Professional services have always been bought on reputation and referral. Now one of the referrers is an AI assistant. A finance director looking for an advisory firm, or a marketing lead looking for an agency, may start by asking ChatGPT or Perplexity who does this well. The firms in the answer get considered. The rest aren’t in the conversation.
That’s harder for a firm than for a product company. You’re selling expertise and judgement, not a feature list, so the question is how an assistant comes to associate your firm with a practice area, and whether it names you when someone asks.
What assistants go on
Assistants can’t see your client list, your win rate or the quality of your team. They work from what’s published and what other sites say. For firms, that usually comes down to three things.
Published expertise
A firm that has written clearly and in depth about a problem, how to approach it and what good work looks like, gives an answer something to cite when a buyer asks about that problem. A firm that has done the work but never written about it gives the answer nothing.
What others say about you
Coverage in the publications your buyers read, mentions in industry research, speaking slots and directory listings all tell an assistant your firm is part of a practice area. Which sources matter depends on your field.
One description of what you do
Firms often describe themselves one way on their website, another on LinkedIn and another in press releases. Assistants draw on all of them. Say what you do, for whom and how, the same way everywhere.
Where firms usually go missing
Ask an assistant about a firm by name and it usually describes it. Ask “which consultancies specialise in supply-chain risk for food manufacturers?” and many capable firms don’t appear. In our April 2026 study of seven companies, none was named in answers to prompts that didn’t name anyone, though each was described when asked about directly. That was a small sample on older models, so measure your own firm rather than assume.
Questions about cost and value are often empty too. When a buyer asks “what should we expect to pay for this kind of engagement?”, an assistant can only cite firms that have written about it.
What to do about it
1. Measure first
Write prompts the way a buyer would ask, in their own words, mostly without naming any firm. Ask several assistants, several times each, and count how often you’re named, with a likely range. Note who is named instead and which pages the answers cite. The tracking guide shows how.
2. Write about your practice area
Publish a clear, useful guide to the problem you solve: what it is, how good work is done, what it costs and what to watch for. Then publish how you approach it. Your method is what sets you apart, and describing it gives answers something specific to cite.
3. Earn coverage where buyers read
Contribute to the publications your buyers read, take part in industry research, and make sure directory and association listings describe you accurately. This is the slowest track, and you can’t edit those pages yourself.
4. Measure again
Ask the same prompts later and compare the ranges. If they overlap, the change isn’t established yet.