Best proprietary channels / methods to source deals?
February 15, 2023
by a searcher from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in Boston, MA, USA
Hi folks,
My business partner and I are looking for a business in the Boston area btwn $3-$8M in rev, minimum $500K SDE. What have you all found are the best, most efficient ways to source deals? Beyond working through brokers (buy or sell side). thanks in advance!
from Rice University in Houston, TX, USA
Depending on how much you want to focus your search to specific industries, it might be worth checking out. Grata is pretty popular, but I've heard mixed reviews from other searchers. I saw a demo, but decided not to spend the money. A lesser-known platform is Cyndx, which pulls from a larger database (21M businesses) and generates more information. I met with them and saw a demo as well, but have not subscribed - it was around the same price, close to $10K/yr. There's probably room to negotiate on pricing with both. I plan to re-visit, but I still have plenty of leads to get through and owners to reach out to.
I've paid for leads via "data scrapers"; contractors that I found and hired via UpWork. I gave them very specific parameters (industry, locations (states), headcount, age of business) and they pulled biz names. addresses, websites, and the owner name/email/phone numbers). I got around 8K, industry-specific leads this way. I would not pay more than USD0.15 per lead - the data wasn't perfect (IE not all president's are CEOs, and they would sometimes put the President's name & contact info). I think this was a good way to start. Hope this is helpful. Feel free to DM me and I would would be happy to share more about my process.
from Embry in Orlando, FL, USA
^redacted - It takes considerable time, often a team - method Web scraping (for those that have the talent
^redacted - affiliate yourself with business/technology incubators
^redacted - (My Friend) - Business Brokers (not all the same) I like the "no cigar!" comment
^redactedoutbound mailing
^redacted Go Directly to owners
All of these answers are correct. You must take a multi-pronged approach to find a business. I look at it as building a stool to sit on, you need at least 3 legs to build a stool, and the more legs you have, the more sturdy (business approach) the stool is.
Identify what you are looking for, and immerse yourself in that industry. Attend their trade shows and associations and ask around. To speed up the process and help you posterize what and when to do, consider a business coach, one with the experience, been there and done that - also baught the T-Shirt. :)