Deal flow in investment banking means something different from deal flow at a fund, and the difference is worth being precise about because the two get discussed with the same words. A fund's flow is opportunities to invest in. An adviser's flow is opportunities to be appointed: pitches. Almost every firm measures the mandates it won and not the pitches it made, which discards the more informative half.
The funnel is pitches, then mandates, then closes
Three stages with three different conversion rates and three different sources. A firm that only records the middle one cannot say whether a weak year was a pitching problem or a closing problem, and those have completely different fixes: one is origination and the other is execution.
The lost pitch is the informative record
Why the owner appointed somebody else, recorded at the time. Fee too high, wrong sector and no relationship are three different problems, and only one of them is fixable by lowering a fee. Firms track wins in detail and losses not at all, which is exactly backwards for learning.
Valuing the live book rather than counting it
On this site's worked example, 14 live mandates at a 35% close rate with a $12,000,000 average value and a 5% fee is $2,940,000 of expected fees and $210,000 for any one live mandate. That per-mandate number is what makes a take-it-or-not conversation short.
The source field applies here too
Which intermediary, which previous client, which past counterparty produced the pitch. It is the same one dropdown as on the fund side and it answers the same question: which relationships actually produce, as opposed to which ones produce meetings.
Questions people ask about deal flow investment banking
What is deal flow for an adviser?
Opportunities to be appointed, which means pitches. A fund's deal flow is opportunities to invest in, and the words get shared.
Why record lost pitches?
Fee too high, wrong sector and no relationship are different problems with different fixes, and only one is solved by lowering a fee.
What is a live book worth?
On the worked example, $2,940,000 of expected fees across 14 mandates, or $210,000 for any single live one.