Twelve per cent of nothing

There's a moment I think about a lot. A systems integrator I know had been running outbound for over a year. One of the meetings it produced finally happened, and the prospect turned up to the call expecting a conversation about something that had nothing to do with what their business actually did.

Not a slightly wrong fit. Not a stretch. A different conversation entirely.

That meeting cost about £5,000 a month for over a year to generate.

The number everyone is about to misread

Hinge Research published their 2026 High Growth Study in January. 495 professional services firms, over $84.8bn of combined revenue, across architecture and engineering, consulting, tech and accounting.

The headline finding is the one that will get quoted everywhere for the rest of the year. High Growth firms spend 12% of revenue on marketing. No Growth firms spend 5%. The High Growth group runs a median growth rate of 36.6% and 39.5% median profitability, so they're not buying that growth out of their margin.

Meanwhile the median firm in the study grew 9.9%. Lowest since 2018, and down from around 14% two years ago.

So the takeaway writes itself. Spend more on marketing. Get to 12%. Everyone else is underinvesting and that's why they're stuck.

I understand why people land there. I think it's close to the most expensive conclusion a founder could draw from this study.

£60,000 of silence

Back to the systems integrator. Sub-100 people, global footprint, genuinely good at what they do. The kind of firm that wins work when the right person sees them work.

They were spending around £5,000 a month with a third party running cold outbound. Generic emails, LinkedIn DMs, the full machine. That ran for over a year, so call it north of £60,000.

What did it produce? Over one six-month stretch, a handful of MQLs. That's the number I was given and I'm not going to dress it up.

And I've got no patience left for MQLs as a measure of anything. It's the same problem as a BDR telling me they've sent a million emails and booked 5,000 meetings. I can press send on an email. Anyone can. What I want to know is how many of those turned into a real conversation, how many turned into pipeline, how much of that pipeline closed, and what it was worth. Nobody was able to answer those questions here, which is usually its own answer.

They weren't underspending. On the Hinge scale, a sub-100 person firm putting £60,000 a year into one channel is a real commitment. They were spending properly on something that was never going to work.

What the 12% actually is

Here's where I think the study gets misread.

12% isn't an instruction. It's a description of what firms can justify spending once they've worked out what actually brings work in.

Look at the same study's other finding, which got a fraction of the attention. Referrals and direct human outreach account for nearly two-thirds of all new business in professional services.

Two-thirds. From people who already know you, and from people in your firm talking to people in the market.

And High Growth firms are 2.5 times more likely to activate their subject matter experts as visible voices. Not their marketing team. The people who do the work.

So the picture isn't "winners spend more". It's that winners have found the channel that works for a business where clients buy the individual as much as the firm, and once you've found that, 12% is easy to sign off, because you can see what comes back.

The integrator was spending 2-to-1 against the No Growth benchmark on the exact channel the study says produces the smallest share of new business, delivered by a third party with no connection to the firm's actual expertise. If you set out to design the worst possible version of "invest more in marketing", that's roughly it.

So what's the right number?

There isn't one. If there were a percentage that worked we'd all be rich and famous.

And a caveat I'd want said out loud: Hinge sells marketing services to professional services firms. Their study found that firms which spend more on marketing grow faster. That doesn't make it wrong, and the sample is big enough to take seriously. It does mean you should hold it a bit more loosely than the press release would like. The causation almost certainly runs both ways too. Firms growing at 36.6% have more money to spend and more confidence to spend it.

What I'd ask before anyone spends another pound:

Where did your last ten pieces of work actually come from? Not where you think. Go and check. In most founder-led services firms the honest answer is referral, repeat client, or somebody on the team who knew somebody.

Who in your business has the market's attention, and what are you doing to put them in front of it? If the answer is "nothing, they're too busy delivering", that's the finding, not an excuse.

And what would you have to believe for cold outbound to work for you? Sometimes there's a real answer. Sometimes the honest one is that a sub-100 person specialist firm selling complex integration work to people who buy on trust was never going to get there by DM.

Does this mean marketing spend doesn't matter? Obviously not. The 12% gap is real and I think it's directionally right. But spending 12% on the wrong channel isn't investment. It's just losing money faster than the firms spending 5%.

The integrator's £60,000 didn't fail because it was too small. It failed because nobody asked what it was for.

Common questions

Where does new business actually come from in professional services? Mostly from people who already know you. Hinge's 2026 study puts referrals at 39.5% of all leads and sales and direct outreach at another 23.5%, so almost two-thirds of new business comes from reputation, relationships and someone in your firm talking to the market. Everything else competes for what's left.

Does cold outbound work for professional services firms? Sometimes, but it's the smallest share of how this industry wins work, which makes it a strange place to start. One systems integrator I know spent over £60,000 across a year on outsourced cold outbound and got a handful of MQLs for it. Ask what you'd have to believe for it to work in your business first. For a specialist firm selling complex work to people who buy on trust, there often isn't a good answer.

How do you tell whether your marketing spend is working? Ask what it produced, not how much of it happened. Emails sent, meetings booked and MQLs are activity. What matters is how many real conversations it started, how much pipeline it created, how much of that closed, and what it was worth. If nobody can answer those, that's usually its own answer.