Home How It Works Recent Transactions Engagements About Get your buy box analysis
Complimentary · 20 minutes · Yours to keep

How many off-market targets
sit in your exact buy box?

We'll build you a Buy Box Analysis on Census and proprietary data for your specific industry, geography, and size range, then walk through it together on a 20-minute call. Includes 50 verified sample companies and the search strategy we'd actually run. The report is yours to keep.

Request your analysis → See $130M in deals
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No obligation Yours to keep, no engagement required
✓
Founder reply Tyler personally, within 1 business day
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Real data Census + proprietary, not a sales pitch
Sample · HVAC · Texas Triangle

Buy Box Analysis

Prepared for: [Your firm] · May 2026
2,847 Deal-qualified targets in buy box
Dallas–Fort Worth MSA1,142
Houston MSA986
San Antonio MSA418
Austin–Round Rock MSA301
Source: U.S. Census County Business Patterns 2024 vintage + Aligned Profit verification
Before you spend another month on broker inbound

You're being asked to bid on 7% of the market.
Most buyers don't realize the other 63% exists.

7%
Where everyone competes

Listed with brokers or already in a banker-led process. Every funded buyer in the country is looking at the same deals, which is why the multiples keep climbing.

63%
Where you should be looking

Open to selling but not listed. Not calling brokers. Not on any deal database. You only get to these owners through patient, direct outreach — which is exactly what we map in your Buy Box Analysis.

A buy box without a population count is a guess. The Buy Box Analysis turns it into a number. How many qualified targets actually exist for your thesis, where they sit, and how reachable they are. Then we hand you the report.

What you'll have in 48 hours

A real deliverable, built on real data,
for your specific buy box.

Clean enough to bring to your investment committee, your lender, or your LPs. The the same report we'd hand a paying client. Built and walked through on us.

Section 01

Executive summary

A bottom-line read on how many deal-qualified targets your buy box actually contains and where the density sits.

  • Total qualified-target count for your exact criteria
  • Breakdown by MSA or region, with share of total
  • Top sectors ranked by qualified-target count
  • Key takeaways on market depth and cyclical risks
  • Methodology notes (employee-size proxy for EBITDA, data vintage)
Section 02

Sector × geography matrix

A full table showing total establishments and the deal-qualified pool broken down by every sector and every MSA in your footprint.

  • Easy to scan — spot where density is highest
  • See concentration patterns at a glance
  • Pinpoint sub-markets worth a sharper search
  • Cross-reference adjacent verticals
Section 03

50 verified sample targets

Real companies pulled from the universe, hand-verified, formatted to your buy box. Not a list to call — a calibration sample for what the engine produces.

  • Company, city, MSA, sector, website
  • Estimated employees + ownership notes
  • Status: Pass, flag-verify, replaced
  • Verification methodology explained
  • What to verify before outreach
Section 04

Search strategy + timeline

How we'd actually run this search — universe size, channel mix, cadence, and realistic timeline to first conversations and LOI.

  • Recommended tier and channel mix
  • Expected funnel math at your universe size
  • Realistic timeline to first LOI
  • Risks specific to this vertical and geography
  • Source citations + buy box definition in writing
Request my Buy Box Analysis →
What the report actually looks like

Real numbers from a recent analysis.

Below: a redacted snapshot from a recent Buy Box Analysis on the lower middle market dental sector across the Southeast. Yours will look like this — built for your industry and geography.

Snapshot 01

Total deal-qualified targets

1,847
Practices matching the buy box

Single-location and multi-doctor dental practices across 12 Southeast MSAs, $1.5M–$5M revenue, founder-owned.

Snapshot 02

Highest-density MSA

312
In Atlanta–Sandy Springs alone

17% of the universe in a single MSA. The geographic concentration shapes the entire campaign cadence.

Snapshot 03

Sample sheet, verified

50
Hand-verified targets, ready to inspect

Pulled from the universe, formatted to your buy box, with ownership notes, employee bands, and verification status.

View a sample analysis →
The Aligned Profit Way™

The same three pillars behind $130M+ in deal flow.

Your Buy Box Analysis isn't just a market sizing exercise — it's a preview of how we'd run your search. Three things have to work together.

01

Right data

Your acquisition thesis run against several million business records using fifteen data points and intent signals. The output is a few hundred owners who match your criteria and look like they're moving toward a transition. A list you can actually work — not a database export.

02

Personalized outreach

Each owner gets messaging that references their actual business — what they do, who they sell to, the signal that put them on the list. Owners can spot a templated pitch from a mile away because they've been deleting them for ten years. Ours doesn't read that way because it isn't written that way.

03

Real follow-up

An experienced M&A operator on every seller call. Most owners in this market are six to eighteen months from the event that finally turns interest into action. Staying useful through that window is the work. When the deal is ready, you're picking up a relationship — not a cold lead.

See the full methodology →
Proof · Recent transactions

Real deals. Real owners.
None of them were on anyone's list.

Manufacturing · Midwest

Midwest Machine Shop

$18MReached LOI

Third generation, partner-owned. We pulled him up by filtering on owner age and ownership structure. He wrote back to the first email.

Dental · East Coast

East Coast Dental Practice

$13MClosed

He'd been deleting cold acquisition emails for years. Our message landed because it was about his practice, not a row in a spreadsheet.

Aesthetics · SE Coast

Plastic Surgery Practice

$8.9MReached contract

Multi-line revenue, founder-owned, 20+ years. We filtered for board-certified practices in secondary coastal markets. He replied.

Specialty services · SE

Surveying Company

$2.4MClosed in 6 months

Owner-operated. Not listed. The outreach happened to land when his timing was already moving. Closed in under six months.

View all 10 transactions →
What clients say
My experience with you guys has been fantastic. I got a spreadsheet the other day with a big, lengthy list. I wanted to make sure that none of them fell through the cracks, which I suppose speaks to the number that you've been able to generate. Some big opportunities, some small, some in the middle — all of them really matter to me. We're super grateful.
DaveM&A Advisory Client
The Coverage Guarantee

98% multi-touch coverage.
Or your money back.

We can't credibly promise a closed deal — too much of that depends on owner timing, diligence, and price expectations. What we can promise is the work. Every owner in your verified target list gets a full multi-touch sequence inside the agreed timeline, or we refund the retainer. As far as we know, no other firm in this segment writes that into the contract.

Read the full terms →
Tyler Murdock, Founder of Aligned Profit
A note from the founder

Why we built this analysis for free.

A buy box without a population count is a guess. We've watched too many funded buyers spend six months chasing a thesis that doesn't have the underlying density to support it — and another six months trying to course-correct.

Twenty minutes on a call with a real Buy Box Analysis in front of you tells you more than most paid market-mapping engagements. If we're a fit, the analysis becomes the basis for a kickoff. If we're not, you still walk with a deliverable you can hand to your investment committee. It's yours either way.

— Tyler Murdock, Founder · Aligned Profit

Questions, answered

What buyers usually want to know first.

Nothing. The Buy Box Analysis is complimentary and the report is yours to keep whether we engage on a search or not. We do this because it's a more honest first conversation than a pitch deck, and because qualifying out a buyer who doesn't have the market depth to support their thesis saves us both six months.

Typically 48 to 72 hours from when we receive your buy box details. The walkthrough call is 20 minutes. You leave the call with the full report — Executive Summary, Sector × Geography Matrix, 50 verified sample targets, and our search strategy recommendation.

Independent sponsors, funded searchers, self-funded searchers, family offices, PE platforms, and operator-acquirers with a defined acquisition thesis. We work primarily in the lower middle market (sub-$25M enterprise value) and Main Street. If your buy box is larger or you're not yet funded, we'll tell you on the call — and you still get the report.

A database export gives you ten thousand rows of company names and nothing useful about which ones might actually transact. The Buy Box Analysis sizes the deal-qualified pool — owners who match your structural criteria and show intent signals consistent with a transition window. The 50-target sample sheet shows you exactly what verified output looks like before you commit to anything.

That's a fine starting point. Most of the analysis call is spent pressure-testing the buy box itself: where the density actually sits, which adjacent sub-sectors are worth considering, whether the geography is wide enough to support a campaign. We've sized everything from $234K cleaning services to $18M machine shops, so the analysis flexes to wherever you are.

No. The 20 minutes is the analysis walkthrough. If you ask about engaging on a search, we'll answer. If you don't, we won't push it. We only take one client per industry sub-segment, geography, and deal-size range at a time — there's no version of this where chasing every lead makes sense for us either.

The data work runs through our Origination Coordinator team using the same tooling that builds every client's target universe. Tyler Murdock, the founder, runs the walkthrough call himself. He's on every kickoff we do, and he's been across $130M+ in proprietary deal flow since 2023.

Request your Buy Box Analysis

Twenty minutes. Complimentary. Yours to keep.

Tell us about your acquisition thesis. Tyler will reply personally within one business day to schedule the 20-minute walkthrough call and confirm the data we'll pull.

We respond personally within one business day. We only take one client per industry sub-segment, geography, and deal-size range at a time. Your information stays with us. See our privacy policy.

$130M+
Proprietary deal flow since 2023
98%
Coverage Guarantee, in writing
2,500+
Owner engagements run