By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

A typical M&A deal timeline runs six to 10 months from engagement to close for Main Street deals and 11 to 12 months in the lower middle market. Relationships break in the gaps between stages, mostly after the LOI, when you go quiet on everyone outside the deal.

You signed the LOI in March. Diligence, the lender, the QoE, the purchase agreement. It is now June. The deal is on track. You have not texted a single broker since the day you signed.

Then the QoE turns up something, and the seller walks. You open your phone to restart, and the brokers who used to call you first are calling the buyer who texted them last month.

What does the M&A deal timeline look like from first call to close?

The IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse for Q2 2026 put Main Street deals at six to 10 months from engagement to close, and lower middle market deals at 11 to 12 months. A full search runs longer. The IESE and Stanford International Search Funds 2024 study found a median of 21 months from the start of the search to close, and Stanford GSB reports that acquiring a company typically takes searchers around 20 months.

Inside that window, the work moves from many people to a few. That is exactly where the damage happens.

Where do relationships break in an M&A deal?

At every handoff from wide to narrow. Here is the timeline, the people you are talking to at each stage, and the relationship that quietly breaks. Durations are sourced where noted. Where a stage has no reliable public number, it says it varies.

Stage	Typical time	Who you are talking to	Where the relationship breaks
1. First call with a broker or owner	Varies	Broker, owner, referral partner	You never send the buy box you promised. You are a name, not a buyer.
2. NDA and CIM review	Varies	Broker	You sit on it. The IBBA’s serious buyer piece says a quick no beats a slow no. A slow no is how a broker stops sending.
3. Seller meetings and offer	Varies	Seller, broker, lender	Every other broker hears nothing while you chase this one.
4. LOI signed	Exclusivity of 60 to 90 days is common, per one intermediary on Searchfunder	Seller, broker, your attorney	The biggest break. You tell the market nothing and go dark.
5. Diligence and financing	Usually under 90 days for a simple deal, per another intermediary	QoE firm, lender, attorneys, CPA	Your referral partners, other brokers and the backup deals you passed on all go cold.
6. Close	One day	Seller, broker, every advisor	No thank you, no update. The broker who just paid you off forgets you by the next listing.
7. First 100 days	About three months	Employees, customers, the former owner	You disappear into operations, and the deal flow for your next add on stops.

Look at the time column. Stages four through seven, roughly half a year, are when you talk to the fewest people. Those are also the months when the rest of your network decides who is active. The whole sourcing side of this is in deal flow for business buyers.

Why does stage four do the most damage?

Because the LOI is a public signal that you are off the market. Brokers hear you signed. They mark you as busy. The ones you do not touch for 90 days assume you closed, or quit.

And the deal may not close. In the IESE and Stanford 2024 study, searchers named diligence discoveries (63 percent), valuation (48 percent), seller retraction (38 percent), competitive bidding (32 percent) and investor support (27 percent) as reasons targets under LOI were not acquired. The same study found the average searcher signed about four LOIs before acquiring. Planning for the LOI to fail is not pessimism. It is the base rate.

If you are in that window now, who to keep warm after the LOI and the brokers you lose during diligence go deeper.

Who do you keep warm at each stage?

Keep the people who will send the next deal, not the people working on this one. They are already in touch with you. Here is the checklist.

1. Stages one to three: every broker who sent you a CIM gets a decision within days, yes or no, with one line on why. That is the reputation that gets you the next CIM.
2. At LOI: text your top five intermediaries. “Signed an LOI on a home services deal. Still buying in the Southeast, so keep me in mind.” You just told them you are serious, not gone.
3. During diligence: one real touch to each of those five every few weeks. A deal they closed, a post of theirs, an intro you can make. Thirty seconds each.
4. At close: thank the broker, the lender and the advisors by name, and tell your top five you closed and what you buy next.
5. First 100 days: stay in touch with the former owner and their CPA. They know who else in the industry wants out.

If the deal dies, you do not restart cold. You restart with five people who heard from you last week. For the long version, read how to stay top of mind with brokers during a 12 month deal cycle.

What this looks like as an illustrative example

Say you work with 20 brokers. You sign an LOI on January 15 and go quiet. Diligence runs 90 days, and the deal dies on April 15. In those three months, each broker brought maybe one new listing to market. Twenty listings went to short lists you were not on.

Now run it again with five texts a week during diligence. By April, each of the 20 heard from you three or four times. Those numbers are illustrative, not a promise. The point is the gap: the same three months, and either you are recent or you are not.

The system that does this for you

Here is how I would run it: let a system watch the clock on every relationship outside the deal, and keep my attention on the deal.

FRONT OF MIND opens on your 10 minutes for today. Each person has one line on why today: a pipeline deal has been quiet 7 days, a follow up is due, they posted, their company was in the news, or they are going cold. Every draft is a text style message, 40 words max. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from your edits so the next draft sounds more like you.

It runs in your phone’s browser and can be saved to your home screen. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them. Start free with your first 25 contacts and see which broker comes up first. See how it works

See how it works