00:00:13:00 - 00:00:26:23 Unknown Welcome to the M&A Zing, the podcast acquisition entrepreneurs, search funders and anyone building a portfolio of SMB real world businesses in the UK and beyond. Today's episode is a little bit different. So if you watch this on YouTube, you'll see that I am here alone. So for anybody listening, it's just me this week. No guests, no co-host. Just you and me having a proper chat about one of the most important and often misunderstood parts of buying a business outreach.

00:00:26:25 - 00:00:47:08 Unknown So if you've ever sat there staring at a spreadsheet of companies thinking, okay, what now this episode is for you. We're going to talk about how you actually get in touch with business owners, the kind of cold outreach that turns research into conversations and turning conversations into deals. I'll walk you through how to do it the hard way manually, because that's how I started.

00:00:47:09 - 00:01:05:25 Unknown It's how lots of people started, you know, the inbox, warm ups, the mail merges, the letters, the DNS records, all the stuff that people struggle with at first. And then I will show you a little bit later on how business simplifies all of that. Now, at this point is good juncture for me to say this episode is not an ad for Biz Crunch.

00:01:05:28 - 00:01:34:25 Unknown I'm sure most, if not everybody listening, knows that the amazing is brought to you by the Biz Crunch team and we have a purpose built platform for finding, reaching out to tracking and everything else you need to do to begin your acquisition journey. But there are other ways of doing it. And I think that even if you are using Base Crunch a solid understanding of how all of these processes work and fit together, you know, the warm ups, the margins, the letters with DNS, the mailboxes, copywriting, all of these things are important process.

00:01:34:25 - 00:02:07:28 Unknown Even if we're helping you to get there a little bit quicker. I think it's all important to know at this point. Again, it's important for me to note that lots of people will be at different stages when it comes to code outreach. Different people have different levels of understanding. If you are a code outreach pro and you just want to know a bit more about inbox, warm ups or copywriting specific for, you know, M&A of market outreach, I would at times stamps to this video or to this recording and you can skip ahead to the part that is most important to you and maybe bookmark there and come back to it when you need it.

00:02:08:01 - 00:02:31:10 Unknown Obviously, I would love for everybody to stay with me for the whole podcast and listen to me talk about my especially subject. But you know, I do demos for Biz Crunch every single day, and I speak to lots of people that have different levels of technical competency, experience with code outreach experience with M&A, code outreach. So I understand that you need to tailor these conversations to individuals, which is hard for me to do on a podcast.

00:02:31:13 - 00:02:49:23 Unknown So I'm going to be very clear about, you know, sections, little pockets of information, timestamp in those so that you can get what you need from me. Okay. So this isn't a sales pitch, it's a field guide, it's a hands dirty. Here's how you do it kind of episodes, whether you're sending your first cold email or trying to scout a search process that already works.

00:02:49:25 - 00:03:07:11 Unknown You will get something out of this podcast. So let's start with the obvious question Why does outreach matter so much in acquisitions? You'd be surprised how many people think the hard part is finding businesses like it's all about the data and there are easier and harder ways of doing that. We will touch on that in the next section.

00:03:07:14 - 00:03:27:09 Unknown But you know, finding a company in companies house or producing a spreadsheet can be relatively easy. Getting the owner to talk to you is the hardest work. Okay, So most owners, especially the good ones, they aren't actively looking to sell. They're not on a marketplace. They're not answering random phone calls. They are very busy. They have a lot to do.

00:03:27:15 - 00:03:42:21 Unknown They perhaps have thought about selling in the back of their mind somewhere, you know, especially if it's a retiring owner and they know that, you know, they're coming up to retirement age, whatever it might be. But if they aren't listed for sale somewhere and a lot of the best businesses aren't, you have to earn the right to a conversation with this person.

00:03:42:24 - 00:04:01:25 Unknown And that's where cold outreach comes in. It's the bridge between research and opportunity. And if you do it well, it will give you deal flow that nobody else has access to. And that is ultra important. It is hard to be fighting over the same listings with multiple other acquisition entrepreneurs. ITAR is on the rise in the UK and in Europe.

00:04:01:26 - 00:04:25:17 Unknown Lots more people are coming to the table. I said, I speak to people every single day. There are new search fronts popping up, there are new searches, there are people graduating from MBAs, there are people, you know, going on some of the the M&A courses. You know, there is more competition all the time. And this proprietary search for off market deals combined with good code outreach is what is going to give you the edge over everybody else.

00:04:25:24 - 00:04:57:15 Unknown This is what's going to make you stand out. This is why at BIS Crunch we lean so heavily towards the off market side of things because we know that's where the real gems are to be found. But you will not master off market until you master code outreach. Outreach begins with list building. Okay, so if you're hoping to just get straight into, you know how you write an email and how you build a, an outreach campaign, that's gonna come a little bit later because step one, your outreach is only as good as your list.

00:04:57:18 - 00:05:17:17 Unknown Now, there are a couple of different ways to build lists. There is the old school way, so no fancy tools, no platforms to show a laptop and some hard work. And there are platforms and tools, including Base Crunch, that can make this easier for you no matter what you do. The important thing is to be specific about your criteria from day one.

00:05:17:20 - 00:05:38:07 Unknown So revenue range, geography, sector number of employees, owner, age, whatever it is, even if you're doing this manually, which will take a bit longer but is cheaper, focus list is always better than a bloated one. Okay, so if you don't have a thesis or some thesis, you know, a couple of different types of companies that you look for something to ground this search him.

00:05:38:12 - 00:06:02:13 Unknown That's why you need to begin now. Hopefully if you're watching or listening to this episode, you already have that. And that's going to make this all the easier because that's where your search is going to stop. Now, if you don't want to invest in a search tool, then you can do this for free with public data. So Companies House is a great place to look.

00:06:02:13 - 00:06:32:12 Unknown You know, it's useful, it's free, it's public. It's also a bit of a jungle. You know, there's no filtering. Financials can be hard to decipher or get to, and it's hard to tell the difference being a sort of viable target sometimes and and a non-viable one. You know, other committee approach, common approach is include Google searches. I'm looking for engineering firms in the Midlands and that might produce a list of companies you can use Google Maps and any company that's listed in this put their own listing on Google Maps will be listed there.

00:06:32:12 - 00:07:06:29 Unknown Trade directories, association member lists linked in local newspapers, regional business awards. There is a wealth of data online about companies at the moment. We've never had a better landscape for data discovery on businesses than we have right now. With that said, the the real work here is going to come in clean in those listings up, you know, cross-referencing data, cross-referencing names, addresses, directors, turnover, finding email addresses, finding email addresses to all the directors email addresses, not just info at company name.

00:07:07:06 - 00:07:25:07 Unknown It's going to go through three people at the company and a couple of gatekeepers and possibly never make it to the owner. The person that you need to talk to. That's going to be messy and time consuming, but it is possible. So I'm not going to sit here and say that you need to pay for, you know, a platform or a tool to do that for you.

00:07:25:09 - 00:07:48:21 Unknown The data is out there if you are cash poor, but time rich, that's the option for you. And I don't discourage you from doing that. I really respect the hustle when it comes to using a platform. There are a number of different ways of doing this. There are a couple of very expensive, very powerful tools like your bureau, Van Dyck, and your Moody's tools.

00:07:48:23 - 00:08:22:20 Unknown You know, fine. And they are excellent. What they do probably best suited to, you know, the upper echelons of M&A, the sort of 20 mil plus deals and company valuations. And they that price reflects that essentially. And what we've done a BIS crunch is try to aim at that mid-market. I'm really help people in that underserved section of, you know, the 1 to 15 million valuation businesses where the data can be a little bit harder to find.

00:08:22:23 - 00:08:43:26 Unknown And also given the deal size, you know, spending 12 grand a year on a basic level package to find the data on those companies isn't really viable, is going to eat too much into your search fund or, you know, the money that you've raised to go out there and buy it. But Crunch kind of sits in between the manual outreach and the more expensive tools towards the money outreach.

00:08:43:26 - 00:09:03:21 Unknown And there are some tools that you can use the direction of what they do. So think about your, you know, end all and red flag and all those other types of tools that make for credit referencing. They are excellent credit referencing tools and they have lots of business data on them. You won't get all of the functionality that you get from a phone.

00:09:03:23 - 00:09:19:13 Unknown You won't get all the business data that you'll get from a base crunch, but you will get enough that's going to save you a fair few man hours away from, you know, you Google searching trade addresses and there is some filtering available on there, but there is still going to be some work doing sick leave boots. Clean that list up.

00:09:19:15 - 00:09:40:21 Unknown Okay. So again, this is another middle ground between a tool that is built for purpose, a tool that is built for a much more expensive purpose and a bit of DIY. This is up to your appetite. I'm not going to say base crunch is the only way to do it because you know that that isn't true. And I want to help you do this in a way that suits your time, your appetite, and your budget best.

00:09:40:23 - 00:10:01:15 Unknown Once you've chosen it all, you've added your filters and you've built your list, you've cleaned it up, and you've made sure that these are the people you want to reach out to. We can start to get into the bones of the Code outreach campaign. Now, I'm just going to say one more time before we get into this, your list, the strength of your list is going to dictate the strength of your campaign.

00:10:01:15 - 00:10:20:12 Unknown So please ensure that you have contact information that is accurate. Email addresses that go through to the right person. You know, letters that go through to perhaps trading addresses tend to have a better response than just registered addresses, and we can touch on that in the letter section. I want you to go into this with as much firepower as you can possibly have.

00:10:20:12 - 00:10:39:08 Unknown Please do. Your prep work is going to serve you so well before we get into this next section, which is the beginnings of setting up your cold outreach campaigns. Now you've got your target list. It's time to send some emails, right? Not so fast. If you send 200 emails from your personal Gmail account, you're going to take your deliverability triggered spam filters and maybe even get yourself blacklisted.

00:10:39:10 - 00:11:05:17 Unknown Here's how to set up your code email system properly. One by a new domain to set up dedicated inbox for your inboxes for your outreach. Three Configure your DNS records properly, SPF Dkim and Demark for me to warm up to for 2 to 3 weeks to build some domain reputation and then $0.05 limit your sending first. So sends for 30 to 50 emails per inbox per day.

00:11:05:18 - 00:11:30:15 Unknown Now let me explain some of those in a little bit more information and I'm going to link to some guides for some of these because I can talk about DNS records for half an hour and nobody wants that. So the reason we are buying a new domain is you do not want to send your code out which campaigns from the domain mailbox that you're using on a regular basis to run your business to speak to customers, to speak to suppliers, to talk to your staff, whatever it might be.

00:11:30:18 - 00:11:54:13 Unknown You want to separate the two things out. If you do have a high number of bounces, if you did have a particularly grumpy seller that you spoke to who reported your email address because they particularly hate cold email, it happens. Some people really hate cold emails and misunderstand the way that GDPR rules work, which we'll touch on a little bit later on if that happens.

00:11:54:16 - 00:12:20:26 Unknown And your deliverability score tanks and your domain gets blacklisted, which is a real thing and it does happen, that's going to affect your livelihood in all other ways. It's going to affect the way that your emails reach your suppliers and your customers and whatever it might be, and you absolutely do not want that. So the reason we buy a new domain is that we're going to create a new mailbox that looks similar to your existing company website, if you like.

00:12:20:29 - 00:12:36:04 Unknown And there's a couple of different options for doing that. You're going to set up a dedicated inbox for that and then you can start forwarding. So it goes to what you normally receive your emails, That's absolutely fine. So you don't have to read multiple different inboxes, but it's a separate place for those emails to be sent from and received to.

00:12:36:07 - 00:13:02:08 Unknown So it doesn't interfere with your everyday business practices? No, no DNS records. I will link to some guides to help you with this and again, depending on what platforms and what tools you use, that can be more complicated, less complicated ways of getting this done. But let's talk about what DNS is and why it's important. DNS records are text stored bits, pieces of information that are communicated between an email domain, an IP server.

00:13:02:11 - 00:13:20:21 Unknown And essentially what they do is they authenticate the sender and they help prevent emails from being marked as spam as a basis. And if you don't want to know any more about DNS, you can skip ahead. But specifically, you know, the SPF, dkim and Dmarc, they are essential for verifying the emails originate within an authorized server and haven't been tampered with, you know, sure.

00:13:20:22 - 00:13:51:23 Unknown When they reach the intended inbox. So without proper DNS is extremely likely that your emails will be flagged as spam or rejected by receiving servers. It is an important piece of the puzzle that a recipient inbox will check for before they allow an email. And if you think about a spam filter, these are one of the very basic things any any inbox is going to check no matter how stringent they might be and some a lot more difficult than others.

00:13:51:23 - 00:14:13:09 Unknown So SPF, if this record tells receiving email servers which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain. So it's checking that the sender of that email is authorized to send that email on behalf of that domain. Okay, this is very important. It means it hasn't been intercepted and somebody else isn't sending on behalf of that particular company.

00:14:13:09 - 00:14:31:27 Unknown And you can imagine why this would be a problem with email spoofing and all sorts of things like that. It shows your emails are more likely to be accepted as legitimate. This is a baseline Dkim stands for domain keys, Identified email, and essentially it's a digital signature that you add to your emails essentially, and it verifies it hasn't been altered during transit.

00:14:31:27 - 00:14:57:03 Unknown So it was the same when it left your server when it arrived at this. Again, super important emails haven't been tampered with en route. Dmarc is domain based message authentic reporting and conformance. I did have that written down. I don't remember off the top of my head. And Dmarc is sort of building upon SPF and dkim and it allows you specify what should happen to emails that fail authentication checks.

00:14:57:05 - 00:15:28:16 Unknown It provides an extra layer of protection against a spam of phishing attacks. So maybe you didn't wanna know that, but it's useful to have these pieces of information understand why they're so important, because it's not just a hurdle that you have to jump over. These are really key ingredients to ensuring that your emails arrive in the inboxes that they should because all of this falls apart if it doesn't even get to the inbox, that doesn't matter how good your subject line is or how great your list building was or how great your copy is that you've written.

00:15:28:16 - 00:15:48:06 Unknown If your emails don't even get into the inbox, that's a problem. So make sure that stuff is set up correctly and I will link to some guys to help you with that. So now we get onto Inbox warm up. So we created a brand new inbox, a brand new mailbox to send and receive. From this point, it doesn't have any sender reputation with any email providers.

00:15:48:06 - 00:16:15:21 Unknown Okay, So if you set this domain up and you immediately start sending code emails, especially at scale from this mailbox, you're going to hit a lot. Spam filters, deliverability will be low. You need to establish it as an existing, functional, real and safe mailbox. So there are a couple of different ways of doing this. Generally, the way that a mailbox warms up is just by use.

00:16:15:24 - 00:16:32:27 Unknown So when you set up your Gmail or your outlook or whatever it might be to use for your, you know, your search, find your whole how your business, when you first set it up, you'd have got through a few confirmation emails from setting up different platforms and signing up to such tools and paying for base crunch, whatever it might be.

00:16:33:00 - 00:16:52:07 Unknown And you're going to send a couple to, you know, your co-founders or your staff or whatever it might be. And gradually over time that volume is going to increase and you're going to see lots of positive responses and people are going to open your emails because they're expecting them, because they know you. Usually at the stop in, you're not sending cold emails from that domain and they're going to respond positively.

00:16:52:07 - 00:17:12:09 Unknown And all of this stuff is tracked and measured and you're going to build an authority. And some of these have scores associated with them, depending on, you know, what you use to check that. There are a couple of tools you can use to check the authority and the score and the and the black a blackboard status of your mailboxes.

00:17:12:09 - 00:17:28:15 Unknown And I will link one of those as well if you check the ones that you have. But with this brand new mailbox, we need to warm it up. And it's a couple of different ways that you could do that. So there are a couple of tools that do this specifically so you can use something like mail reach or warm box.

00:17:28:15 - 00:17:53:12 Unknown And there's a bunch different tools out there. Just search for mailbox, warm up. Sometimes if you are using a cold email outreach tool, they will have this built in. So if you're using instantly, for example, which is what the Bitcoin system is built on, then you can use the inbox warm up system there. And essentially what it does is it sends a bunch of emails between you and some pre authorized domains.

00:17:53:14 - 00:18:08:23 Unknown And for some of them, I believe also other people who are warming their inboxes up and it writes an email on your behalf and it sends it off and then it accepts the email at the other end and replies positively. And it does this for a couple of days, in a couple of weeks, and it tries out in different servers and different emails.

00:18:08:23 - 00:18:31:19 Unknown So it will say to you, you know, some moola, you know, if you've got a good school with Gmail and Outlook and all the different, you know, service inboxes and it will try a couple of links, maybe it will try a couple with attachments and all these different things that you're going to build up a score. And it's managed beginning to end by one of these platforms to give you a positive outcome.

00:18:31:22 - 00:18:49:09 Unknown It's generally going to take at least a week, sometimes 2 to 3, depending on how aggressively they do it or how good they are at doing that warm up process. Again, this feels like a very annoying hurdle put in place to slow you down and to make it harder for you to get to where you want to be.

00:18:49:11 - 00:19:14:07 Unknown But it is absolutely crucial because you need the recipient's mailbox to trust your email when it comes in. Again, we need to land in that inbox if we're going to speak to the business owner. Okay, so your check is ready. It's time to write some actual emails, writing, outreach is very important. Crafting a copy is what's going to open the door to future conversation.

00:19:14:10 - 00:19:36:15 Unknown This is where a lot of people fail because they write like it's a marketing newsletter or a job application, and that's not what we're doing here. You need to think about the intended recipient, the mindspace that they read when they receive that email, and how to best to cut through the noise and speak to the right person and get the outcome that you want.

00:19:36:19 - 00:19:54:02 Unknown So they are a busy person. They have not listed the company for sale. They have lots of other things to think about. This is an emotional subject for a lot of people. They spend a lot of time and effort and blood, sweat and tears to get to where they are. They do not have time to sit and read one piece from you.

00:19:54:04 - 00:20:17:05 Unknown They do not want to feel like you are taking them on a journey on this email. My advice to you is keep it short and sweet, keep it concise, use plain text so you know, avoid lots of links. Don't include videos in the first email message. Don't include your large multiple megapixel signature image. This is going to help you beat a spam filters too.

00:20:17:07 - 00:20:35:14 Unknown We're going to give them a nice concise message with a simple human CTA or call to action. So, you know, would you be open to a quick chat? So here's a simple framework that I like, and I will write this down in the show notes for you. I'll actually use why them? Why now? And what do you want?

00:20:35:16 - 00:20:52:14 Unknown So why them show that you've selected them for a reason? Why are you in this person's inbox? That's their first question. That's your first question when you open a cold email, isn't it? Why is this person in my bloody inbox? Well, okay, explain that to them right off the bat. Why now? Is there a moment or context that makes this relevant?

00:20:52:21 - 00:21:06:26 Unknown Why should they deal with this right now? Why are you contacting them right now? This the next question that they're going to have heard, what do you want? Again, pretty high on the list of questions you ask when you receive a cold email. So it should be pretty high on the questions that you answer when you send one.

00:21:06:28 - 00:21:30:03 Unknown What you want is a conversation, not a transaction. You are not trying to buy their business In this email, you are trying to open the door to have a chat with this person. The fourth option of that is who you are. So if you want to build some credibility, keep it low ego. But again, I don't think you necessarily need to do that in this first email if you don't want to and can do, it's just going to add a little bit more complication to the process.

00:21:30:06 - 00:21:46:29 Unknown Sometimes it is important to cut through the noise, especially if you feel like these are companies that have been contacted a lot. So if you feel like that's important to your particular industry or niche, or if you start to send the three step emails and you're not getting the responses you want, you can play around with kind of flexing that power in and out.

00:21:46:29 - 00:22:07:04 Unknown So you know how long you spent in the industry while you're the right person, Spy this company again, keep it short. But sweet. I have a real short, simple example here that I would send as an initial cold email to a seller if I was engaging in a search. Hi Jane. I came across your business while researching construction firms in the Southwest.

00:22:07:06 - 00:22:23:25 Unknown Looks like you've built something solid over the last 20 plus years. I'm currently looking to acquire and operate a business like yours and wondered if you ever considered taking a step back or exploring options. Would you be open to a short, no pressure chat? And that's it. So we've established why them during Jane's inbox? Why are you in Jane's inbox?

00:22:23:25 - 00:22:41:15 Unknown Well, you were looking for construction funds in the Southwest and Janesville, a pretty good one over the last 20 years or so. A little bit. Flattery never hurt. Why now? Well, you're currently looking to acquire and operate a business just like Jane's. Also, you've kind of answered that in the 20 plus years that Jane's been at this while, maybe Jane would be open to another option.

00:22:41:16 - 00:22:58:22 Unknown So why then? Why now? Answered now. Very simple. What do you want? A sure No pressure chart. Now, this is going to go one or two ways with Jane Jane's. Are they going to go? I'm not interested in this at all, or there's going to be an inkling in something in that it's going to make Jane feel like maybe this is something that she should do and she might respond straightaway.

00:22:58:25 - 00:23:19:23 Unknown She might say the evening to come back to at a later date. But you've opened the doors for conversation. You've also opened the door to a second email. And in that second email, we can include more information. Maybe we could build the credibility that if you didn't want to do it in that first email, maybe at that point you could send, you know, a link to a video or whatever it might be that you want to kind of strengthen your case and follow up with.

00:23:19:25 - 00:23:42:15 Unknown But this initial email short and sweet, Why then? Why now? What do you want? No pitch, no fluff. It's a door opener. That's what we're here to do. Once you send that initial email, I will always, always advise follow up send to send three. Usually I would say at least three. You know, maybe in combination with a letter, which is something that we can touch on.

00:23:42:15 - 00:24:00:03 Unknown It works particularly well for retiring owners. We found a base crunch. Nobody replies to the first email. Very few people reply to the first email. Usually you get response. An email to her email. Three people need a couple of touch points. They need to be contacted a few times. This might not be the right moment for Jane. She might need to come back to it later.

00:24:00:05 - 00:24:18:08 Unknown They might need to see your name a few times. You know, these are real psychological, important processes that have been noted over many, many years of code outreach that, you know, they support a bit of familiarity. You need to realize who you are. Very few people can respond to that initial email and say, hey, I'm ready to go.

00:24:18:10 - 00:24:38:19 Unknown If anything else. You just want to stay in front of mind. I know you know, from my own personal experience, if I receive a code name only, it is something that I need, but I don't need it right now. I might snooze that email or I might try to leave it on unread. So I come back to it and then a bunch of other things come in and you get busy and it happens to all of us inbox Avalanche every single day.

00:24:38:21 - 00:24:56:04 Unknown So maybe Jane does want to talk to you about selling a business to you, but not right now. And in two, three days time she's forgotten or can't find you in the deluge of emails that she's had. So then you pop in with another email and you keep it again, you know, not overly wordy, but you can give a little bit more information.

00:24:56:04 - 00:25:13:18 Unknown You can start to build your pitch to Jane. And then again, I would follow up again maybe a week later and, you know, give one final stop in, Hey, Jane, I'm not going to keep pestering you about this if you are interested, please let me know if you're not. Also, let me know and I'll take your money and I won't contact you again.

00:25:13:21 - 00:25:33:28 Unknown Hope all is well, whatever it might be. Once you've established that first email, stay in touch a couple of time before you completely give up. Okay, Nobody's ready on that first email. Well, very ready. And okay, so we have a domain and we've done all of our DNS records and we're all set up there how we are actually going to send these emails.

00:25:34:05 - 00:25:55:11 Unknown So there's a couple of different ways of doing this. You can again do this manually and you can produce a list and you can copy and paste one email address at a time and what message at a time and one business phone is name at a time, and that is an extremely valid way of doing things. But again, it's going to be slow, it's going to be messy, and especially if you want to work at scale, You know, if you're sending 20 emails a week, that's fine.

00:25:55:11 - 00:26:16:16 Unknown You're probably not going to get the results that you want with off market outreach from doing that. But fine, you don't need a full stack. If you're sending 500 a week or a month, you absolutely do. So there's a couple of different ways of doing this, and I will talk to you about paid ways and I will talk to you about free or cheap ways of doing this to again, no problem.

00:26:16:19 - 00:26:47:07 Unknown So out of the budget, two platforms and tools. So if you're using Gmail, you can build a mail, merge, plug in using Google sheets. And I've used this to great effect many times. You can create a draft email in Google Inc in Google Mail, and you can put all of the columns that you need. So email recipients, first name, surname, business, all the little parameters that you pull through into a cold email, into that Google sheet, and you can build a mail merge that works between the two.

00:26:47:08 - 00:27:07:07 Unknown That's something that exists and I'll give you a link to doing that. It's free is quick, It's simple. It isn't without its flaws, you know, nothing free is. It can be complicated to do and it does require, again, the manual list building stuff, but that is an option that you can use if you want to. You're going to have some issues with tracking.

00:27:07:09 - 00:27:29:01 Unknown You're going to not be able to track clicks and opens and bounces and all those kind of things are going to be much harder for you to do. And again, once you're operating at scale, that's going to become a bigger issue for you. But if you're sending emails a month, maybe that will work and if you don't mind having a bit of a blind spot into what's happening with those emails, absolutely fine.

00:27:29:02 - 00:27:50:11 Unknown If you want to use a cold emailing platform. So if you want to go and pay for an Apollo or an instantly, great, those are going have lots of tools to help you build your campaigns. They're going to help you with the multi-step campaigns that we will touch on when we get to content. So sending multiple follow ups, they're going to help you with tracking.

00:27:50:16 - 00:28:17:21 Unknown It's going to help you with data cleanup. Sometimes there are lots of different tools out there for you to use. If there's something that you're already using, fine, Please go ahead with that. If you are looking to pay for a service to create your list and pay for a service to send your mail merges, At this point, I will plug base crunch because what you will find is where we have everything in-house and we do everything in one place.

00:28:17:21 - 00:28:33:12 Unknown It's not only be quicker and easier and you don't need to do all that DNS sets up stuff because we do that for you and we set up the domain and all those tricky takes I've talked about already. You can forget that is done. It's also going to work out better value for you because we should do everything in one place.

00:28:33:15 - 00:28:51:12 Unknown So we save you some time and some time cost there. But again, that's not the only way to do this. And if you do want to combine, you know, another search platform, clean the data yourself, put it in the columns, and then upload it to a code email outreach tool and then track the results of this somewhere else.

00:28:51:12 - 00:29:13:09 Unknown In the CRM, you're more than welcome to do so, and it absolutely does work. There are lots of great tools out. There are also some great tools when it comes to sending letters, so Base Crunch will send emails and letters, but you can also use stamp stamp poster. It clicks. And there are a couple of different ways out there that you can do mass letter sending to business owners.

00:29:13:12 - 00:29:36:07 Unknown Letters work incredibly well for retiring owners. I've actually found from outreach that we've done for our customers on our concierge service that the combination of emails and letters together is brilliant. You know, if they get an email from you and they see your name for the first time and then they get a letter and they get that kind of, you know, tactile letter in their hands with your name on it, and you've got a signature on there.

00:29:36:07 - 00:29:53:17 Unknown And then they get a follow up email a week later. That seems to be a sort of magic sequence. You know, it's all about those touch points. So there are a bunch of different tools out there, and I will link to the Google sheet and Gmail plug in. For those of you that are trying to be thrifty and do your outreach on a budget.

00:29:53:20 - 00:30:14:00 Unknown Okay, so now we have a domain. We support DNS records, we've picked a tool, we've built our list, we've got all the data in place, we've written our emails, and we are potentially also start ready to start sending letters. And what is the last thing that we think about before we start to send all of this stuff out, the legality and the ethics of all of this?

00:30:14:00 - 00:30:35:24 Unknown So this is one last bit that I want to touch on before we wrap up, and it is all important there is a legal and ethical side to code outreach. However, in B2B is slightly different. So in the UK we have GDPR and PCR on what many people know about it is a supplement to GDPR and is therefore consumer protection essentially.

00:30:35:26 - 00:30:58:13 Unknown And it's really that to protect individuals from mass outreach, unsolicited mass outreach from companies. However, if you are sending a business to business code outreach, email or letter and you have just cause for doing so, there is a benefit or a potential benefit to the recipient. You are allowed to do this. So you need to ensure that the business is a limited company and not a sole trader.

00:30:58:13 - 00:31:27:05 Unknown So slightly different rules around sole traders, but limited companies fall outside of the GDPR. Rules for individual consumers need to ensure that your message is relevant to their role. This is the exact language from the GDPR rulings so relevant to their role. They are a business owner. You want to buy their business. It's pretty bloody relevant. You offer a clear way to opt out so they can unsubscribe or they can reply to you and say that they're not interested.

00:31:27:08 - 00:31:56:17 Unknown As long as you meet these parameters. So limited company relevance a way to opt out, you are fine legally to send code outreach that covers business email addresses and it covers business addresses. It does not cover personal e-mail addresses or personal addresses. So at best crunch, we will give you business emails and I will give you registered addresses and trading addresses, but I will not give you PSC addresses because very often PSC addresses are home addresses.

00:31:56:17 - 00:32:17:04 Unknown And we looked into this and it is a GDPR violation, so we do not provide that. So please do not go into companies house and find somebody's home address if it is listed as their offices. Address a PSC address or whatever it might be and send them letters there. I cannot advise that you do that. That is a violation of GDPR.

00:32:17:06 - 00:32:51:00 Unknown Likewise, with scraping and finding personal emails, there are some nefarious tools out there that will help you not only with business email addresses, but they will help you find personal emails for anybody on LinkedIn or whatever other site you may be searching on. Those also fall outside of the remit of legality for GDPR and PCR, so please do not send to personal email addresses and personal addresses if you are sending to business addresses both email and letter, you'll find legally keep it relevant.

00:32:51:00 - 00:33:07:15 Unknown Give them a way to opt out. Now I'm going to show you how you can do everything we've just covered quickly, cleanly and easily using Base Crunch. This is the only real plug for base crunch on this episode. And if you've seen this before, you can skip this part. But if you haven't, we're going to make this outreach portion so quick and easy for you.

00:33:07:15 - 00:33:26:09 Unknown So here we are, this discover your next deal and you're going to enter the location that you're searching within the industry, that you're searching for the revenue range, which includes the estimated revenue for those companies that turnover, less than 10 million are reported. And you can narrow this list down using, you know, their individual companies load it to us it ratio.

00:33:26:09 - 00:33:46:03 Unknown They're profitable, they're established, you know, been around more than 15 years. They've got retiring owner simple ownership. We can filter by companies with the email addresses. We can filter by you know, anything particular on the balance sheet in the panel. We can see by different ownership structures and there are all sorts of things we can do to build a list of companies that are the right list of companies for you.

00:33:46:10 - 00:34:13:24 Unknown Once you've built your list, it will look something like this and you can go through and decide whether these are the right companies for you. And we can do a little bit more of a dive dive into the companies here. We've got this little small pop out. We can look at company insights where we've got a summary and we can look at the shareholder distribution and we can look at the company's website and their revenue trends and their profit trends and their assets and liabilities and net asset value trend and all this excellent data that you might want before you perform your outreach.

00:34:13:24 - 00:34:33:11 Unknown And once you're happy that these are the people you want to reach out to, you're going to save them to a collection. A collection is essentially a list, and then you can create a new collection here. And we want to call this outreach podcast, and it's going to store all of the companies in this collection, and you can go through a little bit more vetting from there if you wish to.

00:34:33:13 - 00:34:50:21 Unknown That's the list building portion of it done. Again You're matching your ICP to our filters. Now we're going to start a campaign. Let's do emails and letters. Why not? While we're here, we're going to select the collection that we're going to do the outreach to. So let's pick our collection from here, and I'm going to move on to the next step.

00:34:50:23 - 00:35:08:02 Unknown We're going to set up our customizations, which are essentially just your return contacts, information, detail. So what's the name of your holdco? What's your phone number? What's your website? What's your return address? Details. Remember, we're going to send some code outreach. We want this brand to get back in touch with us. We will give you a step here to provide us with the domain that you would like.

00:35:08:03 - 00:35:32:07 Unknown We will create that domain for you and we will start a warm up process in the background warm inbox up for you. Again, another tool that you have to pay for and I think you don't have to worry about no DNS settings, nothing. We do all of that for you. Then you going to edit your email here, You're going to play around with some of the parameters, you're going to email, follow up emails, what you're happy with your copy, you can go to the next step and do the same thing with your letters and you can edit your letter information.

00:35:32:07 - 00:35:52:08 Unknown Here we provide you with the template, but I always advise that you edit it. You can pull through some personalization parameters, preview your letter once you're happy, and then you get to the summary stage and you ensure that you have the right number of recipients and it's within your quota and you've got the right plan for it. And then you're going to start campaign and it will send for you and all of those complicated things we just covered.

00:35:52:12 - 00:36:12:23 Unknown You don't need to worry about so much other than good email copy writing. With that said, it's important for you to know all of these and understand that's what this country is doing for you in the background so that you can send emails with confidence and be happy that they can arrive in the right place. And that in a very long nutshell is how to do code outreach for SMB M&A.

00:36:12:26 - 00:36:29:17 Unknown If there's anything in here that you would like to know a little bit more about, if you have any questions, something that I haven't answered, something that I went over to quickly, something I didn't explain for. Please do leave us a comment on LinkedIn, the YouTube video, or send me an email, get in touch with me on LinkedIn, whatever it might be.

00:36:29:17 - 00:36:46:15 Unknown I'll leave some contact details at the bottom of this pod and you can get in touch with me any time. This is my specialist subjects and I'm more than happy to talk through it with you and show you how you can help you. And you know, even if you're not going. He's been quite happy to answer some questions because we are all about empowering the ECI community.

00:36:46:17 - 00:37:01:10 Unknown And like I said, this is a really important step in ensuring that you can go out there and acquire companies and that's good for the economy, It's good for 88 and it's good for base crunch. So I believe that there I hope that's been useful for you. And so next time, keep on crunching.