The three blocks of an AI-run business development system: playbook, project instructions, record

A system with one design rule: nothing lives in her head

The business development system I handed over this week has one design rule: nothing is allowed to live in anyone's head. It was built for a freelance communications specialist in Kuala Lumpur, a former newspaper editor with four project clients across three countries, who needs recurring retainers and has never had to fill her own pipeline.

The previous article covered the thinking: the four areas a consultancy runs on, and the outreach system that fills the empty ones (the four areas of a consultancy). This one covers the build. The whole operation fits into three blocks, a playbook, a set of project instructions and a record, and she runs it from two fixed appointments a week.

Why a one-person firm cannot run on memory

She agreed with every part of the framework in our conversation. However, agreement rarely leads to execution, and the reason is structural rather than a character flaw.

A one-person firm runs her customer servicing and business development pipeline on the same cognitive resources. When a client deadline and a prospecting block land in the same week, the brain sides with the deadline, because the deadline has a person attached and the pipeline does not. Whatever part of the system is held in memory gets simplified, then postponed, then dropped.

She carries a second handicap: none of this is instinct yet. An experienced business developer holds the scoring, the cadence and the follow-up rhythm as a habit. She is starting from advice, and advice kept in the head degrades into "I should do some outreach at some point".

So every part of the system was written into a file, where it can be read, tuned, run and checked. Three files, three jobs. Business development becomes part of how the consultancy operates, and her head stays free for the work clients pay for.

This is the same Human to AI to Human structure I build inside agencies: judgment decided first, production in the middle, a person signing off at the end.

The three blocks: the playbook, the project instructions, the record

Block one, the playbook. The whole framework is written out in plain language: the positioning statement, profiles of the firms worth writing to, a ten-point score a firm must earn before it gets outreach time, the email templates, a four-touch follow-up sequence, retainer shapes, the pricing method, the weekly targets.

It is the one block she has to actually read. Her first task was to go through it end to end and tune it until it sounds like her. The positioning statement and the templates are hers to rewrite. The cadence and the follow-up rules are not.

Block two, the project instructions. A page pasted into a Claude project, with the playbook and the record attached, that turns the framework into things she can ask for in one line. Research ten firms. Qualify this agency. Draft a first touch. Prep me for this call. Here are my call notes. Run the weekly review.

Every ask runs against the playbook's rules: each factual claim carries a source, anything unverified is labelled, nothing is ever invented, and drafts arrive in her voice for her to edit and send. She does not need to memorise any of it, because the project holds the system and applies it on every ask.

Block three, the record. One plain spreadsheet holding the prospects, the scores and the weekly numbers. My recommendation is to run the whole system in Claude Cowork on desktop, pointed at one working folder, because the spreadsheet then lives inside that folder and updates are written straight into the sheet as each email goes out.

The working folder has three parts. About holds the instructions and the playbook, which govern how the project runs. References holds her templates and her best case studies. Outputs collects everything the system produces, and the record sits inside here as well.

What a week looks like, and what stays hers

The week is two appointments. Tuesday, one ask brings back scored prospects with sources, instead of an afternoon lost to a search engine, and the first-touch drafts follow. She edits each one, because a draft arrives most of the way there and missing the one line that makes it obviously from her, then sends.

Thursday, the project lists the follow-ups that are due, each one carrying something new for the prospect, and the numbers come back with next week's three priorities, plus a plain flag if the sending was missed.

After an introductory call, whenever it lands, her notes come back as a five-line recap email, the record updated, and a proposal draft if the call earned one.

What stays hers: the edit, the send, the call, the price. Her buyers read for a living, and machine prose would cost a former editor exactly the credibility the playbook is built on.

One maintenance rule keeps it honest. The project only knows what the files say, so when her positioning, her templates or her numbers change, the files change first.

Whatever runs on memory in your firm, write it down

Every habit her consultancy needs now exists in writing, which means business development is part of the operation rather than a resolution she has to keep. Your firm carries the same exposure at a larger scale: the pitch logic in the MD's memory, the review standard in one senior's instincts, the account knowledge that leaves in a resignation letter.

Pick the one that would hurt most to lose, and write it into a file this week. Once it is in a file, an assistant can run it, a new colleague can learn it, and it stops depending on one person being available.

Gabriel Tan is the founder of Mekong Bridge Advisory, the lean consultancy for PR and IR agencies.

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