Trade specificity for trust
An intermediary cannot responsibly help with “send me good businesses.” Give them the category, geography, business model, scale and exclusions, plus why the buyer could be a credible next owner. Explain what you do not need and what information should remain confidential.
Offer a small useful artifact: a sourced market brief, owner-readiness checklist or clean one-page criteria summary. The aim is a relevant conversation, not disguising an advertisement as an independent recommendation.
Build a permissioned referral loop
Start with operators, bankers, fractional CFOs, accountants, transaction counsel and industry specialists. Ask what they are seeing in aggregate and whether they can introduce someone who would welcome the discussion. Do not ask them to expose client financials or confidential problems.
Record introducer, permission scope, next agreed action and any conflict. Paid referral arrangements need legal and disclosure review; a revenue target is not a reason to improvise transaction-compensation rules.
Use direct channels with restraint
Researched email, calls and direct mail are hypotheses to test against response quality and permission—not simply volume. For commercial email, use the FTC guidance as a baseline and obtain jurisdiction-specific advice where appropriate. Keep unsubscribes and owner declines actionable across every campaign.
The first commercial test
Our suggested experiment is one narrow paid research pilot with a real decision maker: one mandate, two short decision briefs and a criteria-change log. Success is a better decision and a willingness to renew. It is not a guaranteed deal count, a scrape volume or a claim that every identified company is for sale.
- Federal Trade Commission · Commercial email compliance guide ↗Primary-purpose rules; B2B commercial email is not categorically exempt. No personal legal advice. Checked 2026-09-15.