The ETA ecosystem has become remarkably sophisticated. Searchers learn how to evaluate businesses, build models, structure transactions, navigate diligence, work with lenders and think like future CEOs.
But there is one part of the acquisition process that remains surprisingly underdeveloped: how do you consistently create enough of the right opportunities to find a business worth buying?
For many searchers, the hardest part isn't analyzing a deal. It's generating one. I spent my career in go-to-market before I came to this world, and the pattern is hard to unsee: we've been treating search as an investment exercise when, operationally, much of it behaves like a sales motion.
BEFORE THERE'S A DEAL, THERE'S A PIPELINE
Consider what actually has to happen before an acquisition closes. Somewhere, an owner has to make the extraordinary decision to hand someone else a business they may have spent decades building. Before that decision comes trust. Before trust comes a relationship. Before a relationship comes a conversation. Before the conversation comes outreach, an introduction, a broker relationship or some other source of deal flow. And before any of that comes a decision about which businesses and owners are worth pursuing in the first place.
In almost every other industry, we have language for this: ICP, target universe, outreach, conversation, qualification, opportunity, conversion. It's a sales pipeline. Yet searchers rarely enter ETA thinking of themselves as sales leaders responsible for building and managing one. I think they should.
A BUY BOX ISN'T NECESSARILY AN ICP
One of the first things sales organizations learn is that more prospects do not necessarily create more pipeline. The right prospects do. Search should work the same way.
"Profitable businesses within a broad EBITDA range" may describe what you could buy. It doesn't tell you what you should pursue. A real acquisition ICP should help a searcher say no. What industries make sense given your experience and thesis? What size business can you realistically finance and operate? What geography works? What owner circumstances could create a path to a transaction? Where do you have an advantage over the dozens of other buyers looking at the same company?
The tighter those answers become, the more intentional the search can become. You stop browsing for businesses. You start building a market.
DEAL FLOW SHOULD BE MULTI-CHANNEL
Brokered opportunities are an important part of search. But they shouldn't be the entire search. In sales, nobody would build a growth strategy around a single lead source and assume the pipeline would take care of itself. Searchers should think similarly.
Broker relationships can be one channel. Proprietary outreach can be another. Referrals and existing networks can produce opportunities. Industry relationships can create introductions. And sometimes an owner who isn't ready to sell today can become one of the most interesting opportunities in the pipeline.
The point isn't that one source of deal flow is better than another. The point is to build and understand multiple sources of deal flow, then measure which ones are producing the right conversations.
