From Manual Hustle to Automated Growth

Transforming Business Development for a National Accounting Firm

Overview

A national accounting firm with over $75M in revenue and service lines across audit, tax, and advisory faced a systemic challenge: business development was slow, disconnected, and lacked the real-time insights needed to compete in a modern, data-driven market.

To accelerate growth, they needed to:

• Connect sales, marketing, and practitioner teams with shared data

• Provide sales with real market intelligence

• Automate research, outreach, and follow-up

• Improve pipeline visibility and forecasting

• Double their pipeline and increase win rates

But with no clear roadmap for AI adoption and an outdated ecosystem of siloed tools, they needed a structured, strategic path forward. That’s where Kailos Marketing Lab stepped in.

Key Results

• 2x increase in qualified pipeline opportunities

• 70% uplift in actively engaged prospects within weeks

• Highly accurate, real-time visibility into sales activity and pipeline progress

• Stronger collaboration between business development and practitioners

• Pipeline meetings evolved from passive check-ins to data-driven action sessions

• Forecasts now exceed revenue projections with more predictable deal flow

The Challenge

Despite its scale, the firm’s business development engine was outdated. Their team members were stuck in inefficient workflows, communication was limited, and there were no dashboards to track overall progress. Each sales person effectively worked in a silo, rarely reporting out. In short, they lacked the modern infrastructure required to compete.

Challenges at a glance

• Sales teams were disconnected from client data, marketing insights, and practitioner expertise

• No centralized market research or ICP intelligence

• Communication between sales and service teams was sporadic and manual

• CRM data was incomplete, outdated, or missing context

• Follow-ups were inconsistent and time-consuming

• Leadership lacked real-time visibility into pipeline movement, KPIs, and deal status

The firm knew AI could accelerate their growth goals but they didn’t know where to begin, which tools to adopt, or how to architect an integrated system that played well with existing software.

The Kailos Marketing Lab Approach

We conducted a full-funnel assessment—interviewing team members across the sales cycle, mapping information flow, and identifying friction points.

From this starting point, we engineered a comprehensive workflow rework that maintained existing structures where they made sense, and proposed solutions to open up bottlenecks and increase the flow of information. The result was an AI-powered business development system that unified data, automated outreach, and scaled revenue operations.

After collaborating with process stakeholders, we presented a final workflow that we were then engaged to implement. We worked with the firm’s IT resources build the full operating system composed of the following elements.

1. Unified Sales Support System

We connected the firm’s practice management software to the CRM, creating a shared source of truth for both sales and practitioners.

What we delivered:

• Real-time pipeline and client insights

• Automatic syncing of activity across teams

• Immediate clarity on relationship ownership

• Meeting notes auto-sent to CRM and linked to deals

• Follow-ups automatically scheduled and assigned

Sales teams no longer spent hours on admin tasks, and for the first time, practitioners had full visibility into business development activity.

2. AI-Driven Outbound Engine

We built an outbound system that continuously identified high-value opportunities and engaged prospects automatically.

Key capabilities:

• ICP-event detection (capital raises, M&A transactions, leadership changes, expansions)

• Automated creation of tailored outbound email sequences

• Custom messaging aligned to service lines and prospect triggers

• Apollo-powered market research feeding the CRM with enriched profiles

• instantly.ai driving multi-touch, personalized outbound at scale

The result: sales teams spent time closing and not hunting.

3. Website Visitor Intelligence

We deployed an advanced monitoring tool to identify organizations visiting the website, score them as prospects, and automatically route them into outbound sequences.

Impact:

• Warm leads surfaced instantly

• BD team introduced via automated outreach

• Leads were enriched, qualified, and assigned without manual effort

This created a constant stream of net-new opportunities the firm had never previously captured.

4. Leadership Dashboards & Growth Visibility

We built executive dashboards that gave leadership real-time clarity into:

• Activity levels across BDRs and sales teams

• Pipeline health and momentum

• KPIs and growth targets

• Forecast accuracy and revenue pacing

Pipeline meetings transformed from “What should we do?” to “Here’s what the data says, and here’s the next step.”

The Results

The AI-enabled transformation produced immediate, measurable impact.

• Pipeline Growth: More than doubled qualified deals

• Prospect Activity: 70% increase in engaged opportunities

• Collaboration: Clear, consistent communication between BD and practitioners

• Efficiency: Admin tasks collapsed; sales spent far more time on productive outreach

• Forecasting: Leadership gained visibility and confidence in projected revenue

• Momentum: A surge in prospect communications and early-stage deal movement

While it’s early for final revenue numbers, the forecast now significantly exceeds initial growth targets and is powered by a modern, intelligent revenue engine.

Key Takeaways

• AI enabled a full BD transformation. The firm went from fragmented systems to a unified, automated business development engine.

• Data is the new competitive edge. Connecting CRM, practice management, and market intelligence unlocked new opportunities and visibility.

• Outbound doesn’t scale without automation. AI-driven triggers, research, and sequencing gave sales the leverage they needed.

• Leadership requires clarity. Real-time dashboards provided the insight needed to coach, forecast, and grow intentionally.

Want to Transform Your Firm’s Growth Engine?

Kailos builds AI-powered business development systems for firms that want to scale without adding headcount.

If you’re ready to modernize your revenue engine, let’s talk.