Article by:
Rachel Lugo
If you own a home services business doing $3 million to $30 million, you've been contacted about selling it. According to CT Acquisitions, which advises on the buy side, sophisticated operators in this space receive five to ten cold M&A outreaches per quarter. Most owners file that call under flattering or annoying. Both readings miss what's happening.
Top-quartile deal origination programs convert roughly 1% of outbound contacts into closed deals, over a horizon of 18 to 36 months. The person who called you reached out to about a hundred businesses to close one transaction. Your business might be excellent, but the call isn't evidence of that. It's evidence that you fit a profile: right trade, right revenue band, right geography, owner likely in the right age range. An owner who believes they've been singled out negotiates differently than one who understands they're in a funnel.
The more useful detail sits in the buy-side guidance itself, written to buyers about their own mistakes: most founders aren't ready when first approached, and quarterly touchpoints over 18 to 36 months are where the compounding happens. The buyer already assumes you're not ready. They don't expect the first call to produce anything. They expect to stay in light contact for two or three years and be the relationship already in place when you decide it's time.
That same 18 to 36 months is what it takes to make your business worth what you want for it. Financial history takes three years to build. Owner dependence takes a year or two to unwind. Contracts get fixed at renewal cycles. None of it compresses. You and the buyer are working the same clock, and they know it.
So the choice isn't whether to engage the caller. It's what you do with the window. Spend it getting comfortable and you end up signing an LOI with exclusivity, going into diligence with books built to minimize taxes and a top customer at 30% of revenue nobody had calculated, and taking a revised price because you've been off the market four months. Spend it getting ready and diligence finds nothing, the closing price resembles the opening one, and you can walk away. That last part changes every conversation that follows.
Read the full article at stellaandmain.com/blog-buyer-cold-call-home-services
