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New Dynamics · Field Notes
Vol.01 · 2026
12
A field manual for relationship-led firms

How Firms Win Work

Twelve field guides on business development for professional services

Distilled from how architecture, engineering, legal and advisory practices actually find, qualify and win their next piece of work. No theory that does not survive a Monday morning.

New Dynamics·Guide library, open access·2026
Twelve guides · Four acts
· 2026 ·
The Premise
02 / 19
Before the guides

Work is won early.

By the time a tender is published, the buyer already knows who they expect to bid well. Every guide in this deck serves that one fact.

Guides
12
Four disciplines, one operating loop
Acts
4
Relationships, pipeline, bids, leadership
Average read
5 min
Per full guide in the library
Honest figures
All
Product numbers are real demonstration figures; anything illustrative says so
Where the work is actually won
The winner is positioning, all year
The tender
A year out Tender published Award
Full guides · newdynamics resources
The Premise
Act I · Relationships
Act I · 03 / 19
I
Act I

Relationships

The firm already knows the buyers. It just cannot see that it knows them.

01 Coverage beats contact lists· 02 The shortest route in· 03 Ask only what partners know
Guides 01, 02, 03
· · ·
Act I · Guide 01
04 / 19
Guide 01

Coverage beats contact lists.

A contact database

Tells you who exists

  • Names and emails, owned by nobody
  • Relationship strength lives in partners’ heads
  • Gaps are invisible until procurement surprises you
  • Grows stale from the day it is exported
Relationship coverage

Tells you what to do

  • Every relationship has an owner and a strength
  • Decision-makers nobody covers are surfaced first
  • A finance director with no route in is a named risk
  • Gaps reviewed monthly stop being surprises
What coverage looks like drawn out · illustrative, not client data
route owned nobody covers
Regional authority 1 of 5 uncovered
University estates 2 of 4 uncovered
Healthcare trust fully covered
Framework operator 3 of 5 uncovered
From the guide · Relationship coverage beats contact lists
Act I · 04
Act I · Guide 02
05 / 19
Guide 02

The shortest route in is two desks away.

A cold approach to a finance director is a low-probability shot. A warm introduction from the colleague who worked with her for three years is not.

The best route to a buyer usually already exists inside the firm. The failure is not reach. It is visibility.
Field guide · Relationships
Your bid team Priya Nair · knows her 4/5 David Okafor · knows her 2/5 Janet Frost Head of Regeneration COLD APPROACH
Two warm routes, one cold one · names from the demonstration workspace
From the guide · The shortest route in is two desks away
Act I · 05
Act I · Guide 03
06 / 19
Guide 03
“Ask partners only for what they uniquely know.”

Everything else, the software should already hold. Every field a partner is asked to fill that does not visibly help them is a reason the whole system goes stale.

Field guide · Adoption·4 min
From the guide · Ask partners only for what they uniquely know
Act I · 06
Act II · Pipeline
Act II · 07 / 19
II
Act II

Pipeline

A weighted pipeline is not a report. It is a promise to the partnership.

04 A pipeline you can question· 05 Pursuits drift, not die· 06 Floor, likely, upside
Guides 04, 05, 06
· · ·
Act II · Guide 04
08 / 19
Guide 04

A pipeline you can question.

The weighted number gets quoted at board meetings and turned into hiring plans. It has to survive interrogation, not admiration.

Open fee pipeline
£11.1m
Every pursuit staged, valued and owned
Weighted
£4.6m
Honest probability, not optimism
Open fee pipeline by stage · demonstration workspace figures
Early £3.0m
EOI £2.2m
Tender in £3.8m
Bidding £1.6m
Preferred £0.5m

Pale bar is open value, dark fill is the weighted share. The honest pipeline gets thinner as the odds get real.

Figures from the demonstration workspace board report
Act II · 08
Act II · Guide 05
09 / 19
Guide 05

Pursuits rarely die. They drift.

Nobody decides to lose a pursuit. It goes three weeks without a next action, then the deadline passes, and everyone is surprised on schedule.

The dangerous state is not lost. It is quiet.
Field guide · Pipeline discipline
Days since the last action · illustrative ageing
14-day review line
Science Hub 3 days
Acute Wing 9 days
Regeneration 19 · drifting
Mixed-Use Tower 31 · drifting
From the guide · Pursuits rarely die, they drift
Act II · 09
Act II · Guide 06
10 / 19
Guide 06

Forecast with a floor, a likely and an upside.

One number is a guess · Three numbers are a position
01
The floor
Work already won or near-certain. The number you can promise, and the only one you should.
02
The likely
The weighted pipeline on honest probabilities. The number you plan headcount against.
03
The upside
Everything real but early. The number you invest toward, and never spend in advance.
£2.6m Floor
£4.6m Likely
£6.7m Upside
The three numbers, demonstration workspace figures
From the guide · Forecast with a floor, a likely and an upside
Press → to build the forecast
Act III · Bids and Tenders
Act III · 11 / 19
III
Act III

Bids and Tenders

The formal process is the last mile. The race started a year earlier.

07 Bid or no-bid as a portfolio· 08 Position before the tender· 09 Renewals are won early
Guides 07, 08, 09
· · ·
Act III · Guide 07
12 / 19
Guide 07

Bid or no-bid is a portfolio decision.

The corridor

Decided by feel

  • Whoever feels strongly wins the argument
  • The reasoning is remembered differently later
  • Every bid looks winnable on its own
  • Nobody sees the total cost of chasing everything
The record

Decided as a portfolio

  • Scored against sectors, evidence and routes in
  • The reasoning is written down at the moment of decision
  • Wins and losses feed back into the next call
  • Bid capacity is spent where the odds are real
The same bid team, one year, two disciplines · illustrative maths
Chase everything 3 of 24 won · 12%
Qualify as a portfolio 4 of 11 won · 36%

Fewer bids, more wins, and thirteen bids' worth of capacity returned to fee work.

From the guide · The bid, no-bid decision is a portfolio decision
Act III · 12
Act III · Guide 08
13 / 19
Guide 08

Position before the tender exists.

Planning applications, framework pipelines and budget papers announce work months before any portal does. The winners were in the room before the clock started.

Score the signal, find the buyer, name the gap, decide. All before your competitors have seen the notice.
Field guide · Market intelligence
A week of signals, triaged · illustrative counts
Live signals 58
Scored high-fit 9
With a route in 4
Pursued early 2

The 58 is real, from the live Market Radar feed. The discipline is the four rows underneath it.

From the guide · Pre-positioning before the tender
Act III · 13
Act III · Guide 09
14 / 19
Guide 09
“Framework renewals are won a year early.”

Incumbents lose re-lets they assumed were safe, to challengers who spent the final year building evidence, relationships and a story. Start while the renewal is boring, not once it is urgent.

Field guide · Frameworks·4 min
From the guide · Framework renewals are won a year early
Act III · 14
Act IV · Leadership
Act IV · 15 / 19
IV
Act IV

Leadership

The board does not want more dashboards. It wants answers that survive questioning.

10 What the board asks· 11 Losing well· 12 Dormant clients are warm
Guides 10, 11, 12
· · ·
Act IV · Guide 10
16 / 19
Guide 10

What the board actually asks.

Where is next year’s work?
Weighted pipeline against target, by sector and stage
Monthly
What are we chasing?
Live pursuits with owner, value and a named next action
Weekly
What is at risk?
Fees exposed to drift, key-person risk and stale evidence
Monthly
Why did we lose?
Recorded win and loss reasons, not corridor memory
Quarterly
Where are the gaps?
Decision-makers nobody covers at the accounts that matter
Quarterly
From the guide · What the board actually asks about BD
Act IV · 16
Act IV · Guide 11
17 / 19
Guide 11

Losing well.

A lost bid you learn from is a cost. A lost bid you explain away is a habit.

Record the reason
Within a week, while it is still honest. Price, relationship, evidence or fit: name one.
Hear it from the buyer
A ten-minute debrief call beats an internal theory every single time.
Change one behaviour
A review that alters nothing was not a review. It was a meeting.
What a year of recorded reasons typically shows · illustrative, record yours and it stops being a guess
Price 34%
Relationship gap 27%
Weaker evidence 22%
Should not have bid 17%
From the guide · Win and loss reviews that change behaviour
Act IV · 17
Act IV · Guide 12
18 / 19
Guide 12

Dormant clients are warm, not cold.

A client who paid you three years ago knows your work, your people and your invoices. That is not a cold lead. It is an unattended relationship.

The cheapest pipeline you will build this year is a list of past clients nobody has spoken to since the last project ended.
Field guide · Relationships
One client's fees, year by year · illustrative
£180k 2022
£420k 2023
£0 2024
£0 2025
? 2026
From the guide · Dormant clients are warm, not cold
Act IV · 18
The Question
19 / 19
Where this leaves you

Where is your firm’s next opportunity coming from?

If answering takes four tools and two interrupted partners, that is the problem these twelve guides describe. The full versions are free to read, no gate, no form.

new-dynamics-web.vercel.app/resources·New Dynamics · 2026
End · Thank you
· 2026 ·