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.

In the first 100 days after acquisition, keep five outside relationships warm while you run the inside plan: the broker, the lender, the seller, your deal advisors, and the owners who told you to call once you closed. One touch each every 30 days is enough, and each touch should carry real news before it asks for anything.

Your 100 day plan has 40 rows. Meet every employee. Call the top 20 customers. Move the bank accounts. Fix payroll. Renew the insurance. Not one row is about anyone outside the building.

That is how every 100 day plan is written. The inside problems are loud. They knock on your office door. The outside relationships send no alerts at all, so they quietly go to zero, and they are the ones holding your next deal.

Who outside the business slips in the first 100 days after acquisition?

The people who got you to close, and the people who will send the next deal. Usually that is five groups, and each one reads your silence differently.

Who	Why they matter now	What silence looks like to them
The broker	Has your name on a buyer list and new listings every month	You are done buying
The lender	Will finance the add on, or not	You only call when you need money
The seller	Knows every owner in the industry	You took the business and forgot them
Your attorney, CPA and QoE team	Have other clients in the same industry	The deal was a transaction, not a relationship
The owners who said call me after you close	Were waiting to see if you could close	You never meant it

The inside plan has an owner: you, your general manager, your board. This list has no owner. That is the whole problem.

Why does the outside list go quiet first?

Because nothing on it is urgent until it is too late. Two numbers make the timing clear.

First, the next deal is already far away. In the IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse for Q2 2026, lower middle market deals averaged 11 to 12 months from engagement to close, and Main Street deals six to 10 months. If you want an add on in year two, the conversation that becomes it starts inside your first 100 days.

Second, the seller drifts on a clock. In a Searchfunder survey of about two dozen searchers, sellers stayed engaged for eight months on average, and felt unneeded after 4.4 months on average. That is just past day 100. The best deal source you have starts to feel like a stranger right when you stop needing them day to day.

What does a day by day outside plan look like?

Here is how I would run it. It fits around the inside plan, not on top of it.

Days	Who	The touch
1 to 7	Broker, lender, advisors, seller, the first introduction	Thank each one, by name, for one specific thing
8 to 30	Owners who said call me after you close	Tell them it closed. No ask
31 to 60	Broker and lender	One line of real news from inside the business
61 to 90	Seller and advisors	Good news about the business, then one narrow question
91 to 100	Broker, lender, advisors	Your add on buy box, in one sentence

The thank you round in week one is covered in detail in who to thank after the close. The rest of this page is what happens after the thank you, when the operating weeks take over.

What should the texts say?

Short, specific, and about them or about news they will care about. Five examples, one per stage, each under 40 words.

1. The owner who said call me after you close (day 20).

We closed on Miller Supply last month. You said to call once it was done, so this is me calling. No agenda. Coffee in a few weeks when things settle?

2. The broker (day 45).

Six weeks in. Kept every employee and the largest account just renewed. Wanted you to hear it from me first. Thanks again for holding the deal together in week eight.

3. The lender (day 50).

First month of numbers came in ahead of the model you underwrote. Figured you’d want to know the loan is in good hands. Talk soon.

4. The seller (day 75).

The crew finished the Hendricks job a week early and the customer asked about you. Quick question when you have a minute: who else in the trade is thinking about what you just did?

5. The broker, lender and advisors (day 95).

Ninety days in and we know exactly what fits next: industrial distribution, $1M to $3M EBITDA, within two hours of Dayton. If one crosses your desk, I’d love an early look.

Notice the order. News first, then a narrow ask, and the ask only shows up after day 60. That gives everyone two or three touches that want nothing before they get one that does.

How much time does this actually take?

About ten minutes a week. This is illustrative math, not a benchmark.

Say your outside list is 25 people. One touch each every 30 days is about 75 touches across the 100 days. Spread over 14 weeks, that is five or six texts a week. Each one takes a minute or two if you know what to say.

The hard part is not the texting. It is knowing, on a Tuesday in week seven, which five people are due, what you told each one last time, and which owner said “call me after you close” at a dinner in March.

Isn’t this the same as the plan between deals?

Close, but not the same. What to do between acquisitions is the holdco version: dozens of owners in a pipeline, sourcing as a running habit. This page is for the first 100 days of a single company, when one deal is eating your calendar and the outside list is small enough to keep by hand, if you actually keep it. The full picture of how these relationships produce deals lives in the deal flow system for business buyers.

Here is how I see it

I have watched operators meet the right people, have real conversations, and then disappear for six months, buried in diligence or a capital raise. By the time they resurface, someone else has the relationship. The first 100 days after a close is the same trap with better excuses. You are running a company. Everyone understands. They still call whoever they heard from last.

That is why I built FRONT OF MIND. It opens on your 10 minutes for today, and each person comes with one line saying why today: a follow up due, an advisor going cold, a pipeline deal quiet 7 days or more, the seller’s old company in the news. Every draft is a text style message, 40 words max, it learns from your edits, and nothing sends without your tap. Ask Liala out loud, “who do I know that is a lender in Ohio,” and get the right people with the reason why.

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Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who on your outside list comes up first.

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