Case study · Totus One
A first platform acquisition, scoped properly
Totus One is a buy-and-build at the start of its life. The first acquisition sets the template for every one after it, so the brief was narrow on purpose — and the list had to respect it.
The brief, and why it excludes things
A platform acquisition of £250k to £500k in gross recurring fees, unregulated, in mainland UK. Every part of that is an exclusion as much as a target, and a list that quietly ignores one of them wastes the most expensive thing in a first deal: time.
- £250k–£500k of gross recurring fees, not "around that"
- Unregulated — a registered auditor brings obligations a first platform does not want
- Mainland UK; Northern Ireland is a separate mandate with separate rules
- Independent firms, not branches of national brands
The proof the mandate is being respected
Zero of the 964 firms on Totus One's board are registered auditors, while all 484 on another client's boards are. Same universe of 3,387 firms, same scoring engine, opposite results — because the mandate says so, and the exclusion is recorded on every firm it applied to.
That is the whole argument for scoring per mandate rather than keeping a list per buyer. A firm that Totus One should never see is often exactly the firm another client should.
Where it stands
964 firms scored, 68 at tier A, 99 contactable today. Outreach has not started on this mandate — the first wave went out on another one. So the claim is about how sharply the universe has been narrowed, not about a deal done.
See it on your own buying brief
The most useful demo is against a real brief — what you are buying, where, and at what size. You will see your own long list, not a demo account.
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