Acquisition search

What the $6,000 fee covers

$6,000 · 30 days · Up to 50 hours of human calling

• A list of companies researched against the agreed buy box, including businesses never listed for sale.
• Outreach to those businesses by phone, text and email across the 30 days, including up to 50 hours of human calling.
• Structured follow-up with owners who do not answer at first.
• Screening of responses: whether the contact is the decision-maker, and whether there is willingness to discuss a sale.
• Appointments with owners who meet the agreed screening criteria, reviewed by Cole Kutschinski before any introduction reaches the buyer.
• A written progress report each week, covering effort, responses and next steps.
• A review at the end of the 30 days.
• No further search fee if an introduction leads to a purchase.
• A conditional closing rebate: if the buyer acquires a business the firm introduced, and its seller has separately engaged the firm and paid its fee, the $6,000 is returned to the buyer. The conditions are set out below and in the agreement.

The caller is a Wild Rose Advisors resource assigned to the buyer's campaign. The engagement is a managed research and outreach campaign, not a full-time or exclusive employee.

The weekly report

Illustrative example. The numbers below are invented to show the format. They are not results, not an average, and not a forecast.

Each report shows what the hours produced. Repeated calls to one business count as one business attempted, so effort and reach are reported separately.

The report also covers objections and fit problems encountered, and changes planned for the following week. The analysis sits in the written report, which is sent to the buyer.

There is also a private page of your own. Before the search starts it shows what is still outstanding and whose side it is on. Once it is running it shows the counts as they move, the calling time used against the hours allowed, how many businesses have actually been spoken to, and appointments held as distinct from booked.

Conversations with owners appear there as write-ups once they have been checked, usually alongside the weekly report. It is a place to see where things stand between reports, not a replacement for the report.

You also see every business on your list: what it is, where it is, why the firm thinks it fits your brief, and how far it got. A business is named once its owner has agreed to talk to you about a sale. Until then you see the shape of it rather than the name, because an owner who has not agreed to anything has not agreed to that either.

What counts as an appointment

Appointments are the purpose of the campaign, so the term is defined. All of the following must apply:

• The person is the owner, or someone authorised to decide.
• They understand the purpose is a possible acquisition discussion.
• They are willing to explore a transaction.
• The business broadly meets the agreed screening criteria, or you have approved a named exception.
• They agree to the introduction and to a scheduled conversation.

An unanswered call, a contact record, a request for information and a pleasant word at a trade counter are not appointments. A meeting scheduled is not a meeting held, and the weekly report counts them separately. The firm does not promise a number of appointments; it has not run enough of these campaigns to state what is typical.

Whom the service suits

• Operators acquiring a business in or adjacent to what they already run.
• Individual buyers ready to act on a business that fits, rather than exploring.
• Buyers whose budget and criteria are realistic enough that a viable pool of businesses exists.

The call before engagement tests whether the criteria support a practical campaign. Where they do not, the firm says so before any fee is taken, rather than charging $6,000 to confirm it over 30 days.

What the engagement does not include

• No guarantee of an acquisition, of seller responses, or of a number of appointments.
• No exclusivity over any opportunity unless separately agreed in writing.
• Screening is a fit and willingness check. It is not financial, legal, regulatory, or acquisition due diligence.
• Financing, valuation, negotiation, diligence management and closing representation are not part of this engagement.
• Where a business operates under licenses, nothing here establishes that a license transfers or that a regulator will approve a change of ownership.

“No further search fee” means this engagement does not charge the buyer again if an introduction becomes a purchase. It does not mean a purchase is free of other costs. Legal, accounting, diligence and financing are the buyer's responsibility, and any further service from the firm is quoted and agreed separately.

The conditional closing rebate is not money back for a search that finds nothing. It is paid only when a purchase closes, within the 30 days or 18 months after them, the seller of that business has separately engaged Wild Rose Advisors, and that seller's success fee to the firm of at least $30,000, net of any referral share, has cleared. Then the $6,000 comes back to the buyer within 30 days, once per search fee. Whether the firm introduces an owner never depends on whether that owner has engaged it, and the firm says so in writing before the buyer meets one who has.

Common questions