Internal friction
Most firms think their biggest BD challenge is external competition.
It isn’t.
It’s internal friction.
Slow decisions. Endless approvals. Conflicting opinions. Drafting by committee. Twenty-seven versions of the same document called “FINAL_v8_ACTUALFINAL_USETHISONE”.
Clients might not see the internal mess directly, but they absolutely feel the symptoms:
- slow responses,
- watered-down thinking,
- duplicated conversations,
- inconsistent messaging,
- and opportunities quietly drifting away.
So here are three types of friction that damage BD momentum far more than most firms realise. Enjoy.
#1. Speed is now part of competence
Professional services firms still underestimate how commercially important responsiveness has become.
Not recklessness. Not panic. Just… movement.
Clients live in a world of instant information, live updates and same-day expectations. The benchmark has changed, whether firms like it or not.
If somebody asks a question on Monday and receives a response the following Thursday, that no longer feels “thorough”. It feels oddly disconnected from reality.
And yet perfectly sensible momentum gets destroyed internally by:
- over-reviewing,
- excessive stakeholder input,
- unnecessary governance loops,
- and the terrifying phrase: “Let’s socialise this internally first.”
Which roughly translates to: “This will now disappear into a cave for two weeks.”
Meanwhile, your faster competitor:
- responded,
- demonstrated commercial awareness,
- gave a view,
- and moved the conversation forward.
That doesn’t mean rushing poor work out of the door. It means recognising that speed itself increasingly shapes how clients perceive competence, confidence and commerciality.
Particularly now AI is accelerating expectations around turnaround times.
#2. Drafting by committee creates beige
One person writes something good.
Seven people edit it into oblivion.
Welcome to modern professional services marketing.
Strong ideas rarely survive large internal groups untouched.
Not because people are malicious. Mostly because everyone wants to:
- reduce risk,
- add their point,
- avoid upsetting somebody internally,
- or quietly demonstrate they’ve contributed.
The result?
Content that sounds like it was written by a corporate hostage negotiation team.
Safe. Forgettable. Completely interchangeable with ten of your peer firms.
You can almost hear the personality being removed sentence by sentence.
And increasingly, in a world flooded with generic AI-generated content, originality, clarity and genuine points of view are becoming competitive advantages again.
Ironically, many firms now risk creating the same problem twice:
- first by generating bland AI content,
- then by collectively editing any remaining personality out of it internally.
The winning formula is probably:
AI for speed.
Humans for judgment.
Far fewer people involved in the middle.
AI top tip:
Use AI to create momentum, structure and first drafts quickly. Then sharpen the thinking, strengthen the perspective and inject personality. Just don’t let 14 rounds of internal editing turn something interesting into corporate wallpaper.
#3. Internal politics always leaks externally
Firms love to believe clients can’t see internal dysfunction.
They absolutely can.
It shows up when:
- three different people give three different answers,
- nobody seems clear who owns the relationship,
- meetings are attended by territorial colleagues defending turf,
- pricing takes forever because departments can’t align,
- or obvious cross-selling opportunities are ignored because teams operate in silos.
Clients may not know the internal history, but they feel the friction:
- slow progress,
- duplicated conversations,
- inconsistent messaging,
- and a subtle sense that the firm is harder work to navigate than it should be.
Clients experience your culture operationally.
If the internal environment feels political, fragmented or painfully slow, clients assume working with you probably will too.
The best firms feel coordinated externally because they are coordinated internally.
That doesn’t mean zero disagreement. It means clients aren’t exposed to the organisational wrestling match happening behind the scenes.
Because every unnecessary layer of complexity slows momentum.
And momentum is increasingly where competitive advantage lives.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
Most BD problems are not caused by lack of intelligence.
They’re caused by organisational drag.
Too many steps.
Too much caution.
Too much internal noise.
The firms that grow fastest are rarely perfect.
They’re just easier to move inside.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
