How to find the best small businesses for sale?

searcher profile

March 12, 2025

by a searcher from University of Cincinnati - Carl H. Lindner College of Business in Lebanon, OH 45036, USA

Hello! I’ve been at it for only a couple months on bizbuysell but haven’t found many good opportunities yet. Curious where everyone has had luck. SMBmarket? Strategies for a pre market approach to find the right businesses/owners directly?
Thank you!
Ryan

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commentor profile
Reply by a professional
from Tufts University in Medfield, MA 02052, USA
Hey, I have 4 investments into 3 portcos and I'm close on my 4th and largest investment. I've found it easiest to work from my network, but I suspect you may be in a different place than me. I haven't seen acquire.com on this list, so add that to your list.

The theme above rings true to me. Develop a target sector/segment and a story that you personally have on why you're a great partner. Attack the market outside of the existing marketplaces. Independent Sponsors and Searchers have higher returns when they have proprietary deals (i.e. - no broker/sell side involvement). None of my deals involved anyone but me sourcing them and I did not do volume outreach. When others zig, you should zag. HVAC companies and Dentists are barraged by low effort outsourced and proprietary outreach. Focus on something you have a passion for and build a strong pathway.

Other thoughts:

* Develop adjacent network like high end lawyers, placement agents, and other people who feed the PE ecosystem. These people often know of things kicking around and certainly can give you POV on work you're doing. My core point here is bizbuysell is about as low effort as you can get - develop something interesting and execute on that.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, USA
‌^redacted‌ thank you for the tag. ^redacted‌it is important to first have your acquisition criteria defined clearly as that will help refine how you go to market and conduct the search. It is also one of the critical components to being a credible buyer. If you have a narrow and industry specific focus your approach may be different than if you are industry agnostic with well-defined characteristics. Assuming industry agnostic for a moment, developing relationships with business intermediaries such as brokers, accountants, attorneys and wealth managers will enable you to create a deal flow of transactions beyond bizbuysell. But they can only help you if your criteria is well-defined so that they know what to direct your way.
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