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Asymmetric Strategic Intelligence

Know how your market chooses a firm.

ASI builds hundreds of Client Proxies modelled on the clients in your market, in every role that decides on a firm. Client Proxies answer the questions you can’t put to real clients. You learn why they choose a firm and why they rule one out, the words they use, and how widespread each view is, all with the reasoning behind every answer. It’s synthetic research, built for professional services firms.

Make your next pitch or marketing decision based on what clients look for, not on what the partners guess they look for. Use it on pitches, growth plans, panel reviews, lateral hires and new service lines. You’ll have the answers in four to six weeks.

Book a 30-minute call Or download the one-page summary (PDF, no sign-up)

Spot the difference

When every firm sounds the same, clients choose on fees or flip coins.

Spoken at, published in and quoted in

  • Legal Marketing Association
  • PM Forum
  • ICON
  • INTHEBLACK

Your clients hear differently

Firms mean ‘fresh’ when they call themselves innovative. In our studies, clients hear innovative differently. They hear you’ll ‘shake things up’ (sometimes welcome) or use them as ‘guinea pigs’ (unwelcome).

ASI gives you the chance to hear how clients think about your positioning, angles and messaging before you commit.

From guessing to knowing

  • Guessing: Find out why you lose from the debriefKnowing: Learn what clients care about, before you pitch
  • Guessing: Listening only to the clients who chose youKnowing: Hear from everyone who decides
  • Guessing: One brand tracking pass a yearKnowing: What moves the needle now

A partner told us her firm was winning more work from a key client. Why.

‘I think they like working with us.’

A nice feeling but 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. Usually the bet rests on what the partners think clients want. That’s an expensive guess.

Ask a chatbot and you get another guess

Ask ChatGPT, Copilot or another chatbot 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.

That’s why ASI puts every question to hundreds of Client Proxies, built across the roles making the decisions. And we run them on more than one AI model.

Every organisation that has commissioned an ASI study has commissioned another.

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Pitching on a guess, and pitching on what you know

Before and after ASI Two rows of four steps. Guessing: partner opinion, a guess at the message, the pitch, the debrief where you learn why you lost. Knowing: client evidence, a message chosen on evidence, the pitch built to the client, knowing why you won. The rows part at the first step. GUESSING Partner opinionwhat we guess A guessthe message we hope works The pitchsame as last time The debriefwhy we lost, too late KNOWING Client evidencereasons, language A choicemessage on evidence The pitchbuilt to the client The resultknow why we won
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 clients in that market score highest, and the proof they need 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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?
  3. 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.
  4. 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

An ASI study, week by week Over four weeks for one practice area or market: scope the decision in week 1, build the Client Proxies in weeks 1 to 2, question them in weeks 2 to 3, analysis in weeks 3 to 4, and findings, workshop and AI tool in week 4. Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4 Scope the decision Build the Client Proxies Question them Analysis Findings, workshop, AI tool
One practice area or market takes about four weeks. Two take about six.

What the Client Proxies tell you

What the Client Proxies tell you Decision-makers, varied by sector, role, seniority and team size, become hundreds of Client Proxies built to represent your clients; that shows what changes clients’ thinking. What you need to know goes to them as a survey, which shows what drives their decisions. Decision-makerssector, role, seniority, team size What you need to knowyour questions about the market Client Proxieshundreds, built torepresent your clients Test 1: the clientswhat changes their thinking Test 2: the surveywhat drives their decisions

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 came back for a second phase. The findings now sit inside its client onboarding, partner training and key account management, and its sponsor offered to take reference calls before we asked.

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. 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’.

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Before you commission a study

Questions firms ask about synthetic research

‘Our partners know our clients.’

They know how the work felt, and that matters. But clients are polite to the people they buy from, so the partners hear the version clients are comfortable saying. And no partner hears from the client who left you off the shortlist. Client Proxies answer the questions partners can’t ask: why a firm was ruled out, what would make a client move, how bad it would have to get. Your partners’ instincts become things to test, not things to bet on.

‘We already have a client listening program.’

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.

ASI and your listening program ASI produces specific hypotheses, your client interviews test them, and what the interviews can’t explain goes back into ASI. ASIClient Proxies Hypothesesspecific, testable Interviewsyour program The gapswhat’s unexplained What the interviews can’t explain goes back into ASI

‘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. The AI your BD team already uses doesn’t know how your market thinks either, which is one reason AI isn’t improving your firm’s BD results. 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.

Download the PDF, no sign-up

Book a call

Bring the question in front of you

Tell us what you’re deciding when you book: a pitch, a practice group, a panel review, a lateral hire. We’ll come to the call with the questions we’d put to the Client Proxies, and what each answer would change for you. In thirty minutes you’ll know whether ASI can answer it. If it can’t, we’ll say so.

Want your COO, risk team or partners to hear it from us? Bring them to a second call.

Prefer email? asi@taleist.agency

Tell us the decision in front of you and we’ll reply within one business day.