Who exactly should we be going after, and in what order?
How to build a target list of named companies and score it
Pick one service line. Write down forty named companies. Score each out of three on fit, budget, access and trigger. Remove anything that hits a disqualifier. Work the top ten this quarter and ignore the rest.
20 August 2026 · 5 min read
A market you can work is a list of companies with names on it, in an order. Not a sector and not a description, because you cannot approach a category. Here is how to build one in ninety minutes.
Rules before you start
- One service line, not the whole firm. Different services have different buyers, budgets and triggers, so a combined list ranks nothing.
- Forty names. Below twenty you cannot see patterns. Above sixty nobody finishes, and the list gets abandoned.
- Book ninety minutes and two people. One sitting. Spreading it over three weeks is how it never gets finished.
Get to forty names
Name them all before you judge any of them. Sources, most productive first:
- 1Companies that look like your last ten clients for this service.
- 2Companies that approached you and did not buy. They already believed they had the problem.
- 3Companies your competitors publish case studies about. Their case studies are your target list.
- 4Trade body members, awards shortlists and conference agendas your buyers pay attention to.
Score each one, four times, out of three
Two minutes per company. Longer than that and you are researching, not scoring.
| Score | Ask | A 3 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | Do they have the problem you solve, not one you could stretch to? | You have solved this exact problem for a company like them. |
| Budget | Can they spend this without it becoming a board decision? | The work is a normal size of purchase for them. |
| Access | Can you reach the person who owns the outcome in one step? | You know them, or know somebody who does. |
| Trigger | Has something happened recently that makes this live now? | Something in the last three months you could date. |
Remove anything that hits a disqualifier
Delete these entirely. Do not rank them low, or they will keep resurfacing.
- They just signed with somebody else. Diarise three months before that contract ends.
- It can only be bought through a framework you are not on.
- Nobody owns the outcome internally. No named owner, no buyer.
- Your fee is a large share of everything they spend. They will want it and it will hurt them.
Work the top ten
Add the four scores, sort descending, take the top ten into this quarter. Put the other thirty in a file with a date to re-score.
The point of scoring is not to find companies worth approaching one day. It is to decide which ten get your attention while your attention is finite. In a boutique firm it always is: the people doing business development are the people delivering the work.
Re-score the trigger column quarterly
Fit, budget and access barely move in a year. Trigger moves constantly, and it is the one that changes the ranking. Re-scoring forty companies on one column takes under an hour.
What to do next
- 1Book ninety minutes this week. Two people.One service line. One sitting.
- 2Reach forty names before you score anything.Naming and judging together makes you self-censor down to comfortable names.
- 3Score all four columns, then apply the disqualifiers.Delete, do not demote.
- 4Take the top ten into next quarter. Ignore the other thirty.They are not lost. They are not now.
- 5Put a quarterly trigger re-score in the calendar.One hour. This is what stops the list going stale.
Read next
The Business Development Workshop builds this into your firm in a day: your market mapped and ranked beforehand, the plays written and installed in the tools you already use, and thirty days of support while your team runs it.
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