Buy-side M&A search is growing as competition to acquire well managed companies continues to heat up.. The low hanging fruit was picked long ago. Private equity and family offices continue to move deeper into the lower middle market to find value.

The lower middle market is not the same as the middle market.. It is characterized by vast numbers of companies, and a high percentage of them have material weaknesses. This makes the search process increasingly expensive.

Private equity firms, family offices, U.S. and off-shore strategic acquirors without an in-house business development group are common users of buy-side search. Developing all the skills in-house to run business development can be daunting and expensive, as the learning curve is long and steep, and technology continues to change what works and what doesnt.

Some PEGs hire 20-somethings as business development people. This results in your time being wasted as you sort good deals from bad. But worse, you miss out on connecting with the large number of owners that won’t even talk with a Gen-X or Millennial.

Buy-side search can be broad-based and industry agnostic pin-point specific. If you are very clear on your goals, we can identify targets down to six-digit NAICS codes, employee count, state or city. Then, with key acquisition candidates identified, we reach out to them with only our senior people. Almost all of our people have operating experience, and some are former CEOs. We can hold the high level conversations needed to develop a relationship with reticent owners.

If you want a broad based search, we offer outbound digital marketing services as well as tele, and traditional mail. We have run business development for a number of large institutions, and have paid our dues to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Every search program is custom-made based upon your unique needs. If you don’t have a strong business development capability, we can act as your outsourced BD group.

Our due diligence process ferrets out the weaknesses in these companies. Our expertise is in the soft side of due diligence assessing the companys intellectual capital. We also have expert operating managers and former credit officers that can look at the company from very different perspectives than other investment banks. This ensures that a company can be leveraged safely and operated according to your plan.

For more see: Digital Marketing

To be added to our database of acquirers, please click here.

- Analytics understanding the revenue model, the processes, the Human, Structural and Relational Capital are critical to Mergers and Acquisitions.