What we actually do
We work with attorneys, consultants, wealth managers, accountants, executive recruiters, business valuators, and architects. Small firms. Expert-led. Often a principal plus a few people. Excellent at what they do, and inconsistent at the work of getting more clients.
The pattern is structural, not personal. Most boutique firm owners didn't go into their profession to become salespeople, and the BD function tends to get whatever time is left after the client work is done. That's not enough time, and it's the wrong kind of attention. The result is feast-or-famine pipelines, dropped opportunities, and the slow erosion of momentum that makes good firms underperform.
We don't fix that with motivation. We fix it with infrastructure.
How we think about this
Most of the firms we talk to are either ignoring the AI shift entirely or chasing every new tool as it gets released. Both fail for the same reason. The question isn't which tools to use. The question is what your business needs to be doing differently in a landscape where buyers' agents may be evaluating you before any human at the firm ever does. We work backwards from that. Tools come last.
The deeper version of what we install is a knowledge substrate. By the time you've worked with us for six months, you have a structured operating record of your own thinking. ICP definitions that are queryable, not vague. Decision logs with reasoning attached. Conversion stages with named criteria. Methodology made visible. The substrate is what makes the immediate BD outcomes possible, and it's also what positions your firm for whatever tooling comes next.
But you don't have to care about any of that to get value from working with us. The reason most clients hire us is the immediate one: more qualified meetings, better follow-up, fewer dropped opportunities. The substrate is the thing we leave behind that compounds.
Who runs this
Lamprophony is run by Eric Burr. Eric has been doing business development consulting for professional services firms for more than a decade. The methodology that became Lamprophony was built through thousands of hours of campaign work for financial advisors, executive recruiters, business valuators, and consultants - watching what worked, what didn't, and what the recurring failure modes were across very different firms.
Eric works in collaboration with Val Lewis (Discovering Excellence) on direct client engagements, with Val running day-to-day execution and Eric serving as strategist and architect. We're a small operating company by design, not by accident. We're not trying to scale into an agency. We aim to do excellent, personalized work for a manageable number of firms that meet our criteria.
How we work
The standard engagement is two phases.
Phase 1 is a six-week diagnostic and set-up. $4,000 flat, paid up front. We analyze your placement or client history, identify your highest-leverage verticals, define the ICP per vertical, build a campaign blueprint, optimize your LinkedIn presence, and produce the messaging and contact strategy you need to execute against. At the end of Phase 1, you have a complete plan you could execute internally if you wanted to.
Phase 2 is optional monthly execution. $3,000 per month, no minimum term. If Phase 1 makes the case for ongoing work, Phase 2 is the engagement that runs the campaigns, manages the pipeline, coaches conversion, and produces weekly reporting. You decide at the end of Phase 1, not before.
Both phases use a shared Obsidian workspace as the primary collaboration surface. Real-time visibility into the work, structured navigation, and continuous availability without the lag of weekly status emails. Setup at kickoff via screen-share. Free for you. We absorb the sync cost into the engagement fee.
Who this is for
If you run a boutique professional services firm in the United States and you have:
- A real client problem you can articulate (not "we should probably do something about BD")
- Someone besides yourself who can own day-to-day execution (or willingness to engage us for that)
- A defined target market that allows precise outreach (we can refine, but you need a starting point)
- Genuine bandwidth to engage substantively for six weeks
Then a discovery call is a reasonable next step. If any of those are missing, we'll likely tell you that and suggest what to do instead. We're more interested in whether the engagement pays off than in whether we book you as a client.
Where we are not the right fit
We're not the right fit if you want to outsource business development entirely without engaging in the work. We're not the right fit if you're price-shopping against $1,500/month outreach packages from agencies that promise meetings without conversion infrastructure. We're not the right fit if your firm doesn't have a definable ideal client (most "we work with anyone" claims fall apart in the first conversation). We're not the right fit if you want AI consulting or automation services as the headline offering. AI is leverage we use. It's not the product.
If any of those describe you, there are good people in adjacent categories we're happy to point you toward.
Workshop
We're developing a Workshop curriculum for Q3 2026 aimed at firms who want to build the capability internally rather than retain us. The Workshop teaches the structural reframe (knowledge infrastructure first, BD as the immediate outcome) and the methodology to apply it inside your own firm. Workshop details and waitlist signup if it sounds like a fit.
What you should do next
If reading this matched your situation, the next step is a 30-minute discovery call. We'll figure out which of the recurring problems is actually costing you the most and what the right shape of an engagement would look like. If it's not a fit, we'll say so.