What would you pitch if you knew what they’d think?
ASI shows you why clients in your market choose a firm, why they rule one out and the words they use, so your pitches, proposals and positioning answer what they’re looking for. It’s synthetic research, built for professional services firms.
When everyone sounds the same, clients choose on fees or flip coins.
Spoken at, published in and quoted in
From guessing to knowing
The debrief after you loseWhat clients care about, before you pitch
The clients who chose youEveryone who decides
One pass a yearThe follow-up question you never got to ask
A partner told us her firm was winning more work from a key client. We asked what was driving it.
She paused. “I think they like working with us.”
That’s a good sign and a dangerous answer. If you can’t say why you win, you can’t protect what’s working or repeat it on purpose. If you can’t say why you lose, you’ll lose the same way next time.
Every pitch, proposal and panel response is a bet on what the client wants to hear. When the bet is wrong, you find out at the debrief, if you find out at all.
How firms find out what clients want
The debrief
Comes too late. You hear why you lost after the work has gone.
The listening programme
Hears from too few: the clients who chose you, when they can find the time.
The partners’ read
Second-hand. Clients are polite to the people they buy from.
Brand tracking
Tells you whether you’re in consideration, not why.
Asking ChatGPT
Gets you one confident guess, with no way to check it.
ASI
The reasons clients give, the words they use and how they react, from hundreds of Client Proxies.
Asymmetric Strategic Intelligence (ASI) reaches what those sources can’t. We build hundreds of Client Proxies (synthetic personas modelled on the clients in your market, in every role that decides) and put to them the questions you can’t ask real clients. You get the reasons they give, the language they use and how they react to your messages, with the reasoning behind every answer. That’s the asymmetry: you’ll know what your competitors don’t.
Why hundreds? Ask ChatGPT what a general counsel thinks and you get one confident answer. In one of our studies, two leading AI models gave opposite answers to the same client’s central positioning question. ASI puts each question to hundreds of Client Proxies, built across the roles that decide and run on multiple AI models, so you can see which answers belong to the market and which to the machine.
One answer, or a map
One question to one model is one person pretending to be a market. Hundreds, built across the roles that decide, show you where the market agrees and where it splits.
Know, don’t guess
What changes when you know why clients choose
You learn three things you don’t have today:
What makes a client in your market choose a firm, or rule one out
The words clients use for what they want
How the people you want to win react to the messages you’re considering
The words matter more than firms expect. In our studies of Australian corporate legal buying, “innovative” split the room: one decision-maker heard “shaking things up”, another heard “guinea pigs”.
The numbers, and the reasons behind them
ASI gives you both kinds of answer: how strongly your market leans, and why it leans that way. In our study of 334 Client Proxies modelled on corporate legal clients, around nine in 10 said what stops them moving high-stakes work is their own career exposure: being the one who answers for choosing a new firm. A challenger’s capability barely came up. Behind that number sits the reasoning. One Client Proxy, a general counsel at a mid-sized organisation, put it like this:
“Some of that credibility comes from being reliable and not creating surprises. If I switch firms on a high-profile matter and anything goes even slightly wrong, I’ve created a problem for myself that didn’t need to exist.”
A firm that knows clients are protecting their own careers pitches safety, not brilliance.
Pitching on a guess, and pitching on what you know
The difference starts before the pitch is written.
Six decisions
Where synthetic research is used in professional services
Win the pitch
Before a pitch or panel review, find out what the committee will score highest, who can turn a yes into a no, and the proof each of them needs to see.
Grow a practice group
For the group that should be growing faster, find where clients want what it does, and the message that moves them, in their words.
Launch a service or growth platform
Test whether clients want it, and how to describe it, before the partners commit the budget.
Reach the client you never meet
The CTO, the CFO, the risk officer: find out what they need to hear about your service without waiting for an introduction.
Bring your partners with you
A new CRM, client feedback in partner reviews: test how partners will hear a change before you announce it.
Know which clients will follow a lateral hire
Before you hire a partner for their book, find out what makes clients move with them, and what keeps clients where they are.
Answers in four weeks
How an ASI study works
We start with the decision in front of you: a pitch, a practice group, a panel review, a lateral hire, a repositioning, and the assumptions your partners hold about it.
We build the Client Proxies. Hundreds of them, varied across the dimensions that might change how a client decides: sector, role, seniority, how they buy, their relationship to firms like yours, what’s changing in their business. We vary them so you learn which differences between clients change their thinking, and so should change your marketing. Does a general counsel with a big team choose a firm differently from one with a small team? Does a CEO decide differently in their first year?
We ask the clients you can’t reach the questions you can’t ask. Some clients are out of reach: the ones who chose another firm, and the decision-makers you’ve never met. Nobody can survey a whole market of general counsel and CFOs. And some questions are too sensitive to put to anyone you hope to keep, like how bad you’d have to get before they moved. Client Proxies answer all of them. We run every question on multiple AI models, so you can see which findings belong to the market and which to the machine. When an answer opens a thread, we pull it.
You get the intelligence, and the means to use it. A report, a presentation to your partners, and an AI tool your team can use to question the research, so the findings shape decisions every day instead of sitting in SharePoint.
From question to answer in four weeks
One practice area or market takes about four weeks. Two take about six.
What the Client Proxies tell you
What you get, in four to six weeks
Brand tracking reports on its own cycle. Client interviews wait on clients’ diaries. ASI answers in four to six weeks, while the decision is still in front of you.
The criteria clients in your market use to choose a firm, in the order they rank them
The reasons they give for choosing a firm like yours, and for ruling one out
Which differences between clients change those reasons
The language clients use, set against the language you use
What nobody in your market is saying yet
The messages you’re choosing between, tested on the people they’re meant for
A report, and a presentation to your partners
An AI tool your team can use to question the research
None of your client data goes in. We don’t need access to your clients, your CRM or your files.
Law, accounting and beyond
What ASI found for four clients
Commercial lawyer · Manufacturing
The worry that came before any legal question
A commercial lawyer wanted work from the Australian subsidiaries of overseas manufacturers. ASI built 100 Client Proxies (managing directors, CFOs, operations directors, country managers and general counsel at those subsidiaries) and tested every standard way a lawyer positions themselves. The Client Proxies rejected every one. The decision-makers’ first worry wasn’t legal, and their referrals came from somewhere the lawyer had never looked. The lawyer repositioned around that worry and moved outreach to where the referrals come from.
Global law firm · Partners
Partners who wouldn’t use the CRM
A global law firm needed its partners on a new CRM, and the obvious message was “the CRM will make you more efficient”. ASI built 219 Client Proxies of partners, across six working styles, to test that message. It wouldn’t move most partners, and ASI found the message that would. ASI also found a group of partners who needed a different conversation entirely. The firm now uses an AI tool built on the research to tailor its change communications every day, and came back to ASI with its next question.
Accounting firm · Audit clients
Who clients stay for
An accounting firm assumed it knew who its clients stayed for. ASI built 200 Client Proxies of the people who choose an auditor (CFOs, audit committee chairs, board members, CEOs and owners) and ran them on two AI models. ASI found clients stayed for someone else, and pinpointed the moments early in a relationship that decide whether they stay. The firm built the findings into client onboarding and partner training.
Counsellor · Private practice
A counsellor’s “safe space”
A counsellor in private practice used ASI to rewrite her website. ASI built 200 Client Proxies (people looking for a counsellor for themselves, a teenage child or a partner) and showed what they look for when they choose. Since the rewrite, a psychologist looking for someone to see her own sister picked the counsellor from the site: a professional who knew what to look for. The counsellor is seeing more new patients in her specialisation. One arrived worried that being very religious would put a counsellor off. Every competing site opened by promising a “safe space”, and to that patient the phrase meant nothing. The counsellor’s site didn’t make the promise; it made the patient feel safe. In a law firm, “client-focused” is the “safe space”.
Keep it. Only client listening tells you how the work felt and where service slipped. But it reaches the clients who chose or shortlisted you, never the one who left you off the list. It may not reach everyone who decides, and the GC, the CFO, the risk officer and the board chair judge you on criteria that don’t agree. It can’t ask the dangerous questions, like how bad you’d have to get before they moved. And it gets one pass a year. Client Proxies work those limits from the other side, and your interviews get sharper because you arrive with things to test.
“We already track our brand.”
Keep it. Brand tracking tells you whether you’re in consideration, and whether you’re more in consideration than last year. That’s worth knowing, and ASI doesn’t measure it. But tracking is slow and it looks backwards: each wave reports where you stood after clients had already chosen. And it can’t tell you why: what would move you up the list, and what’s holding you back. ASI answers the why in weeks, while you can still act on the answer.
“Isn’t synthetic research just asking ChatGPT?”
No. One question to one model gives you one answer and no way to check it. Ask for 200 GCs in one conversation and you get one model’s assumptions, 200 times. Persona tools that let you sketch your ideal client hand your sketch back to you: describe a GC as busy and every answer comes back about speed. And a panel of thousands of synthetic respondents is a survey: it counts answers but can’t say why. Hundreds of Client Proxies, built across the dimensions that change decisions and run on multiple AI models, are a map of how your market thinks. More on synthetic research.
“What about our AI policy?”
ASI needs nothing your AI policy protects. We need no confidential information about your clients and no access to your files, your CRM or your systems. We sign your NDA before we start.
“What does it cost?”
A fixed fee, set by scope. A comprehensive engagement covers two practice areas or markets and takes about six weeks. A focused one covers one and takes about four.
The one-page summary: what ASI is, what you get and the questions above.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell us the decision in front of you: a practice group that should be growing faster, a pitch you keep losing, a panel review, a repositioning. We’ll tell you whether it needs the comprehensive engagement or the focused one. If ASI is the wrong tool, we’ll say so.
Want your COO, risk team or partners to hear it from us? Bring them to a second call.
