The lean foundation

Basic.

Search engagement · Tier 01

Cold email outreach written from real research. One industry category, up to three sub-industries, one region. Owners who aren't running a brokered process. Personalization where institutional templates get archived.

Best fit

Who Basic is built for.

Basic is built for the Main Street acquisition range. Sub-$2M enterprise value, generally under $500K EBITDA. The retainer and close-fee economics are sized to pencil at that scale, where every dollar of fee has to earn its keep against a smaller deal. See the economics page for the full math.

You've probably already run the alternative. Refreshing BizBuySell at sunrise. Joining the same Facebook groups everyone else joined. Calling brokers who keep showing you the same picked-over listings at the same high multiples. Getting a different story each week about why the seller's still considering offers.

Basic is the way out of that. Real deal flow against your specific buy box, surfaced from owners who aren't running a brokered process. Realistic timelines because the owners are at realistic decision points. Common fits are self-funded searchers in tight verticals, smaller independent sponsors, and family offices with a single-vertical Main Street thesis.

Email in action

What real outreach actually looks like.

Every message written from research about the specific owner — their business, their tenure, their signals. No merge fields. No junior-analyst scripts.

Jordan Reeves · Aligned Profit

Tue, 9:42 AM

Re: Hartwell HVAC

David — caught the Camelback retrofit + the two techs you brought on this spring. We represent a sponsor building a Southwest residential HVAC platform: operator-led shops, tenured crews, $1–3M EBITDA. Your profile is the anchor they're looking for…

From a real mailbox, written from real research.

5+ warmed sender mailboxes with SPF/DKIM/DMARC clean. Each subject line and opening sentence references something specific about this owner's business.

Why this works

Personalization is what gets read.

In any vertical with active PE consolidation, owners get the same email. Same merge-field intro. Same generic "we'd love to learn more about your business" close. The first three sentences could be from any of the dozen firms running the same playbook.

Owners delete those without reading. They've been deleting them for a decade.

What earns a reply is research. A specific reference to something the owner built, hired for, or said. A sentence about why your buy box maps to their business in a way no other buyer's would. An ask that's worth fifteen minutes because the message preceding it was worth two minutes of attention.

Basic is built around this. Every message references real research about why that owner could fit your mandate. Sending happens from warmed mailboxes with reputation managed daily, so the message lands where the spam filter doesn't catch it. Personalization is the lift that makes the email layer earn its keep on its own.

Inside the engagement

What's included.

01 · Email

Outbound across 5+ warmed sender mailboxes

Every campaign runs on dedicated sender infrastructure: fresh domains, warmed inboxes, SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured properly, and reputation monitored daily. We rotate across 5+ mailboxes so deliverability stays clean across the campaign and we don't burn one address. Owners see a real email from a real person, not a flagged outbound blast.

02 · Cadence

5+ email touches per owner

Owners ignore single-touch outreach by reflex. A sequenced email campaign — each message referencing something specific about the owner's business — is what earns a reply. Five touches is the minimum we'll commit to per prospect, in writing.

03 · Reporting

Monthly pipeline coverage report

You see exactly which owners were reached, how they responded, and where each one sits in the cultivation cycle. No black box. The report is the same one we use internally to track the search.

04 · Cultivation

Sustained outreach through the full timeline

Most owners aren't ready the day we first reach them — they're six to eighteen months from the event that turns interest into action. We stay useful across that window so when they're ready, you're already a warm relationship, not a cold pitch.

05 · Guarantee

Full Buy Box Guarantee™

Every Basic engagement runs the same Full Buy Box Guarantee™. The work we commit to is written into your Search Engagement Agreement. If we miss it, the retainer comes back. It's the only piece of the engagement with refund consequences attached, because it's the only piece we can fully control.

Learn about the guarantee →

Starting at

^$1,000/mo

Plus a $500 enrichment deposit at signing and a 1% consulting fee at close. The deposit and every retainer credit dollar-for-dollar against the consulting fee. Pricing varies based on industry, geography, and scope. See the economics.

Get your complimentary Buy Box Viability Analysis™

How it runs

One month to ramp. Six to run.

A standard Basic engagement runs seven months total. The first month builds the buy box and warms the sender infrastructure. The next six are the search itself, running sequenced email outreach in coordinated waves.

Month 1

Ramp

Buy box construction, contact validation, sender warmup, kickoff with your team to lock criteria.

Months 2–3

Launch

First waves of email outreach go out across your target list.

Months 4–5

Cultivate

Follow-up email sequences to warm and non-responders. Initial qualified introductions land in your inbox.

Months 6–7

Sustain

Continued cultivation of warm-but-not-ready owners. Monthly coverage report. Quarterly criteria check-in.

Other engagement options

When Basic isn't the right tier.

Basic works for compact buy boxes with reachable owners and flexible timelines. If your buy box leans toward older founder-operated businesses, or your timeline is tight, you'll likely get more out of a tier that stacks additional channels.

Step up to

Epic Search

Adds handwritten direct mail to your top-priority owners — the channel that reaches founder-operated and older targets who ignore email entirely. The default engagement, and the most common one we run.

Learn about Epic →

Step up to

Ultimate Search

Adds full buy box handwritten mail plus Meta ad campaigns. Built for compressed timelines, larger buy boxes, and verticals where heavy PE competition makes top-of-mind awareness matter.

Learn about Ultimate →

Next step

See if Basic fits your buy box.

We'll put together a Buy Box Viability Analysis™ on your target industry and geography. Twenty minutes, yours to keep. If a different tier is the better fit, we'll say so.

Get your complimentary Buy Box Viability Analysis™