Lobbying’s underappreciated challenge: acquiring new clients

When Cassie Gilson worked for a law firm, she thought it wasn’t complicated to drum up new business.

“Law firms have full-time marketing people,” she said. “As a lawyer, you have something to plug into” to help find new clients.

But after she moved to lobbying firm in 2001, Gilson discovered lobbying firms don’t typically have that option.

“That is not as much of a thing” for lobbying firms, said Gilson, co-founder and managing partner of Axiom Advisors. “Who do you market to and how do you market is a little more complicated. It is a more straightforward business development playbook in a law firm environment,” she said.

While Sacramento’s elite firms generate enviable revenues in the millions of dollars, they face an underappreciated challenge as moneymaking businesses: finding new clients.

“I’ve been trying to find the secret to finding new clients for 37 years,” said Mike Belote, a veteran lobbyist for California Advocates and a member of Open California, the board that oversees Capitol Weekly.

“It’s very hard,” he said. “It’s basically word of mouth. … It’s far more subtle than advertising personal injury firms.”

Special interests rarely, if ever, change representation, leaving lobbying firms to grow their businesses by attracting clients new to the political process.

The Deveau Burr Group does that by keeping its ear to the ground for emerging issues while its lobbyists go about their work serving the firm’s existing clients, founders Andrea Deveau and Timothy Burr Jr. said.

“The team is always looking ahead,” Deveau said.

“You always want to bring in new clients,” Burr agreed.

But not at the expense of existing clients, which they both repeatedly emphasized is their top priority. That’s another difficult aspect of acquiring new clients for lobbying firms. They understandably don’t want to look like they’re shortchanging their current clients who pay them handsomely, even though securing new customers is a basic need for businesses.

Deveau said the DBG team navigates these tricky politics by striving to earn their existing clients’ business every day.

“You can’t ever take it for granted,” she said.

Still, between watching her P’s and Q’s with not only existing clients but also other lobbying firms, who can play a role in referring new clients, Deveau said she’s “constantly waltzing” around potential mines.

Burr said the firm looks for potential new clients in emerging industries as well as issues that are poised to become a focus of the Legislature. DBG might hear something from conversations its lobbyists have with lawmakers, or it may be approached with new business from people who used to work for old clients.

“There’s not one trick pony in terms of where our business comes from,” Burr said.

Having a diverse approach can be important, because Belote said lobbying firms often have to reject new clients that come their way.

I’ve been trying to find the secret to finding new clients for 37 years.”

“For every four lobbying referrals you get,” he said, “two you have conflicts with.”

Nonetheless, elite firms do seem to consistently find ways to grow. A Capitol Weekly analysis of the number of clients represented by top firms found that in aggregate they had an average growth rate of 9% over the past three cycles.

Miller, Cespedes and Associates, for example, saw a modest increase in business, as its total number of clients went from 32 in the 2021-22 cycle to 38 in 2023-24 to 34 in 2025-26. Platinum Advisers went from 96 clients to 123 to 119. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, 34 to 70 to 84.

Actum, the new powerhouse firm founded in late 2021 by former Mercury Public Affairs partners Kirill Goncharenko and Fabian Nuñez, the former Assembly Speaker, had an unusually large average growth rate over that period. Its client base grew 109% over the three cycles as its number of clients ballooned from 27 to 62 to 117.

Gilson said the strategy for modern lobbying firms to acquire new clients is multi-pronged.

It helps to offer vertically integrated services that cover regulatory work, lobbying at the local level and communications and public affairs functions, she said.

Also important, Gilson said, is networking and maintaining good relationships with contacts inside government and business. She said she’s gotten clients because good contacts she’s had have risen in the ranks over the years and, when they became decisionmakers, they trusted her.

“This is all about who you know and who will pick up the phone when you call,” Gilson said.