Blog · Guide
How M&A advisors find off-market sellers beyond referrals
By Gio Bezhanishvili · November 6, 2026 · 9 min read
Every call I get on with an advisor starts out pretty similar. They have built up a stream of referrals over the years, a network they know.
Why referrals run dry, and when
The problem is that whenever someone quits the business or retires, all those connections go with them. And you can only get so many referrals. You cannot time them and you cannot really predict them.
So one or two months you might be doing great, and then, boom, you have no pipeline at all. Or the referrals you do get are not the right fit, or the owner is not ready, and it makes no sense to work with them.
Because of that, a lot of advisors start posting on LinkedIn and going to events. That is good. It builds your reputation, your personal brand, your visibility. But if you need deals today, if you need a pipeline today, you cannot rely on a channel that brings you owners tomorrow. And that is what all inbound channels are.
Early this year I got on a first call with a sell-side advisor in the Midwest. On paper he was doing everything right. He advertised, he sent direct mail and postcards, and the phone rang a good amount. The problem was who was calling. He told me he turned down about 80% of those calls because the businesses were too small - an owner with a toolbox and zero employees. He had also tried an outbound agency the year before, and some of the “leads” they delivered were owners replying “stop emailing me”. His words: “That’s not a lead.” What he wanted was to get in front of the right owners early, because, as he put it, it’s “such a relationship type business”. Here is how that search went.
So below are the main channels advisors use to find off-market sellers, side by side, with published costs and where each one breaks.
Every channel, side by side
Prices come from published pages, checked in November 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a price, it says so.
| Channel | What it is | What it costs | Time to first conversation | What you get | Best for | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals | Introductions from CPAs, attorneys, wealth managers, bankers and past clients. | Relationship time, plus a referral fee if you pay one. Check fee arrangements with your compliance counsel. | Whenever the referrer's client is ready. You do not control it. | The highest-trust conversation there is. The owner arrives already sold on you. | Every advisor, as the base layer. | Volume and timing. When a referrer retires, the stream goes with them. |
| Deal marketplaces (Axial) | A private deal network. Advisors list mandates to buyers; Advisor Finder refers some owners to advisors. | Free for qualified advisory firms. Owner referrals cost "a small fee share once you've been engaged" - the share is not public. | Not stated. Axial's own partner example: 7 owner introductions over 4 years to one investment bank, which led to 2 engagements and 1 close. | Buyer reach first, owner leads second. | Firms with an active origination team and mandates already in hand. | Owner referrals go to "top-performing advisors" ranked by activity, so a small firm with few listings gets few. |
| Co-brokering | Sharing a deal with another intermediary. | A share of the fee. One broker's page cites a 50/50 split. | No public data. | Someone else's listings or buyers. | Advisors with buyers but no inventory, or inventory outside their region. | You split the fee and inherit the other side's habits. And a brokered deal does not stay off-market for long. |
| Data platforms (Grata, SourceScrub, Inven) | Private-company databases for building target lists by industry, size and signals. | Not public; quoted on request for all three. Lighter contact databases like Apollo start at $49 per seat per month, billed annually. | None on its own. A database gives you a list, not a conversation. | A countable universe of target companies and some contacts. | Firms that already run outreach and need a better list. | Small owner-run firms are thin in the data, and someone still has to do the outreach. |
| In-house BD hire | A salaried junior person who builds lists, prospects and books owner meetings. | US average $63,947 a year for a Business Development Associate I (Salary.com), plus tools like Sales Navigator at $119.99 a month. | A few weeks if they arrive with experience and a list. Several months if you have to train them. | Dedicated capacity you control. | Firms that already know what works and have a process to hand over. | Onboarding, training and managing. Without experience, the firms they bring may not be the quality you need. |
| Cold calling | Phoning owners directly from a list. | Caller time, plus a dialer and data. Apollo's dialer add-on is $119 per team per month, billed annually. | No public data. It depends on how often owners pick up. | Live conversations and objections you hear in real time. | Local, owner-operated businesses where the owner answers the phone. | Gatekeepers, low connect rates and caller burnout. |
| Direct mail | Letters or postcards to the owner, often signed by a partner. | $0.82 per First-Class letter stamp before printing. Print-and-mail services like Lob start at $0.828 per letter. | Delivery in a few days; replies are slow and hard to track. | A physical, discreet touch that reaches owners who ignore email. | Older owners and high-value targets, paired with email. | Every piece costs postage, and the address has to reach the owner, not the front desk. |
| LinkedIn outreach | Connection requests and messages to owners, usually through Sales Navigator. | Sales Navigator Core is $119.99 a month per license, with 50 InMails a month. | No public data. | Context: you see the owner, mutual connections and recent activity first. | Professional services and tech owners, and warming up a target before email or a call. | Many owner-operators are barely on LinkedIn, and volume is capped per seat. |
| Cold email | Short, plain emails to owners on a researched list. | In-house: Smartlead from $39 or Instantly from $47 a month, $8.40 per mailbox, Apollo data from $49 a month billed annually, plus the person running it. Agency terms vary, so ask. | No public data. New domains have to be warmed up before you send from them. | The only owner-direct channel here that reaches thousands of owners a month at a low cost per touch. | Advisors with a clear mandate and a market of thousands of owners. | Done badly, it hurts deliverability and reputation. Very small niches run out of owners. |
| Conferences and events | Dealmaker and industry events. | ACG DealMAX listed $2,500 to $4,050 per ticket in its last published table, before travel. Some conferences only show the price inside registration. | On the day, but mostly with buyers and peers. | Buyer relationships, referral partners and credibility. | Building the buyer side. For owners, go to their industry's trade show, not an M&A event. | M&A conferences are full of buyers and intermediaries, not sellers. |
| Content and inbound | Articles, newsletters, podcasts, LinkedIn posts, directory profiles, AI search. | Mostly your time. | Slow and unpredictable. Owners find you when they are ready, not when you need them. | Owners who arrive already trusting you. | Advisors with a clear niche and a point of view who can publish for a year or more. | It compounds slowly, so it cannot fix this quarter's pipeline. |
Reach owners before they are ready
It’s really crazy, but you might think most owners are going to be ready to sell right now, even when they say “okay, I’m open to having a conversation”. Most are not ready today. To catch an owner who is ready right now, you have to be super lucky to get in touch with them at that exact moment, which is a very, very low probability. Hoping for that is like going to the casino and putting everything on green.
To put a number on it: across our sell-side campaigns, roughly 1 in every 475 owners we email says they are open to a conversation. And as I said, even most of those are not selling this month.
So if you realistically want to fill the pipeline, you build a reliable network of owners who can sell in a few months, in a year, in the next 2 years. If you fill that pipeline properly, you never have to worry about it running dry. They might be thinking about selling. They might be planning it. You want to be the first one to start building the relationship, so by the time they decide to sell, you are the advisor they come to.
How to pick your first two channels
Keep your referrals. The question is what you add next to them.
If you already have an active origination team, people with their whole day dedicated to finding the right targets, qualifying them, reaching out and getting on calls with the ones who show interest, then Axial makes sense.
If you don’t, or you feel most of your team’s time goes to things that could be spent better, then you need a direct channel to owners. You can build it yourself, hire for it, or hand it to an agency.
If you have never done outbound, start here
The first thing I would do is build a good list. Especially nowadays with AI, you can do a lot of things that used to need a whole team. You already have the knowledge. You know what a good firm looks like, and you know what good succession signals are.
- Give the AI everything you know: what a good firm looks like for your mandate or thesis, what a good succession signal looks like, what a good owner looks like.
- Ask it to build you a small sample list. Let’s say just 100 companies, with proper research on each owner so you know how to approach them.
- Use a data tool like Apollo, LeadMagic or QuickEnrich to get each owner’s email, phone number and LinkedIn.
- Then go account by account. Send a short email, under 80 words. Quickly introduce yourself, say why you are reaching out to them specifically, and what you bring to the table that dozens of other advisors don’t.
- Mention a specific buyer, or your access to a buyer network. That does a lot more than “I can help you sell” or “I can help you prepare to sell”.
- Connect on LinkedIn and give them a call too. Space it all out, so they keep seeing you from different angles and they cannot forget you.
Write like a person
You might think deal sourcing is all about sounding clever and way too professional, with a suit and tie on. Drop the facade, get off your high horse. On the other end of the line is just another person, same as you. Write as you would normally speak to a friend. Obviously, no swearing and no buddy-buddy talk, but keep it casual and easygoing, and invite them to a conversation. That is the whole point.
When to hire, and when to hand it off
You can hire a BD person, and it makes sense at the point where you already know what’s working and have a process laid out. If they come with experience, a list and existing connections, they might get you a first conversation in the first few weeks. If they don’t, you have to onboard them, train them, manage them, and get them used to your tools. It might be several months before you get a first valid conversation. And if they have no previous experience, the quality of the firms they bring may not even be there. So it’s not really worth it.
With an agency, you’re relying on a team that works with dozens of firms like yours and already has the data on what’s working and what’s not. The catch is that a bad agency sends you wrong-fit firms just as fast, so ask to see a sample of the list and the emails before anything sends.
When not to do cold email at all
If you have the budget to run ads every day, owners come to you from referrals and content every month, and there is always more demand than you can supply, then you definitely should not. You don’t need outbound in that case.
For everyone else, the next step is small: write down your mandate, the succession signals you trust, and what makes a good owner, then build that first list of 100.
Questions people ask
What is the fastest way for an M&A advisor to find off-market sellers?
Direct outreach to a researched list of owners who fit your mandate, by email, LinkedIn and phone together.
Should I hire a business development person or use an agency?
Hire when you already know what works and have a process laid out for them to run.
Is Axial a good way to find sellers?
Axial is useful if you already have an active origination team or mandates and want buyers. Its owner referrals go to top-performing advisors ranked by activity, so a small firm with few listings gets few.
When should an advisor not do cold email at all?
When owners already come to you from referrals, content and other sources every month and you have more demand than you can handle. In that case you do not need outbound.
How long should a cold email to a business owner be?
Under 80 words.
Sources
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator - plans
- Grata - plans
- Instantly - pricing
- Google Workspace - pricing
- Apollo - pricing
- Axial - Advisor Finder
- Axial - investment banking partnerships
- Axial - pricing
- IBBA - glossary
- Inven - pricing
- Lob - pricing
- Salary.com - Business Development Associate I
- Smartlead - pricing
- SourceScrub - pricing
- USPS - prices
- ACG DealMAX - registration table (search result; page redirected)
- Konverrt sell-side campaign data (measured November 2026)