M&A business development workflows have changed significantly over the last 5 years. Nearly 50% of dealmakers now leverage AI tools for sourcing, screening, and due diligence, helping them outperform their competitors and navigate economic volatility.
M&A transactions surged in 2025: Easing interest rates and narrowing valuation gaps drove M&A activity up 8.3% YoY as deal value climbed 203% YoY, according to Ernst & Young. This growth would not have been possible without effective, efficient BD teams and processes.
In this article, we will dive into the evolution of business development and how to best leverage the function to support and propel M&A activity.
Key Takeaways
- M&A business development is a marathon, not a sprint.
- Revenue isn’t the only important metric to track in M&A; customer satisfaction and integration timelines can serve as vital indicators.
- Successful business is not just transactional; at its core, it's relational.
What Does M&A Business Development Actually Mean Today?
Traditionally, business development was associated with the early stages of dealmaking, i.e., sourcing and screening. Today, modern M&A business development teams are involved across the full deal cycle – from sourcing and screening to outreach and relationship building to early diligence and integration.
Modern BD teams must demonstrate flexibility as deals ebb and flow. The process is rarely linear, and strong teams must know when to rev the engine, and when to put on cruise control.
From Targeting to Closing: The BD Workflow Behind the Deal
Behind every merger and every acquisition is a robust workflow. This is how the Business Development team fits into the M&A process.
1. Research & Target Identification
M&A business development begins with research – mapping markets, subsectors, and competitors to build long target lists that align with strategic priorities and thematic investing. At this point, firm-defined objectives and strategies have informed where BD teams will cast their net. From here, BD teams dig further into research to create a curated list that matches client criteria. This process demands a purpose-built platform that combines proprietary data with robust integrations and complex workflows.
2. Outreach
Initial conversations are rarely about selling. Rather, early-stage business development focuses on learning, trust-building, and understanding the long-term goals of an acquisition target. In the outreach phase, personalization and relationship-building are the priorities.
3. Valuation & Early Diligence
When there appears to be a fit between the buyer and acquisition target, the BD team begins early diligence in analyzing the target’s operational efficiency, positioning, and financial health. This process also includes product fit, customer overlap, and cultural signals.
4. Negotiations
Because the Business Development team has already had multiple touchpoints with the target, the company's owners should be primed for the initial approach. The personal touch of a BD team can help to streamline the process of outlining key deal terms, conducting preliminary due diligence, and drafting the LOI.
5. Due Diligence
Due diligence is typically performed by equity research analysts and fund managers as opposed to the BD team. This step involves a deeper look at financial statements, legal documentation, supply chains, and company culture.
6. Valuation and Structuring
Parallel with due diligence is the valuation and deal structuring process. The Business Development team can assist with reviewing past M&A transactions in the sector to help inform fair market value, but much of this step will be executed by the finance team.
7. Integration and Value Capture
The most successful teams treat integration as a core part of M&A business development, not just a handoff. Having well-aquatinted parties on both sides of the transaction can facilitate more effective communication and maintain trust during a time of transition.
Tools for M&A Business Development
Deal Sourcing and Screening
The private market is vast, opaque, and dispersed. Grata provides full visibility into the landscape. With features like Agentic Search, Grata equips dealmakers with the precise insights they need to quickly source and screen companies.
Speed is the bottleneck in early sourcing and diligence – or, at least, it used to be. Dealmakers often start with unstructured investment mandates and spend cycles, learning filter paradigms in deal sourcing tools, tweaking keywords, and iterating to eliminate noise in the results. Grata’s Agentic Search expedites the process by understanding the “why” behind your query, then reasoning through it like a teammate.
Instead of static filters, Agentic Search adapts, guides exploration, and accelerates the refinement process—turning vague mandates into precise target lists. The result is an accelerated path from idea to validation, so dealmakers reach conviction faster and win the deal first.
Live Deals
Speed wins deals – so, being first matters. Grata’s Live Deals platform provides direct access to mandates before they hit the market. Live Deals are vetted and qualified by Grata’s investment standards, including detailed financials, ownership structures, and a direct connection to the advisor.
Pipeline Management
The best pipeline is a visible one. Grata eliminates complicated spreadsheets and time spent switching between systems by centralizing deal stages, notes, owners, and statuses in one place. Double-entry is a relic of the past with Grata’s two-way CRM sync and instant exports. Users can build custom labels, best-practice templates, and visualize deal flows from whichever angle works best.
Conferences and Events
Every event can be a sourcing opportunity if you know who’s in the room. Grata tracks over 25,000 industry conferences, expos, and trade shows so you can make the most of your travels. Grata offers real-time visibility into emerging players, competitors, and category leaders who will be in attendance.
Within the platform, Grata Autopilot automatically monitors saved conferences and target lists, sending you alerts when a target is attending the same event as your team. Grata’s Similar Search to map expands pipeline potential by enabling users to save similar companies attending adjacent events, so you can build targeted lists and schedule high-impact meetings with confidence.
CRM Intelligence
Grata helps you get more mileage out of your CRM. By overlaying existing CRM data directly in Grata, users can discover new insights, receive alerts on target-related activity, and sync everything back to Salesforce, Hubspot, or DealCloud.
Lessons from Real Acquisitions: What Worked, What Didn’t
“We acquired a company to enter the B2G market and strengthen our B2C presence in a strategic region of São Paulo—resulting in a 25% revenue increase and a 7% EBITA improvement.” - Fábio Priore, Head of M&A at Rentokil Initial (LinkedIn)
Lessons learned:
- M&A is a means, not an end: Combining acquisition (scale) with BD (execution) was a key driver of success.
- Due diligence goes beyond the financial -- understanding culture and operational processes are critical.
“I have seen this time and again: the buyer wants the technology to match their stack, so they lose valuable go-to-market (GTM) momentum from the deal because of refactoring. Instead, plan a joint new version that will have an integrated solution. Customers will understand if everything doesn't match perfectly. Make sure security and quality are up to your standards.” - Kit Merker, VP of Business Development at JFrog (Forbes)
Lessons learned:
- Don’t sacrifice quality for uniformity. Plan to transition the companies jointly.
“It was early in my career, and I was a Corp Dev officer who came out of banking...We did a deal in a hot technology market. And about three to four weeks after the deal closed, I called up the business sponsor and asked him how the business was doing. As it turned out, he had never seen the company nor visited it even once...When the deal closed, a big announcement went out, and the one thing that we did was send out a mass email. Other than that, it was crickets...
Two things happened: First, about half the employees left. They were all getting other job offers, and nobody told them whether they had a job with us. The second thing that happened about the same time: the press release went out, and all the clients started calling. And, literally, people weren't answering the phones. The reps that clients used to deal with were gone. And this was a kind of business where you could easily transfer your business and your contract. So, they all left.
So, after 30 days, when we looked into it, we found we had lost about half the employees and about 40% of the revenue. And if we had bought one plane ticket and 40 polo shirts, we could have stopped that from happening. It was an important lesson for me and how powerful integration is and how important the integration process is as part of building and not destroying the value of a deal that you do." - Michael Frankel, Founder and Managing Partner at Trajectory Capital Management (LinkedIn)
Lessons learned:
- Focusing on people, both customers and employees, is critical to a successful acquisition.
Turning M&A Into a Long-Term Growth Engine
The most successful companies don’t treat M&A as a box to be checked – they treat it as a muscle. Business Development is vital when it comes to exercising that muscle; researching, networking, and iterating until a match is made. BD teams engage potential targets years before a process begins, earn trust through repeated interactions, and demonstrate a clear vision for how an acquisition benefits both sides. That patience compounds from sourcing to integration.
The importance of a personal touch cannot be understated. Far before money is exchanged, decisions are shaped by organic moments and human interactions; relationships are the foundation of M&A Business Development.
By investing in the Business Development process – strategy-driven targeting, purpose-built platforms, and deliberate relationship building – M&A becomes a repeatable engine for growth. In an increasingly competitive dealmaking landscape, fortune favors those who are committed to a true partnership.
Supercharge Your Business Development Workflows with Grata
Grata empowers M&A business development teams to source smarter, move faster, and build better relationships across the entire deal lifecycle. From deep market research and CRM intelligence, to live mandates and pipeline visibility, Grata helps you reach conviction sooner — and win more deals.
Schedule a demo of Grata to see how leading BD teams are transforming M&A into a repeatable growth engine.
