A weekly new-company outreach workflow

A weekly routine turns an irregular search for new companies into a small, repeatable batch with a named owner, a fixed cap and a written completion check.

This guide sets no time target for the routine, because no dated, repeatable test of one exists yet. Publishing a minutes figure without one would be a guess dressed up as evidence, so the practice measures its own instead. The routine is batch-capped, not clock-capped: the practice sets a weekly review cap it can sustain and a fixed slot in the diary, then records its own step times on the worksheet near the end of this guide. It runs on the free Companies House search and a spreadsheet, or a CRM if the practice already has one. It does not shorten the review itself or the decision to contact a company — those still take the judgement they take — and running it gives no assurance that any company will reply.

It assumes a practice already has a working method for finding and approaching new companies. If not, start with the outreach overview before adopting the weekly loop below.

Four roles, one small team

The loop below assigns four roles. In a small practice, one person can hold all four; naming them separately still matters, because each one is a place a batch can quietly stall.

• Batch owner — pulls the week's list, applies the cap, and closes the week.
• Reviewer — works through the review card and records each company's outcome.
• Approver — checks suppression and the channel rule, and authorises what is actually sent.
• Recorder — logs what was sent, processes replies, and updates the weekly measures.

Splitting the roles across two or more people adds a natural check: whoever approves contact is not the same person who decided, five minutes earlier, that a company looked promising.

The weekly loop

The loop below does not set its own rule for how soon to contact a company after incorporation; that window is tested separately, not assumed here — see when to contact a new limited company. What follows is the sequence a practice runs once a profile and a review card are already in place.

The weekly batch spreadsheet

The loop runs on one file, updated in place through the week. Column names are illustrative — a spreadsheet, a CRM or a shared list all work, as long as every field below has a place to live.

• company_number — the dedupe key against last week's file.
• company_name, incorporation_date, sic_code, registered_office_address — the register fields the review card checks.
• source — which search or saved profile produced the row.
• cap_status — inside the cap, or parked as overflow.
• reviewer and outcome — who reviewed the company, and Lead, Review later or Not suitable.
• research_notes — what step 4 found, or “insufficient information”.
• suppression_check — pass, blocked, or not applicable.
• channel, date_sent, follow_up_date — what steps 6 and 7 record.
• reply_status — no reply yet, replied, or objection.
• exception_flag and exception_reason — set whenever a row leaves the ordinary sequence.

The exception queue

The exception queue exists so that anything unclear leaves the week's batch rather than stalling it. Four kinds of row belong there: batch overflow parked at the cap; companies marked “review later” with a date to revisit; records that are genuinely ambiguous — for instance where it is not clear whether a filed address is a registered office or a trading address, see registered office versus trading address — and replies that need a partner's judgement before anyone responds.

Empty the queue at the start of the next cycle: work through overflow first against that week's fresh cap, revisit any “review later” date that has arrived, and resolve or escalate anything ambiguous before it ages further.

If the queue is still growing after three consecutive weeks, that is a signal about the profile, not about the team's effort. Narrow the profile rather than the cap — see building a search profile for how to adjust it.

Closing the week: a checklist and three measures

A week is not closed because the diary slot ended. It is closed when every item below is true.

1. Every row in this week's batch carries one outcome: Lead, Review later or Not suitable.
2. The exception queue holds only overflow, dated “review later” items, genuinely ambiguous records and replies awaiting a partner — nothing left there by mistake.
3. Every shortlisted company shows a suppression-check result.
4. The sent count matches the cleared-shortlist count.
5. Every sent contact has a follow-up date.
6. Every reply or objection received since last week is logged, and any objection has been suppressed.
7. This week's three measures, below, are recorded.
8. This week's file is saved somewhere next week's pull can dedupe against.

The three measures are recorded every week, with no benchmark attached to any of them:

• Batch size reviewed — how many companies received a recorded outcome this week.
• Contacts sent by channel — how many letters, emails or calls went out, by channel.
• Replies, objections and suppressions recorded — what came back, and what was suppressed as a result.

These are counts, not conversion rates. They tell a practice what the routine actually did in a given week; they do not predict what it will do next week, and no figure here is a target to hit.

A dry run through the loop

The counts below are a designed illustration, not an observed test: a fictional batch of 12 records, worked through the ten steps above to show how the counts move. No practice ran this batch, no company in it exists, and no minutes are given for any step.

Two records reach “review later” rather than a clean Lead or Not suitable — typical of a batch where a filed address or SIC code does not settle the question outright, which is why the exception queue exists rather than forcing a decision on the spot.

A worksheet to copy

Copy these fields into a document or the top of the spreadsheet, and fill in the blanks as the practice actually runs the routine:

• Slot: ________ (day and time reserved each week)
• Cap: ________ (companies reviewed per week)
• Owner / Reviewer / Approver / Recorder: ________
• Time actually taken — pull and cap: ________
• Time actually taken — review: ________
• Time actually taken — research: ________
• Time actually taken — suppression check and send: ________
• Time actually taken — recording and close: ________
• Exceptions this week: ________
• Notes: ________

Fill this in for four consecutive weeks before deciding whether the routine fits. One week tells you almost nothing — a busy filing season, an unusually large batch or a single awkward exception can distort it. Four weeks of a practice's own recorded times are worth more than any figure this guide could have offered instead.

When to stop or adjust the routine

• No capacity this week. Skip the week rather than double next week's cap to catch up. A doubled batch under time pressure is exactly where review quality slips.
• A rising objection rate or a complaint. Pause sending, suppress the company or companies involved, and review the channel and message against GDPR and contacting new companies before resuming.
• The profile runs too wide or too narrow. A queue that keeps growing, or a batch that rarely reaches the cap, both point back to building a search profile rather than to the loop itself.

How Launch Register can help

A saved search profile delivers each week's batch already deduplicated against the one before it. The matches list records the Lead, Review later and Not suitable decisions from step 3, together with the contact and follow-up dates from steps 6 and 7. The authenticated Outreach Playbook holds the letter starting points referenced in step 6. The cap, the review judgement, the channel and legal checks, and the letter itself remain the practice's. See how Launch Register works.