Search as a Sales Motion. The Sales Discipline Behind Search
Coming from a sales and GTM background that led to five acquisitions, one of the biggest things I've noticed about search is how closely it resembles a sales motion.
Territory. Prospecting. Discovery. Conversion. All Sales Motions.
Every stage of a search maps surprisingly well to a sales pipeline. And in GTM, pipeline discipline isn't about working harder. It's about creating visibility into what's producing opportunities so you can make better decisions about where to spend your time.
I think there's a huge opportunity to apply more of that thinking to search, even across brokered opportunities, but mostly when thinking about proprietary outreach and off-market owner conversations.
Even something as simple as how the first conversation with an owner begins can change where that conversation goes.
The more I work in ETA, the more convinced I am that creating deal flow deserves the same operating discipline we already bring to evaluating it.
That's a big part of what we're working on with searchers inside Five Experts and in our October Search Cohort so very curious to get others input.
For those actively searching: where are you seeing the most consistency in deal flow right now: brokered, proprietary, referrals, or somewhere else?