Want to buy a business? Follow these tips to find opportunities.

Most small business owners and managers know: If you want to get a better deal for anything, set up a competitive bidding process. That’s exactly what sellers are doing when they work with a broker and publicly list their business for sale, especially via online marketplaces.

If you search online for businesses to buy, you’ll come across websites with listings that EVERYONE can see. Those listings represent a fairly competitive process for acquiring the business. They also create a greater opportunity for sellers to attain a higher price for their business.

For you, as a potential buyer, the opportunity to obtain a better deal comes from the opposite. You want to limit competition, even to the point of becoming the acquirer pursuing a deal. So, how do you limit competition?

You need to know the owners before they’re seriously considering selling. In this article, we’ll examine two approaches to meeting potential sellers: a broad marketing campaign and one–to–one networking.

Finding Low Competition Deals: A Marketing Approach

Serious buyers are often engaged in serious network building. If you want to expand your network to meet prospective business, a great way to start is to use tactics businesses already employ to meet prospects: Connect with them directly via LinkedIn and email.

LinkedIn offers great search functionality for finding businesses of a size, industry, or location. Connect with one new contact on the platform each day, and you’ll have 365 potential acquisitions within a year. The point here is to become known to peers or leaders in your target business type. You will not have much luck directly messaging people on LinkedIn about buying their business. But, business owners are often open to having coffee to talk about the industry, even if it’s just over a Zoom or Teams call.

Often, business owners look to acquire competitors or a similar business that serves a different market. They may also look for companies offering products or services that complement what they already offer to gain greater cross-sell opportunities within their customer base. Both of these facts provide a starting place:

• Know the industry of your target
• Know the general geographic location for your search

Some industries aren’t as big on LinkedIn as others. Another way to make this type of connection is to email owners or managers. You can use the Association for North American Industry Classification System’s search page to find the NAICS code for your industry. You can then use that code to purchase lists of businesses in your state or region. Often list sellers can also provide executive names, emails, and phone numbers within your desired NAICS code for a nominal amount.

Your odds of finding deals, especially at a discount, improve vastly if you network widely. The wider your network, the “luckier” you can get.

Finding Low Competition Deals: One-to-One Networking

Financial professionals can also be extremely valuable as connections in your search. Lawyers, accountants, tax accountants, wealth advisors, suppliers to businesses in your target industry, and loan officers at local financial institutions, all may know people selling businesses within the scope of your search. A loan officer at your institution will also know brokers who can help you search, as well as the financing structures available.

It’s not likely that financial professionals will tell you which businesses may be interested in selling. (They can’t share what clients have told them in confidence.) But, they can tell those clients that you are interested in acquiring. Meeting with them to let them know your plans can go a long way in letting them play connector.

Business association meetings or vendor conferences also offer excellent ways to meet owners or leaders in your industry. Often, suppliers or vendors allow companies to buy exhibit booth space at their conferences, and you can attend social hours and networking events as a sponsor. These are great ways to grow your network by building one-on-one relationships.

If you want a private deal down the road, sellers are the most likely to engage a buyer they know and like. Networking with them now is a way to become that person for them.