Growth by Acquisition

Buying Businesses that Aren’t for Sale

The best businesses to buy are those that aren’t for sale. Once a business is on the market it has been packaged and marketed in order to maximize interest, and ultimately selling price.

Our focus is finding businesses, before they are on the market. To simplify, there are three groups of businesses:

• Group One: Those businesses that are actively for sale.
• Group Two: Those businesses that are not actively for sale but may be open to seriously exploring the possibility of being acquired.
• Group Three: Those businesses that absolutely are not for sale.

Most businesses fall into Group Three: Not for Sale. However there are many businesses in Group Two: Companies that aren’t for sale but where the owners are willing to talk about acquisition. We call these the gray area sellers. With the right approach, care, and patience, you can find good gray area opportunities. We specialize in helping clients find, approach, and ultimately to acquire these businesses.

How Do We Find Gray Area Sellers?

Well, we’ve been finding and working with these gray area sellers for many years, and we’ve developed and honed our process. Also, we maintain a database of potential sellers: those that haven’t listed their companies for sale, but are open to discussing acquisition. Finally, we’ve also built a large database of profession contacts like lawyers, accountants, brokers, and others who are in a position to hear about gray area opportunities.

Over the years, we’ve been able to put together strategic acquisition deals in industries as diverse as knitting supplies to business services, to allied medical education companies.

Are you interested in finding a few good target companies to grow by acquisition? We can help. Give us a call for a no cost initial consultation.