Insights & News for modern dealmakers

Whether you are a private equity investor, a strategic acquirer, a search fund or an M&A advisor: winning deals or mandates means reaching the few owners in a large market who really fit and approaching them personally and credibly. Whoever sells a mandate or a portfolio company decides, among other things through the approach to the buyer list, whether the process creates competition at all. This article shows where outreach sits in the M&A process. It compares Lemlist, Instantly and Smartlead on the criteria that matter there and describes what the outreach system looks like for each type of process.

Outreach in M&A: where the approach sits in the process

Outreach is any active approach, for example by email, LinkedIn, phone or letter, including through your network and existing relationships. Cold outreach is the part where the recipient does not know you yet. The first email to such a person is called a cold email. In M&A there are two occasions for outreach: deal origination and execution sales.

Deal origination: approaching owners. Deal origination means actively uncovering transaction opportunities, ideally before a company is formally for sale. Three groups do this: buyers such as private equity, strategic acquirers and search funds, M&A advisors with a buy-side mandate on behalf of their client and M&A advisors looking to win new sell-side mandates. All three approach owners, just with a different objective. A thesis on sector, size segment and business model produces the long list and outreach follows. It usually takes several contacts over a longer period. An owner is rarely ready to sell at first contact and in the German Mittelstand many never make their intention to exit public at all. Origination is the activity, deal flow the result. The tool delivers the metrics: companies approached, response rate, conversations held.

Execution sales: approaching buyers. Here there is already something to sell: an M&A advisor holds a sell-side mandate, or a private equity investor wants to sell a portfolio company. Execution sales is the buyer outreach in this live process. The buyer list receives the teaser, an anonymised profile of one to two pages. Anyone seriously interested signs a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and receives the information memorandum. The phase ends with indicative offers. An auction process typically approaches a few dozen addressees. Which ones is the seller's most important early decision. Volume plays no role: the list is curated and each addressee is approached exactly once and in the right order.

Why this works differently from sales. A SaaS sales team rewrites a weak sequence and sends it to the next batch of contacts. In M&A the list is not renewable. In deal origination a niche often holds only a few hundred relevant targets, in execution sales the buyer list often only a few dozen investors. Anyone building proprietary deal flow keeps coming back to the same owners over a long time. There is no next batch. Then there are the channels. Some owners reply on LinkedIn within a day, for others an assistant reads the inbox, some only respond to a call or a letter. LinkedIn matters in the Mittelstand, but it is one channel among several. The tool has to keep these touchpoints together per person, log each of them and stop immediately as soon as someone replies.

Two types of tool: multichannel precision or email volume

The outreach tools for this task fall into two groups and choosing the group comes before choosing the tool. Multichannel sequencers such as Lemlist combine email, LinkedIn outreach and manual steps in one sequence per contact. They are built around the person, not the inbox. Volume platforms for cold email such as Instantly and Smartlead are built around the sending infrastructure. They connect many mailboxes, rotate them and warm them up automatically so that sender reputation stays stable. Other channels are missing or run through integrations.

Volume is not what separates the groups, a multichannel sequencer also reaches thousands of contacts. The question is whether you want one tool for all channels or combine several, for example a volume platform for email and a second tool for LinkedIn.

7 comparison criteria for outreach tools

Channels: Lemlist runs email, LinkedIn, SMS and manual steps in one sequence, WhatsApp as an add-on and calls through the built-in dialer. Instantly campaigns are pure email sequences. Calls and SMS sit in the separate CRM add-on and Instantly triggers LinkedIn tools such as HeyReach, Aimfox or La Growth Machine through its automation builder. Smartlead is email-first. LinkedIn runs through an integration, for example with HeyReach, a separate tool with its own licence: a reply, an open or a click in Smartlead hands the contact over to a HeyReach campaign. Calls run through the SmartDialer, a paid credit-based add-on. The letter is optional and not a native channel in any of the three. It can be run as a manual step and partly automated with n8n or Make.

Personalisation: All three work with variables from the list, so personalisation is created in the list. Already while building the long list, AI can write individual text snippets per company, for example on the business model, the location or a succession signal. Uploaded as variables, every email reads as individual without anyone writing it by hand. Add to that spintax: sentence and word variants from which the tool picks at random per recipient so that a hundred identical emails do not go out over the same domain. All three support spintax, Lemlist and Instantly additionally support Liquid syntax for conditions in the text.

Deliverability and warm-up: All three offer warm-up and inbox rotation, Lemlist with lemwarm in every plan, Instantly and Smartlead unlimited for an unlimited number of mailboxes. Lemlist has a deliverability hub with alerts per mailbox and deliverability tests in every plan. Instantly and Smartlead sell inbox placement tests as a paid add-on. Unlimited mailboxes are an argument for mass sending, the volume of a single mandate is covered by every plan compared here.

Block lists: Anyone running several mandates in the same niche needs a list that applies across all campaigns: owners who have declined, existing clients, the client's competitors. Lemlist has a team-wide unsubscribe list for this, in which entire domains can also be blocked. Instantly has a global block list in every plan, Smartlead a global block list and an unsubscribe list.

Reply handling: Lemlist collects replies in a unified inbox in the multichannel plan, Instantly in the Unibox, from which you can only reply from the Hypergrowth plan upwards, Smartlead in the master inbox. All three use AI to detect whether a reply signals interest, a rejection or an out-of-office notice.

CRM integration: Lemlist syncs HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive natively in every plan, Smartlead from the Pro plan upwards. Instantly connects HubSpot in the settings and additionally links HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio and Zoho through the automation builder. Salesforce runs through the API or webhooks and webhooks are only available in the Hypergrowth plan.

Price and cost structure: Lemlist charges per user in the multichannel plan and by email volume in the Email Pro plan, Instantly and Smartlead charge per account with limits on contacts and emails. At entry level all three sit in the range of roughly 30 to 60 euros or dollars per month on annual billing, the plans that matter for a team at roughly 80 to 90. On top of that, all three tools require domains and mailboxes, with the number depending on sending volume. Instantly adds a separate credits subscription for its lead database, enrichment and AI agents. Instantly and Smartlead also need a second tool for LinkedIn. So cost out the whole stack before comparing list prices. Prices change frequently, the current terms are on the providers' websites.

Lemlist in detail

Lemlist is a French multichannel platform. A sequence combines email, LinkedIn profile visits and connection requests, text and voice messages, calls, SMS and manual steps. Each step can depend on what the contact did before. For M&A the relevant plan is Multichannel Expert, because only it includes LinkedIn, calls, SMS, manual steps and the unified inbox. Email Pro plays in the same league as Instantly and Smartlead.

Strengths for M&A teams: Warm-up, deliverability hub and native CRM integration are included in every plan, so a boutique needs no second subscription. The interface is available in German and LinkedIn runs directly in the sequence.

Limits: The multichannel plan is priced per user, so a team of three advisors pays three times over. And every user has to connect their own LinkedIn account.

Instantly in detail

Instantly is a US platform for cold email at scale. The Growth, Hypergrowth and Light Speed plans are tiered by contacts and email volume. Lead database, enrichment and AI agents run through a separate credits subscription.

Strengths: Instantly is built around the sending infrastructure: unlimited mailboxes in rotation and warm-up in every plan, plus bounce detection and reputation protection. Inbox placement tests are available as a paid add-on. AI reply detection sorts replies at no extra charge and the credits subscription adds a database of more than 450 million B2B contacts.

Limits: The campaign itself can only do email, calls and SMS cost extra as a CRM add-on. LinkedIn runs through a connected tool with its own licence, which Instantly triggers by automation, for example when a contact does not reply. Among our clients we have seen Instantly users add La Growth Machine for this. For a team the Hypergrowth plan is the one that counts, because team members, replies from the Unibox, subsequences and webhooks are only available there. In price it sits on a par with Smartlead Pro and below one user in Lemlist Multichannel Expert, but lead database and AI agents cost extra as a credits subscription. Instantly fits when email is the main channel and the team also uses the lead database.

Smartlead in detail

Smartlead is the second volume platform in this comparison, with unlimited mailboxes and warm-up in every plan.

Strengths: Compared with Instantly, Smartlead scores with its native Salesforce integration, which like API and webhooks is included from the Pro plan upwards. Add to that client workspaces and dedicated sending infrastructure, both as paid add-ons. Subsequences trigger their own follow-up flows depending on the reply. For a pure email campaign that is meant to run in Salesforce, Smartlead is the right volume platform.

Limits: LinkedIn runs for example through HeyReach with its own licence, calls through the SmartDialer add-on. The Base plan has neither CRM integration nor API and webhooks. As soon as owners on the short list need a call and a personal follow-up, a multichannel sequencer is the better choice.

Warm-up: why a new domain must not send straight away

Gmail and Outlook rate every sender domain by its history. A fresh domain that sends two hundred emails to unknown mailboxes on day one looks like spam to these filters, however good the copy is. Warm-up gives a domain that history.

The technical setup comes first. The sending domain needs SPF, DKIM and DMARC, three DNS records that prove the email really comes from you. Domains and mailboxes are available directly in all three tools. We recommend buying them independently of the tool, domains from a registrar such as GoDaddy and mailboxes from a provider such as Zapmail. Zapmail also offers domains, sets SPF, DKIM and DMARC automatically and hands the mailboxes over to the common sequencers, including Lemlist, Instantly and Smartlead.

Then the build-up begins. Through a network of connected mailboxes, the tool exchanges real emails that are opened, replied to and pulled out of the spam folder. With lemwarm the volume rises by one email per day. We recommend warming up the mailboxes yourself so that you keep control of the process. That should start at least four to five weeks before the first campaign. In the campaign itself we recommend 20 to 50 emails per mailbox per day, spread across the day. Warm-up then keeps running in the background.

In M&A this weighs more heavily than in sales. If the email to an owner you only approach once lands in the spam folder, the target is lost. A burned domain also hits the next mandate, because it shares its reputation across all campaigns. That is why sequences run through separate sending domains rather than the main domain, a reserve domain waits warmed up in the background and the first email carries no attachment. The same logic applies to LinkedIn: profile visit first, then connection request, with fixed daily limits instead of a hundred requests on day one.

Design: what the outreach system looks like for each process

An outreach system consists of target criteria and list, enrichment and signals, sending domains and mailboxes with warm-up, sequences per channel, block lists, CRM integration and the rules for replies. How you assemble these building blocks depends on the process.

Deal origination: private equity and strategic acquirers

The data sets the timing of the approach: succession signals, shareholder changes, the owner's age or sector triggers decide who enters the sequence and when. The CRM is the system of record, every touchpoint has to land there and that is exactly what a multichannel sequencer is built for. At dealspec we implement a setup like this with Lemlist for deal sourcing clients, among others. Before that, the team clarifies whether it wants an owner conversation or a screening result. Sourcing among a few hundred owners is multichannel work, an email screening across many candidates is volume work.

Deal origination: search funds

A searcher does the same origination with a small team across a large market. The bottleneck is the team's time, so the system decides how many owners the team reaches at all. The infrastructure of domains, mailboxes, warm-up and block lists comes before the first email, because a burned domain costs weeks that are missing from the search. If the search runs through email, LinkedIn, calls and letters, a multichannel sequencer carries the whole process. JANUS, a search fund we work with, coordinates email, LinkedIn and letters in a setup like this, automatically analyses several hundred companies per week and has increased its outreach volume more than sixfold with a small team.

Deal origination: advisors with a buy-side mandate

The target criteria come from the client and the mandate has a term. The client wants to see whom you have approached and how the conversations are going. That is why reporting per mandate matters, for example through dedicated campaigns or separate client workspaces as in Smartlead. Often the client's name should not yet appear in the first approach, so personalisation then runs through the target.

Deal origination: winning mandates

Anyone looking to win sell-side mandates approaches the same owners but sells their own advisory services. The approach therefore needs a trigger, for example a succession signal, a development in the sector or a comparable transaction the advisor has handled. Many owners only think about a sale later, so the cadence can also run over a longer period. Then it matters to be able to see at any time where each owner stands, because with owners in different phases things quickly become hard to track. That is exactly where we see one of the biggest benefits of an outreach system: not everything has to be maintained by hand. A multichannel sequencer with CRM integration carries this, for a pure email screening across a broad region a volume platform is enough.

Execution sales: approaching buyers

Whether an advisor with a sell-side mandate or a private equity investor selling a portfolio company: the list is curated and short. What counts is personalisation per investor, for example with AI drawing on portfolio and investment focus. Add to that the order and deadlines from the process letter, confidentiality and a record of who received what and when. The first approach runs in the sequencer. If an investor shows interest, the conversation continues in the tool, or the teaser goes out from the advisor's main mailbox. Documents do not belong in the first email, because attachments hurt deliverability. A practical option is a separate mailbox such as transaction@ on the main domain in CC, from which NDA and teaser follow as PDFs, or the NDA goes out as a DocuSign link. For teaser and information memorandum, a data room such as Papermark is worth it. It shows per recipient which pages were read for how long, ties access to acceptance of the NDA and applies dynamic watermarks.

The tool is only as good as the list

Every tool in this comparison will send a flawless sequence to the wrong person too. A long list with outdated owner names, generic info@ addresses and duplicates produces bounces, spam complaints and embarrassing replies and no warm-up fixes that. Precision starts with the target criteria, meaning sector, size, geography, financials and shareholder structure. Enriched data such as the owner's age then decides when someone is approached.

Someone has to build and run list and system. In funds this is often done by a dedicated team that works by sector or region and maintains contacts over years. A boutique with a few advisors or a searcher does not have that team and even in a fund the setup ties up capacity that is missing from the deal. Then a partner takes over. dealspec sets up the system for private equity teams, search funds and M&A boutiques.

We build custom long lists including shareholders and financials, scored and prioritised by fit. We also set up domains, warm-up, sequences and the connection to the CRM. This runs in the team's tools and on its domains, or on ours. Replies, conversations and status land in the CRM and the partner sees where each target stands without opening the outreach tool. Anyone who brings the partner in early, before domains, mailboxes, block lists and sequences are in place, gets a setup tailored to their own process from the start. Rebuilding later is expensive.

The choice between these outreach tools comes down to channels, volume and personal preference. Whichever tool you pick, the list, the copy and the timing decide the response rate. If you want to see how we build and run these lists for mandates like yours, take a look at deal sourcing by dealspec.

Disclosure: the links to Lemlist and Zapmail are affiliate links, which has no influence on the assessment.

FAQ on outreach tools in M&A

What is the difference between Lemlist and Instantly?

Lemlist is a multichannel sequencer. It combines email, LinkedIn, calls and manual steps in one sequence per contact. Warm-up and native CRM integrations are included in every plan. Instantly is a volume platform whose campaigns send email only without integrations, with unlimited mailboxes, warm-up and a lead database as a credits subscription. Lemlist suits teams approaching a few hundred decision-makers across several channels, Instantly suits teams sending cold email at high volume.

What is the difference between Instantly and Smartlead?

Both are volume platforms for cold email with unlimited mailboxes and warm-up. Instantly brings AI reply detection, an automation builder, connections to CRMs and LinkedIn tools and a lead database through a separate credits subscription. Smartlead offers CRM integration, client workspaces and API from the Pro plan upwards. In price, Smartlead Pro and Instantly Hypergrowth sit close together, with Instantly adding the credits subscription for database and AI agents.

Which outreach tool suits search funds?

That depends on the channels. If the search runs through email, LinkedIn, calls and letters, a multichannel sequencer such as Lemlist carries the whole process. For a pure email search, Lemlist Email Pro with a flat price for unlimited users or Smartlead Pro with CRM and API is enough. More important than the tool is tailoring the setup of domains, mailboxes, block lists and sequences to your own search from the start and building the right long lists.

Do I need additional domains and mailboxes?

Yes, with all three tools. The main domain stays out of cold outreach. Sending runs through separate domains with two to three mailboxes each. The number of domains depends on the daily volume. A reserve domain waits in case a domain lands on a blacklist. We recommend buying domains and mailboxes independently of the tool, for example from GoDaddy or Zapmail and warming up new mailboxes for at least four to five weeks.

How do I send teaser and NDA from an outreach sequence?

Not as an attachment in the first email, because attachments hurt deliverability. The first approach runs in the sequencer. If an investor shows interest, the teaser goes out from the tool or from the advisor's main mailbox. NDA and teaser follow as PDFs from a separate mailbox such as transaction@ or legal@ in CC, the NDA alternatively as a DocuSign link. Teaser and information memorandum run through a data room such as Papermark, which shows which pages an investor read and for how long.

Can I run LinkedIn outreach with Instantly or Smartlead?

Not natively. Instantly connects HeyReach, Aimfox and La Growth Machine through its automation builder, Smartlead connects LinkedIn for example through HeyReach. Anyone who needs LinkedIn alongside a volume platform adds, for example, La Growth Machine, a Lemlist alternative focused on LinkedIn, with voice messages and social warming in the higher plans. Lemlist is the only tool in this comparison that runs email, LinkedIn and calls in one native sequence.

JANUS is a search fund led by Felix Wolters, who is looking to acquire and take over a SME business from its direct owner. With a small team covering a large market, increasing outreach through manual processes would have required additional staff. dealspec therefore built an efficient sourcing infrastructure, automated key steps and delivered practical workshops to help the team develop its own workflows. Since then, JANUS has increased its deal sourcing and outreach volume more than sixfold.

Status Quo: A small team searching for targets in a large market

A search fund needs to do two things well. It must cover enough of the market to identify the few companies that genuinely fit its acquisition criteria. At the same time, it must approach the owners of those companies in a personal and credible way that can lead to a conversation. Both requirements create a considerable amount of work before the first owner conversation even takes place. Potential markets and industries need to be assessed, companies identified, financial and shareholder information collected, contacts researched and each opportunity evaluated against the search fund’s investment criteria. Once a suitable company has been identified, the team needs to prepare personalised outreach, coordinate communication across email, LinkedIn and letters, and track each company throughout the outreach process.

For JANUS, there were three operational bottlenecks:

1. Sourcing: Identifying relevant industries and companies across a large and fragmented market requires extensive research. As JANUS expands its search into additional segments, the volume of potential targets and the associated research workload increase further.
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2. Enrichment and analysis: Shareholder, financial and contact data needs to be collected from separate sources and consolidated in a structured format. This includes identifying the relevant business owners and their contact details. Industries and individual companies then need to be assessed against JANUS’s acquisition criteria to determine which opportunities warrant closer attention.
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3. Outreach: Once a relevant company and its owners have been identified, the team needs to prepare personalised content, coordinate communication across email, LinkedIn and letters, as well as manage the status of each company throughout the outreach process. As the number of companies grows, maintaining personalisation while keeping outreach activities and responses organised becomes increasingly demanding.

JANUS has a small team to manage this entire process. Felix’s time is most valuable when speaking directly with business owners and evaluating potential acquisitions. However, the research, data preparation and coordination behind those conversations can easily consume a significant share of the working day.

"As a search fund, we need to combine two things in deal sourcing: broad market coverage and a highly targeted approach to the business owners who are truly relevant to us." (Felix Wolters, Managing Director @ JANUS)

The Goal: Increase sourcing capacity and free up time for owner conversations

From the outset, JANUS wanted to build its search around processes that could scale. The objective was to increase market coverage and sourcing throughput without having to grow the team at the same rate. At the same time, Felix wanted to spend less time managing data and repetitive process steps and more time evaluating opportunities and speaking with business owners.

The desired setup therefore needed to:

1. Expand market coverage: Enable JANUS to identify relevant industries and companies systematically, without increasing the manual research workload at the same rate.
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2. Structure enrichment and evaluation: Bring financial, shareholder and contact data together in a consistent format and assess industries and companies according to their own acquisition criteria.
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3. Scale personalised outreach: Support personalised communication across email, LinkedIn and letters while giving the team a structured way to manage companies, activities and responses throughout the outreach process.

Simply adding more data or another standalone tool would not have achieved these objectives. JANUS needed a coherent infrastructure that connected sourcing, enrichment, evaluation and outreach around its own acquisition criteria. The purpose was to automate repetitive work while preserving the judgement and personal engagement required to identify suitable opportunities and build relationships with business owners.

Delivery: AI-enabled Sourcing, Enrichment, Scoring & Outreach Infrastructure tailored to Search Funds

An integrated sourcing and enrichment stack

dealspec supplied and implemented a sourcing and data enrichment stack tailored to JANUS’s internal processes and acquisition criteria. The workflow begins with industries that have already been identified as potentially relevant to the search. Within these pre-filtered industries, the infrastructure supports the systematic identification of companies that may fit their acquisition profile. For each company, the workflow sources and consolidates relevant financial, shareholder and company data from multiple sources. This includes information on company size, financial performance, ownership structures and the relevant business owners. Bringing these data points together creates a structured company profile that the team can use to assess whether an opportunity warrants closer attention.

The work began with the underlying process: which information is required at each stage, where it can be sourced, how the different data points should be connected and where manual handovers occur. dealspec then connected the relevant tools and data flows, implemented the workflows and tested them together with JANUS.

This process-led approach was essential because the value of the infrastructure depends on the relevance and quality of the information it produces. Instead of collecting large volumes of generic company data, the setup focuses research and enrichment on pre-filtered industries and applies JANUS’s criteria to the companies within them. The workflows were subsequently refined based on the team’s experience in its day-to-day search activities.

"What stands out is that dealspec doesn’t simply implement individual automations. They first examine and optimise the underlying process and data flow. The solutions are then tested together and developed iteratively." (Felix Wolters, Managing Partner @ JANUS)

AI workflows built around JANUS investment criteria

JANUS already had a clear view of the industries and company characteristics relevant to its search. dealspec translated its Deal Evaluation Matrix and Industry Scorecard into AI-enabled workflows that could apply these criteria consistently across a much larger number of potential opportunities.

The workflows first assess industries against the factors that matter to JANUS. They then evaluate individual companies within the most relevant segments. Shareholder, financial and contact information is collected and processed, while companies and their business models are analysed against their specific acquisition criteria. This gives the team a structured basis for deciding which opportunities deserve closer attention. Instead of starting each assessment with a blank page, JANUS receives prepared information that can be reviewed, challenged and supplemented by the team.

The workflows also support the transition from analysis to outreach. Based on the available company and owner information, they help prepare personalised outreach content. dealspec complemented this with the implementation of the full email, LinkedIn and postal outreach process, enabling JANUS to coordinate both channels within the broader sourcing workflow. The aim was not to automate the relationship with the business owner. It was to reduce the repetitive work required before that relationship can begin and give the team more capacity for the conversations and judgement that cannot be automated.

Practical workshops using JANUS’s own processes

Technology alone was not enough. JANUS also wanted its team to understand how the workflows operated, where they could be adjusted and which additional use cases might be suitable for automation. Alongside the implementation, dealspec therefore delivered several practical workshops, including a full-day session on site in Düsseldorf. Rather than relying on generic examples, the sessions used JANUS’s own processes, data and operational challenges.

Together, the teams reviewed existing workflows, answered practical questions and developed further automation ideas that could be applied directly to the search. This made it possible to connect the technical setup with the way JANUS actually works from day to day. dealspec remained available after the workshops to answer questions and support the continued development of individual workflows. Over time, this enables the JANUS team to take greater ownership of the infrastructure rather than depending on external support for every adjustment

"Instead of discussing AI and automation through generic theoretical examples, we worked directly with our own processes, data and specific challenges. […] The goal was to give our team the knowledge and tools to understand many of the automations themselves, develop them further and identify new use cases." (Felix Wolters, Managing Partner @ JANUS)

Results: More than 6x the sourcing & outreach with a small team

JANUS now handles more than six times its original outreach volume. More efficient and structured processes allow the team to manage that increase without expanding its headcount at the same rate or compromising the quality of its approach to business owners.

"This allowed us to make our existing processes significantly more efficient and structured, and handle substantially more outreach with a small team without compromising the quality of our approach. Specifically, we increased our outreach volume to more than six times its original level." (Felix Wolters, Managing Partner @ JANUS)

The infrastructure also analyses several hundred companies and datasets automatically each week. Information that previously required repeated manual research and processing can now move through a consistent workflow, giving the team a larger and more structured basis for evaluating potential acquisition opportunities.

"This gives us the infrastructure to achieve high sourcing throughput without having to scale our headcount accordingly. Specifically, we now automatically analyse several hundred companies and datasets each week in a structured way." (Felix Wolters, Managing Director @ JANUS)

The increase in volume is only one part of the result. By connecting the individual stages of sourcing, JANUS has also created a clearer operational process. Data moves more consistently between research, evaluation and outreach, while the team can focus its attention on reviewing the most relevant opportunities and speaking with their owners. Following the workshops, the JANUS team can understand and refine many of the automations itself and identify further use cases as the search evolves. Routine work increasingly runs through the infrastructure, giving Felix more time for the conversations and decisions where his personal involvement creates the most value.

What this means for Search Funds

Search funds typically operate with small teams but need to assess a large number of markets and companies before finding the right acquisition opportunity. This makes sourcing capacity a central constraint: greater market coverage usually creates more research, evaluation and outreach work.

A connected sourcing infrastructure changes that relationship. By linking company identification, data enrichment, evaluation and outreach, search funds can process more opportunities without increasing manual work at the same rate. At the same time, scoring and outreach can remain grounded in the searcher’s individual acquisition criteria rather than relying on generic filters.

dealspec builds and implements these sourcing workflows around the processes of each search fund. This can include the sourcing and enrichment stack, AI-assisted evaluation based on the searcher’s own scorecards, and coordinated email and postal outreach. Practical workshops help the team understand the infrastructure, develop it further and identify additional opportunities for automation.

If you are launching or improving your Search Fund and want more time talking to business owners and less time managing software and data, we're happy to support you.

MIND advises buyers and sellers on M&A transactions in the small and mid-market. For the launch in Q3 2025, we created an entire public-facing presence: logo, slide master, website and branding assets. dealspec supported in building the brand, designed and developed the website and the company valuation calculator and took on search engine optimization as well as ongoing advisory regarding website features and their implementation. Since the launch, leads for M&A transactions have been coming in through the website on a regular basis.

Status Quo: A new M&A advisory firm ahead of its launch

In June 2025, the MIND was preparing to launch it's M&A boutique. In M&A, business owners and buyers look closely at who they are dealing with before they agree to a conversation: through the website, through the documents they are sent, through social media and through whether it all fits together. A firm that is launching has to bring all of this into existence at once. There is no older website to fall back on, no library of documents that has accumulated over the years, no search visibility that has built up on its own. For an advisory firm that is just starting out, the public-facing presence is therefore part of the basic equipment and it needs to be complete on day one.

The Goal: A complete brand at launch and a website that brings in leads

MIND wanted everything the firm needed for the outside world ready at launch: a logo, a slide master for pitches and mandate documents, a website and all media assets, coordinated with each other. Beyond that, the website was not just meant to inform. It had to reach business owners who are considering a sale and give them a concrete reason to get in touch. A brochure site describes what a firm does; it does not create the moment in which someone decides to make contact. Brand, website and documents therefore had to be developed in parallel, under one deadline, and had to fit together at the end of it.

Delivery: Branding, Slide Master, Website, Valuation Calculator, SEO

Brand, Slide Master & Assets

dealspec started with the brand: the logo and the visual identity, and from there a set of illustrations and icons that gives MIND a visual vocabulary of its own instead of stock imagery. From that identity we derived a slide master of more than 75 slides, covering the layouts MIND needs for pitch decks and mandate documents. Deriving it from the identity rather than building it separately is what makes it hold up in daily use: mandate documents are written under time pressure, usually by whoever is closest to the deal, and a master that already carries the firm's typography, colours, icons and layouts means the result looks like MIND without anyone having to think about it. Alongside it came the media assets, along with templates for the formats a boutique publishes regularly, deal tombstones among them.

Website & Valuation Calculator

In parallel, we designed and developed the website, including a company valuation calculator that gives business owners a first indication of what their company is worth and puts them in touch with MIND in the process. Most owners considering a sale have one question before any other, and it is not which advisor to appoint. It is what the business is worth. The calculator answers that question at the level an early enquiry needs, an indication rather than a valuation, and in doing so it gives the owner a reason to leave their details at a point where "contact us" would still have been too big a step. For MIND, the effect is that a conversation starts with a subject already on the table instead of a blank message.

Search Engine Optimization & Sector-specific Landing Pages

Search engine optimisation was not set up as a one-off project for the launch but as an ongoing task that has been running ever since. Rankings move, competitors publish and the way owners search changes, so a position won at launch is not a position held. That ongoing work runs on two tracks. The first is the technical condition of the site, which we monitor rather than assume: MIND currently sits at a health score of 97 out of 100, and keeping it there is what allows everything published on the site to compete in the first place. Broken links, slow pages and crawl errors accumulate quietly on any site that is actively growing, and they cost rankings that the content itself has already earned. The second is content. We have published 18 articles and 6 sector-specific landing pages, which answer the search queries of business owners in each segment. An owner looking for advice on selling their company rarely searches in general terms; they search with their industry attached. A general homepage is a weak answer to that query on both counts: it ranks less well, and the visitor who does arrive has to work out for themselves whether the firm has handled anything like their business. A page written for their segment does both jobs at once, and we keep improving those rankings continuously

Results: ready at launch, incoming leads ever since

MIND went to market with a complete public-facing presence. The website has been a channel in its own right ever since, one that business owners regularly use to get in touch with MIND, carried by ongoing search engine optimisation and by the sector-specific landing pages that have built visibility in their segments. Today the site ranks in the top 10 for 221 keywords and in the top 3 for 154, built on the 18 articles and six sector-specific landing pages published since launch. Positions in the second half of page one rarely produce an enquiry, because the clicks concentrate at the top, and that is where 154 of MIND's rankings now sit. For a firm that had no search presence at all in June 2025, this is the difference between a website that has to be sent to people and one that owners arrive at on their own. The collaboration has since expanded: since December 2025, dealspec has additionally supported MIND with deal sourcing.

"We have been working with dealspec since June 2025. They supported us through the initial launch of MIND and have supported us continuously ever since. [...] dealspec designed and built our website and the company valuation calculator based on our specifications. Search engine optimization has been running continuously ever since. It gave us a finished public presence right at launch and by now, owners are getting in touch with us through the site regularly." (Philipp Köppe, Managing Partner @ MIND)

What this means for M&A Advisors ahead of a launch

Anyone setting up a new M&A boutique, Private Equity or Search Fund needs the same list: logo, slide master, website, assets, visibility. What is difficult is having all of them finished, consistent and live on the same date, while the founders are occupied with mandates, capital and hiring. We deliver all of it and know the audience, the business owners and investors who check how an M&A advisory firm presents itself. A valuation calculator, sector-specific landing pages and ongoing SEO turn the website into a channel that brings in leads.

If you are approaching a launch or relaunch, we're happy to talk and support you.