A LeadGen.com Case History

Mergers and Acquisitions

Finding acquisition candidates can be time-consuming and expensive. For one M&A Specialist, this meant that everything they tried netted little to nothing in return. So, they called on LeadGen.com for help.

Discover how we created a scalable process that dramatically reduced the cost of finding viable acquisition candidates!

Overview

With business values increasing, mergers and acquisitions are on the rise. More companies are seeking to buy market share when the acquired company has it. But weeding out the “princes” is no easy task when there are so many “frogs” around. Many companies that want to sell don’t qualify, and most of the ones that would tend to hide. So how do you find the truly qualified acquisition candidates amidst the hundreds – or even thousands – of unqualified ones?

What They Tried

For one M&A specialist in the health field, finding qualified candidates was simply taking too much time and costing too much money. Spending thousands of dollars on direct mail returned on a few responses; and by the time the respondents were screened out, months had gone by and none had met their criteria. Trade shows were similarly expensive: Over 90% of the people who expressed interest really weren’t in a position to be acquired, and the ones that were had many other suitors already.

The Solution

Turning to LeadGen.com was counter-intuitive; B2B telemarketing didn’t seem to fit with the acquisition model, at first glance. But a good salesperson is a good salesperson. Qualifying an acquisition candidate is basically the same as qualifying a prospect. And convincing someone to be interested in selling their business, it turns out, is the same as convincing them to grant an appointment. LeadGen.com developed, with the client, a discrete process that wouldn’t make employees suspicious, a brief telephone presentation for the owner, and a series of qualifying questions that was quickly able to pre-qualify thousands of potential candidates – and stimulate high levels of interest among the good ones.

Results

While there were still a lot of calls to be made, they took a lot less time – and cost a lot less – than direct mail. And in only a short time, numerous deals have resulted, along with a dramatic drop in the cost of finding, and generating, good deals. Most importantly, the process is scalable, enabling the company to ramp it up and down at will.