Effective Proprietary Outreach Strategy Ideas
November 01, 2024
by a searcher in Amagansett, NY, USA
Hi Searchfunder Community,
I'm seeking advice on building and executing an effective proprietary outreach strategy. My goal is to connect with business owners in target sectors using a combination of cold emails, LinkedIn, cold calls and (maybe) snail mail. I've started exploring software platforms that can help me be more effective such as instantly.ai, which seems to be good for cold emailing.
If anyone has recommendations on effective software, scripts, or outreach channels (email, phone, LinkedIn, snail mail) that worked well for you, I'd really appreciate your insights!
Thanks in advance for your help!
from University of Notre Dame in San Francisco, CA, USA
I used to lead buyside searches for PE firms and operating executives while at Harvey & Co (https://harveyllc.com/), and later worked on sector dives at a LMM/MM PE firm, where I also sourced a proprietary transaction.
I think the most effective proprietary sourcing includes a combination of:
(1) cold email outreach, with a multi-step follow-up process. These emails should come across as at least somewhat targeted vs. a total spam message. The key here is a balance of your time and making the prospective seller feel like you actually read their website and understand the high-levels of the business before blasting them 3x+ times with emails
(2) Direct LinkedIn outreach
(3) Marketing materials via snail mail -- slept on in my opinion
(4) Calling the company 2-3x; You may have to get through a gatekeeper to reach the owner.. do this carefully to not irk the EA and/or spook any employees about a sale.
(5) Find out who the best brokers and bankers are in the industry segment you're pursuing. Develop a relationship with them and make sure they understand your strategy and background -- why should they think of you vs. the 100+ other "buyers" in their CRM for that type of transaction
Throughout it all, you need to be clear on your strategy and why that particular business fits within your thesis. Why should the prospective seller bother speaking with you -- they likely aren't actively prepping for a sale, so you need to make it clear that it's worth their time. To execute on this, you might need 2-3 different playbooks if you're interested in 2-3 different segments
There's a lot of "noise" out there right now. Your competition is using all the automated tools to spam targets. The key is to streamline your workflows without coming across as "just another ETA searcher".
Feel free to DM
from Polish in Warsaw, Poland
Questions:
- Do you want all-in-one solution that finds and contacts leads, or do you want to split sourcing and outreach?
- Are your leads easy to find and plenty? (If you suspect they are hard to find, I would first evaluate which providers give you the most leads (some providers are quite expensive like Cognism.com)
Few tips:
- I would not over-rely on the AI-assistants touted by these, or other, providers
- E-mail outreach at scale is tricky, because it's hard not to look like spam; caution advised to not get burned early and blacklisted
- Most software platforms are inter-exchangeable, they differ on flexibility and vertical integration
- Gradual start, frequent testing and monitoring is crucial