How to find off-market leads (3 easy steps)

Last week, we talked about why off-market deals are a goldmine for acquisitions.

Today, I’m going to show you how to actually get started with off-market sourcing.

And that starts with building a lead list.

There are tons of third-party companies that will source leads for you.

But that’ll cost you thousands of dollars.

So instead, I’ll show you how my students and I build lead lists for free.

Step 1: Define your target business

This includes:

1. The industry

2. The geographical area

3. The relative size of the business

You’ll waste a ton of time if you don’t dial this in!

If you want to buy an HVAC company, live in Florida, and need the business to have a minimum of $200k cashflow to replace your W2 income...

It’ll do you no good to look at HVAC companies in Colorado making $50k a year.

Plus, you’ll likely take out an SBA loan to finance the deal. So factor that into your costs.

Step 2: Scrape the leads

Here are the main websites I use to scrape leads.

They’re super simple and 100% free:

1. Apollo.io

Apollo scrapes most of its information from LinkedIn, so this is a treasure trove for lead gen.

You can narrow your search down by:

• Geographical area

• Industry

• Size

• Number of employees

• And too many other categories to list here.

Or, you can cut out the middleman and use...

2. LinkedIn

This is the second best option.

It takes more legwork than Apollo, but it’s also where most small business owners hang out.

I’ve found partners, investors, and companies for sale here I would have never found otherwise.

3. Local business guides

Places like:

• Google Reviews

• Yelp

• Angie’s List

Before adding a company to my list, I always check reviews.

How’s their service? Are people happy with them? Is it a two-star or five-star kind of brand?

These sites are also a great way to find similar five-star companies who might be looking to sell.

Step 3: Scrub the list

Without fail, whenever I build a list, companies like Home Depot and Walmart manage to sneak in there.

Make it a habit to go through and remove any companies that got categorized incorrectly or don’t make sense.

And if you’d rather spend money to save time...

You can hire VA off of Fiverr or Upwork to do all of the above!

This is what I do at this point in my career — it’ll cost you between $40 to $400 and free you up to focus on outreach.

And the final step to sourcing off-market deals is...

Writing a cold email script.

I’ll cover that in the next email.

Until then, if you’d like more step-by-step strategies for buying your first business:

Fill out our 2-minute Interested Investor Survey here.

Or, if you have a business you’re looking to sell:

Tell me the details here, and we’ll send buyers your way if there’s a good fit.

See you in the next issue, and happy prospecting!

— Ben Kelly