relationship management software, TAS teams can take advantage of having a centralized single source of truth to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their pitches and team collaborations. With virtual collaboration capabilities and easy document access, teams also make it faster and easier for prospective clients to respond.
With a solution like DealCloud, firm professionals can also leverage the software’s “skill finder” capability to identify internal experts and view their networks and deal experience in detail — then share this internal expertise to potential clients to demonstrate your firm’s suitability for the engagement.
Once, it would have taken an accounting professional 20 years or more to acquire the level of knowledge and relationships required to become an industry expert and connector. But thanks to the power of deal and relationship management software, young professionals can leverage the accumulated experience and relationships of the firm’s senior partners. With a platform that can extract critical experience and relationship data — without any data entry required from partners — your firm can scale the most successful rainmaker behaviors.
With DealCloud, your firm will be able to multiply transaction advisory opportunities while accelerating sales deal velocity. Learn more about how DealCloud can help TAS teams discover more business opportunities at dealcloud.com/markets/transaction-advisory.