Is it really a numbers game? Sourcing best practices

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by a searcher from INSEAD
in Paris, France

3yrs ago

Is it really a numbers game? Sourcing best practices

Hi,

I was going through sourcing best practices here and there and noticed that there is a high focus on how to massively contact businesses in order to source deals. Here is for example a advice I found in another thread: "I try to customize 25 a week and send outredactednew emails weekly".

This seems very counter-intuitive to me. It is a B2B market where mass marketing approaches tend to work less.

What am I missing? What is the rational behind the numbers game?

Best,

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reply by a searcher 3yrs ago
in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

I'd say the best way to go is to mix up quantity & quality together to ensure that you reach out to business owners with high relevancy.

Here are some strategies I have seen that works:

1. Identifying companies that in your industry and building a list of companies around your ideal criteria such as revenue, EBITDA and so on
2. Reaching out to them with a little bit of personalization and introduction.

The reason why I'd go for a numbers game is because:

1. Not a lot of people are looking to exit their business / raise capital - a lot of sifting needs to be done, and the best way to go about that is via reaching out to a large number of companies and seeing who has interest.
2. Analyzing intent and checking which business owners are looking to exit right now is a high-cost & time-consuming endeavor. In an ideal world, this would be the best idea, but this is an expensive approach in terms of time & money since a lot of research needs to be done.

Hope this was useful.