Here's the thing about small business acquisition: the problem isn't that there aren't enough sellers. It's that most of them are invisible. They're open to the right conversation but not actively looking. They haven't called a broker and they're not on BizBuySell. They're just thinking about it.
In 2025, we sent 82,035 emails to small business owners. We got 1,815 replies (3.87% reply rate) and 454 owners who wanted real conversations. That means that of the people who replied, 34% expressed genuine interest in exploring a sale.
If you're thinking about proprietary deal flow strategies, here's what matters: off-market works because it gives you access to private information before it becomes market information.
The Real Advantage: Getting There Early
Everyone talks about speed in search - find a target, move fast, close in 12-24 months. But that timeline pressure actually conflicts with how owners make exit decisions. Most don't wake up ready to sell. They think about it for months or years before they're willing to engage advisors.
Here's why early contact matters: if you reach an owner during the thinking phase - before they list, before they hire a banker, before they run a process - you get advantages that compound through closing.
You learn about the business when they're still thinking out loud, before the story gets packaged for marketing. You're not bidder #6 in the process. You're the person they called when they were ready. The conversations that start 6-12 months early don't feel rushed, and by the time they're ready to transact, you've already built trust.
Plus, owners who haven't tested the market yet tend to have more realistic pricing expectations than those who've been told their business is worth 8x by a broker.
The 454 interested conversations from our data represent this early access. Not all of them turn into deals, but the ones that do move faster and close cleaner than competitive processes.
Why Just Sending More Emails Doesn't Work
New searchers often think off-market is purely a volume game: send 10,000 emails instead of 2,000 and you'll get 5x the results. The data doesn't support that.
We saw no linear relationship between volume and outcomes. Searchers who sent 5,000 emails didn't necessarily beat those who sent 2,000. What mattered more was whether the message was any good, whether targeting made sense, and whether the searcher could actually convert replies into conversations.
That conversion (reply to real interest) ranged from 12% to 49% depending on messaging and follow ups. The variable wasn't owner readiness - it was whether the searcher could quickly build credibility and make engagement feel low-stakes. If you're funding outreach budgets, this matters. ROI doesn't scale linearly with spend. The 10,000th email has way less marginal value than getting the first 1,000 right.
What Actually Worked in the Emails
Email is a low-trust channel. Owners get dozens of acquisition inquiries, most automated or generic. Default response: delete.
The messages that got replies shared a few traits:
- Short. Most were under 70 words. Long emails signal you don't value their time.
- Personal story, not pitch. The best ones were compressed origin stories: why this searcher was looking, what they brought, why this business specifically.
- Low ask. They didn't ask for a decision, just an exploratory conversation. Owners replied when they could explore without committing.
- Real voice. They sounded like a person wrote them, not a template. Owners can smell automated language.
Where Owners Were Most Receptive
We worked across a ton of verticals in 2025: pest control, fleet repair, defense contracting, cybersecurity, precision manufacturing, asphalt, pond management, medical device repair, HOA tech, water management platforms, and more.
Here's what we observed:
- Consolidating industries. Sectors with roll-up activity saw higher reply rates. Owners knew peers were selling and got curious about their own options.
- Complex operations. Businesses with regulatory burden, technical complexity, or heavy capex needs. Owners were more interested in talking about succession and transition support.
- Aging ownership. No surprise - owners in their 60s and 70s showed higher interest. But the interesting part? Most weren't in active processes yet but rather were still in the thinking phase.
What Killed Momentum
Not every campaign worked. The ones that stalled had common problems:
- Too academic. Searchers who used business school jargon - EBITDA, SDE, gross margins - saw reply rates tank. It's not the common language of small business owners on a day-to-day basis.
- Too generic. Broad outreach to any business in a revenue range got replies but rarely interest. Owners could tell they were just a name on a list.
- Slow follow-through. Getting a reply means nothing if you take 3 days to respond or ask surface-level questions. We saw interest collapse when searchers were slow or clearly hadn't researched the business.
- Wrong timeline expectations. Searchers who needed to close in 3-6 months struggled to convert off-market conversations. These deals often take 9-18 months from first contact because you're on the owner's timeline, not yours.
The Strategic Question
Search funds face more competition every year. More searchers, more PE, more corporate buyers. Brokered processes are crowded and auctions favor speed and scale - neither of which helps a typical search fund.
Off-market solves for different variables: it creates optionality before competition exists. Those 454 conversations represent access to sellers who weren't in the market yet. Some never will be. But some will, and when they are, the searcher who reached out months earlier has an advantage capital can't buy.
The 2025 data says the latter works. It's viable, scalable, and (when done right) more capital efficient.
What Changes in 2026
Off-market is getting more common. More searchers are sending emails. More owners are receiving them. The novelty advantage is fading.
What will matter going forward:
- Specificity wins. Generic outreach will perform worse. Searchers who can articulate genuine, specific interest in a particular business will stand out.
- Reputation signals matter more. Owners will check LinkedIn, search backgrounds, ask for references. Credibility matters in a crowded channel.
- Multi-channel helps. Email still works, but combining it with LinkedIn, mutual connections, or industry events will separate signal from noise.
The core insight doesn't change: owners make exit decisions more slowly and almost always before they engage formal processes. Off-market works because it meets owners in the consideration phase, not the transaction phase.
If yes, off-market outreach remains one of the highest-ROI strategies in search fund acquisition.
