How Beauhurst Helps Corporate Finance Teams Win New Clients
For corporate finance firms, some of the biggest challenges are developing a consistent pipeline of opportunities. In other words, originating and winning mandates.
Identifying the right target to approach, and possessing the knowledge to meet them where they’re at in their journey, is key.
When we look at our own corporate finance customers, we’re seeing them augment their relationship-led approach with more tangible data-led origination methods.
‘100% of the deals that I’ve sourced, that we’ve then gone and made an offer on, have been found on Beauhurst.’
Alexandra McMullen, Origination at Foresight VCT
In this article, we’ll explore how our corporate finance clients use the Beauhurst platform to save time, money, and win mandates — and how you can too.
Key challenges facing corporate finance teams
- Inconsistent deal flow from referral networks
- Vast manual research time
- Low conversions due to poorly timed outreach
How Beauhurst supports corporate finance teams across the entire commercial lifecycle
01. Sourcing
In an industry that thrives on relationship building, you need to know which individuals and businesses are a good fit in the first place. This is an important origination stage, and should come before sending an introductory letter to a target client.
However, if a target client is outside of your immediate network, LinkedIn and Google will only get you so far.
On Beauhurst, you can build a custom target profile for businesses, funds, and individuals — making it as loose or specific as required. For example, you may want to find only early-stage companies in a certain industry, and above a specific revenue threshold.
02. Qualifying
Sourcing potential clients is just the beginning. You’ll likely want to dig deeper into company and people attributes – for example their growth stage, transactions, ownership, or structure.
For example, if you only want to work with businesses that don’t have private equity funding, you can build a specific cap table composition and return only companies that meet this criteria.
You can also use Beauhurst for risk and due diligence purposes, filtering out companies with high risk profiles, or signs of stagnating growth.
03. Timing
Once you’ve built custom target profiles, you can save these to a Collection — a live, monitored list of companies aligned to your criteria.
Static or dynamic lists
Relying on a static CRM or spreadsheet means your data is decaying the moment it’s saved. By using dynamic Collections, companies are automatically added or removed the moment they meet or fall out of your specific criteria.
So, if a business suddenly hits your revenue threshold or undergoes a significant ownership shift, they appear in your pipeline instantly.
Trigger-based events
From leadership changes, ownership shifts, or recent fundraisings, simply enable alerts for these signals (and more), to ensure your outreach is warm and relevant. These specific signals often serve as the precursor to a transaction, including:
- Leadership changes: A new CEO or CFO often signals a change in strategic direction such as an IPO listing, or a desire to sell the business.
- Fundraising milestones: Tracking the time elapsed since a company’s last raise allows you to predict their next funding cycle, before they begin an active search for advisors.
- Growth and innovation signals: Sudden spikes in headcount or new patent filings can indicate a company is scaling rapidly and may require expansion capital or debt advisory.
Trigger-based events like these are vital for reaching a founder at the exact moment they’re considering their next move.
See it in action
04. Pitching
Winning a mandate against peer firms requires immediate credibility. To build a data-driven pitch, corporate finance teams use Beauhurst to access deal comparables and market intelligence that isn’t available through public records alone.
Build a deal comp report
Depending on the industry you’re pitching in, you can aggregate a precise list of precedent transactions to benchmark valuation.
By filtering the platform’s transaction data by industry, stage of evolution, and date, you can identify the specific revenue or EBITDA multiples currently being paid in the private market. This benchmarking is vital for your pitch.
Unannounced fundraisings
Not all fundraisings are publicly announced, and if you’re not tracking unannounced deals – available only on Beauhurst – you’re missing at least 60% of equity market deals.
All of this enables you to walk into a meeting with a complete understanding of the prospect’s sector landscape and valuation benchmarks, demonstrating a level of expertise that builds instant trust with the client. This can be a key differentiator with your competitors.
05. Retaining
A signed mandate is not the end of the sales process. For the most successful corporate finance firms, it’s simply the beginning of a long-term advisory relationship. Using the retaining phase allows teams to move from being a one-time service provider to a strategic partner.
Beauhurst clients in this field use Collections to monitor a range of client activities, ensuring they are always up to date with their clients’ recent news and milestones.
Identifying the next deal
A client who just raised Series A will eventually need a Series B, and a company that just completed an acquisition may eventually need an exit strategy. By placing these clients into a monitored Collection, you receive automatic updates on their updates and news.
For example, if you see a client’s headcount has doubled or they’ve hit a specific revenue milestone via Beauhurst’s Growth Signals, you have a data-backed reason to reach out and discuss their next stage of capital requirements before they start looking for a new advisor.
Spotting potential risks via defensive monitoring
Retaining a client also means protecting them. Beauhurst’s Risk Signals allow you to monitor your current portfolio for red flags — such as a drop in valuation, key leadership departures, or a winding-up petition.
Being the first person to call a client when a risk appears demonstrates your proactivity and sincerity in their interests. It allows you to offer restructuring advice or strategic pivots early, cementing your role as a trusted counselor rather than just a transaction broker.
Identifying opportunities for your clients
If you are representing a client on the buy-side, your job is to constantly find high-quality targets. By keeping your client in a dedicated collection alongside a “Watchlist” of their competitors, you can spot market shifts instantly.
For example, if a direct competitor of your client is acquired or shows signs of distress, you can immediately alert your client and present it as a strategic opportunity.
This turns the relationship from a passive one into a more proactive, strategic partner.
“Beauhurst is a game changer. They get the fast-growth scaleup market better than anyone else in the UK.”
Partner at one of the Big Four firms
How The Big Four Use BeauhurstAdvise to Find Fast-Growth Companies at the Right Stage
Get started with Beauhurst for corporate finance
Transitioning from a reactive, referral-based model to a proactive, data-led origination strategy is the most effective way to secure a consistent pipeline of mandates.
Whether you’re a Director at a boutique looking to improve your team’s workflow, or a Partner at a large professional services firm seeking proven sourcing methods, Beauhurst provides the tools to identify the right opportunities at the optimal time, win mandates, and build long-term relationships.
Want to try Beauhurst? Take a quick online tour of the platform, or for a more bespoke platform demo, get in touch with our team.
