How Thought Leadership Can Improve Deal Flow for Middle-Market Investment Banks and Private Equity Firms
Sarah is a CEO who has 110 unread emails this morning, and five of them are from middle-market investment banks or private equity firms looking to sell or make an investment in her business. She’s not ready to sell at this time, but she has been mulling over the possibility of a liquidity event within the next year. As she reads the emails, she notices that each firm is repeatedly telling her the same thing—without any differentiation or specificity to her situation.
But then, she reaches your email. Instead of just another graveyard of tombstones or message boasting about assets under management, you’re giving Sarah compelling, unique insights on a complex trend facing her industry, just as you have been doing on a regular cadence for the last several months. She has a meeting with her management team later this week on this very topic, so she clicks in to learn what you have to say in case it might help. You present a perspective she hadn’t considered—especially as it relates to the impact her decisions will make on her longer-term plans for the business. Since you’ve offered to have a call with Sarah in the email you sent, she reaches out to you to get more specific information on this trend and what you’re seeing in the market. A direct relationship between a business owner and a trusted advisor is born.
In a competitive middle-market filled with voices shouting to be heard, creating a unique, memorable and timely reason to be top-of-mind for your target audience can make a transformative impact on your firm’s deal flow. You want your potential clients or portfolio companies to look to you as a steadfast, reliable source of industry knowledge—a trusted resource they can rely on during one of the most critical phases of their business lives. This works no matter what your sourcing strategy—direct or intermediated.
Middle-market M&A firm marketing and business development are long-term trust-building exercises. Every activity needs to build trust with that key audience by adding unique value at the right time. They need a compelling reason to think of you in a positive light when it’s time to act or make a recommendation.
While every firm has a unique combination of industry experience and specialized knowledge, not every firm is effectively leveraging that differentiation for business development purposes. The traditional BD model created a sometimes powerful but often inefficient dynamic of intermediated introductions through lawyers, wealth managers and in-person conference attendance that was permanently disrupted by COVID’s long-term impacts. Thought leadership campaigns can consistently, remotely and independently shine a light on your message and brand without being pushy or overtly selling. Through collaboration and conversation, your firm’s thought leaders can share insights that only they can offer while truly exemplifying the differentiated solutions you can bring to the table for your clients or portfolio company partners.
Middle-market M&A firm marketing and business development are long-term trust-building exercises.
Thought leadership pieces can take many forms, from written blog posts to Zoom calls edited into short videos uploaded to LinkedIn. It is highly unlikely your team has time to complete every aspect of the content creation process, but could they hop on a 30-minute call to rattle off their ideas?
When we meet with clients on such calls, we encourage the thought leader to come to the conversation with two to three takeaways for the audience, but often they are just popping in from a back-to-back call and haven’t given it a ton of thought. That’s when our team often steps in, asking key questions based on our industry experience and collaborating on goals for the piece. Once we complete a draft, we will share it with the thought leader to sign-off or make any changes they’d like. After compliance gives a piece the green light, we will create accompanying emails, graphics and social media posts that support and empower the piece to give it the reach it deserves.
It is highly unlikely your team has time to complete every aspect of the content creation process, but could they hop on a 30-minute call to rattle off their ideas?
You may hear from some marketing firms that they can crank out effective thought leadership without the thought leader’s input. While it’s technically possible to type words into a computer without any direction from the person who intimately knows the subject matter, content with no collaboration from a thought leader can lead to a generalized listicle word salad that actually says nothing of value. In the worst case scenario, this type of content is inaccurate, confusing and ends up doing more harm than good for your firm’s reputation.
We know that spare time is in short supply around your firm—our senior team has worked in-house at investment banking and PE firms. Marketing is the last thing on your mind when you’re dealing with the urgent priorities of your existing clients or companies. That’s why it helps to have experts available to implement a thought leadership process intentionally designed to minimize the time required by the team while still providing differentiated and thorough insights.
If you’d like to learn more about how thought leadership can improve your deal flow, we would love to speak with you.