A pitch would land on a Thursday for the following Wednesday, and the first three days went on reading. The reading was rarely wasted, but it was rarely reused either: the next pitch in the same sector started again from an empty document.
What we put on the board
A Source Reader keeps a running file for each sector the firm works in, adding what it finds with the source attached. A Competitor Watcher tracks the named firms in each of those sectors. A Data Analyst turns the file into the numbers a partner asks for first.
When a pitch lands, the reading has been happening for weeks. The three days go on the argument instead.
The research was never the hard part. Starting it from nothing, on a Thursday, was.