When deals slowed down during the past few years, the words “deal sourcing” graced the headlines pretty frequently. But there’s an aspect of dealmaking that needs a little more love: exits.
You know, the way you create returns for LPs.
What’s tricky about exits is building a strong list of potential buyers. Why is this tricky? It’s deceptively difficult. Most dealmakers would shrug and say, “Easy. I know where to go for my lists.” But there are a few strategies dealmakers can use to build an even stronger buyer list that goes beyond the usual suspects.
Common Mistakes When Building a Buyer List
- Going too narrow, too fast. Kicking off your list-building only to stop after the usual suspects is going to leave a huge blind spot, missing under-the-radar acquirers and minimizing your competitive edge. Start your list off broad and then break it down by tiers of likeliness to buy.
- Ignoring adjacencies. Your next great buyer may live in neighboring industry categories. Expand your category scope to ensure you’re hitting all relevant offshoots of the industry. Grata’s Agentic Search does this effortlessly, interpreting national language input into hyper-specific filters and keywords you may not have considered.
- Not screening for intent. Speed wins deals, so moving on the right targets is just as important as moving quickly. Failing to rank buyers by acquisitiveness, recency, and mandate wastes valuable time on low‑probability outreach.
- Assuming ability to pay. Before engaging deeply with a prospective buyer, it’s imperative to validate their capital availability including fund size, dry powder for sponsors, cashflow, market cap, headroom for strategics, etc.
- Excluding financial sponsors. Even though a strategic sponsor may pay more, don’t count out financial sponsors, who tend to increase process discipline and momentum.
- Manual research overload. The days of spreadsheet‑only workflows are over. Dealmakers who use a purpose-built, AI-native platform for buyer discovery are accelerating timelines and encounter fewer risks.
Why You Should Broaden Your Search When Building a Buyer List
If you feel confident in your buyer list, I’d challenge you to go back and review it. How much out-of-the-box thinking do you see in that list?
Take, for example, a dealmaker that’s selling a business process outsourcing (BPO) company that provides HR services.
Selling a BPO, it wouldn’t be surprising if this dealmaker’s initial list included firms whose portfolio companies include similar service companies. But the strongest buyer lists go one step further. They include new kinds of buyers, like recruiting or consulting firms looking to expand their services.
However, like dating in the 21st century, it’s getting harder to make the right connections.
Without the right technology, you can’t easily shift through every firm’s investment criteria and determine how that broad, generic wording plays out in their investment history.
You’re left in the dark searching for the best match for your investment.
Getting Started: What Makes a Qualified Buyer
How to Build a Buyers List That Actually Converts
You’ve likely got a list of expectations and dealbreakers. If you can rank your buyer list according to buyer intent and expend the appropriate amount of resources toward each option , you’re much more likely to find the best buyer in the least amount of time.
As you build your list, consider:
- Acquisitiveness. Assess the level of interest to acquire by looking at the number of total investments the firm has made, and the relevant investments it has made in your space. Is it executing a roll-up with many add-on acquisitions? Is the firm investing around a theme?
- Recency. When was the firm’s last investment and exit? This will help determine if it is in the market or if the deal you’re seeing is stale.
- Investment Mandate (ability to buy). The be-all and end-all for financial buyers will be their mandate. Can they (and will they) invest in the revenue or EBITDA of the target? For strategic buyers, do they have enough market cap, cash, or revenue to do the deal? If they can’t afford the deal, there’s no deal to be done. Conversely, if the deal is too small, it’s not going to be worth their time.
- Financial Sponsors v. Strategic Buyers. A financial buyer will likely run a faster due diligence process, but a strategic buyer will likely have more industry alignment and can pay higher multiples. Each one has unique goals and needs to be approached differently.
7 Steps to Building a Better Buyer List
1. Define the thesis and guardrails.
First, the basics. Clarify your sector scope, revenue/EBITDA range, deal size, geography, and red lines (competitors, channel conflicts). This anchors your search and streamlines messaging.
2. Go broad first, then look for adjacencies.
Start your list with the obvious strategics and sponsors, and then expand to adjacent categories where the strategic rationale is still maintained.
3. Tier the buyer universe.
Segment your buyer list into Tier 1 (core fits), Tier 2 (opportunistic fits), Tier 3 (exploratory/wildcards). Prioritize your time by tier to keep deal velocity high.
4. Score your list for buyer intent.
Rank your buyer list by acquisitiveness, recency, and mandate/capacity to surface near‑term buyers.
5. Validate ability to pay.
Check the fund size/dry powder for sponsors, cash/market cap/leverage for strategics, and confirm their decision process and timelines.
6. Find the right contact for targeted outreach.
When conducting outreach, target corporate development, business unit, or M&A leaders at strategic buyers, and deal team leads, VPs, or principals at financial sponsors. Cross-reference relevant portfolio activity or adjacent acquisitions to determine the best path forward.
7. Track, iterate, and expand.
Measure responses by tier, then widen or narrow accordingly. Use platforms like Grata to export, ensure no duplication, and update data as the process evolves.
Manual vs. Automated Buyer Discovery
Modern deal‑sourcing platforms reduce manual search time, improve data quality, and add ranking signals that are difficult to replicate in spreadsheets. Below, we cover the key differences between manual and automated buyer discovery.
How to Use Grata for Buyer List Building
Building the right buyer list is crucial – not just when it comes to exits, but also when raising a fund or attending an event. Today’s dealmakers need precision, speed, and full visibility into the private markets, and that requires technology built specifically for M&A workflows.
As an end‑to‑end dealmaking platform, Grata provides investment‑grade private‑company intelligence that traditional M&A databases can’t match. Instead of relying on incomplete industry classifications or narrow keyword searches, Grata uses AI‑driven, investment‑aware search to map markets, surface hidden buyers, and reveal unexpected adjacencies that manual methods routinely miss.
Most importantly, Grata transforms what used to take hours into seconds. With Grata, dealmakers can:
- See the full landscape instantly, with proprietary intelligence pulled from 20M+ private companies -- far broader and more accurate than legacy databases.
- Identify financial sponsors and strategics actively investing in your exact space, using AI to analyze activity patterns and extract investor relevance in seconds.
- Find non-obvious comparables and look‑alike buyers, thanks to NLP‑driven similarity search that understands a company’s business model far beyond its NAICS code.
- Uncover targets and buyers traditional tools miss, including software‑enabled or hybrid-category companies that exist outside clean industry taxonomies.
If your buyer discovery still depends on guesswork or incomplete data, you’re not just moving slowly -- you’re leaving real opportunities behind. With Grata, you’ll stop looking for buyers in the wrong places and start discovering the ones that matter most.
Schedule a demo of Grata today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a buyer list in M&A?
A buyer list is a curated, tiered universe of strategic, financial, and hybrid acquirers with the rationale, capacity, and appetite to buy your specific business with the intent to maximize competition and certainty.
How long should a buyer list be?
A buyer list should be long enough to “clear the market” but short enough to manage. A list of 50-200 names is a good start. Filter your list into tiers, so you focus on the most likely bidders first. Start with a broad list before narrowing down.
What’s the difference between strategic and financial buyers?
Strategic buyers pay for synergies and long‑term fit, while financial buyers optimize for return and process. By researching both strategic and financial buyers, your buyer list will enhance competitive tension and deal certainty.
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