How to Prepare for an M&A Conference: Who to Meet First
How to prepare for an M&A conference: a three week research plan, a who to meet table, and a one line card per person so every meeting starts warm.
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.
How to prepare for an M&A conference: three weeks out, pull the attendee list, mark who you already know, and pick the 10 to 15 people who can move a live deal or mandate. Write one fact about each, book those meetings before you fly, and text the people you already know first.
That is the prep. Everything else is detail.
Here is the scene most people live instead. You land the night before. You open the event app in the hotel room and scroll 3,000 names. You request 25 meetings at random. Half never confirm. The next morning you walk into a lounge full of people you half know, and the broker who emailed you a teaser last spring walks past you because neither of you looked.
The ticket bought you the room. The prep decides who you sit across from in it.
What should you research before an M&A conference?
Research the people, not the agenda. Sessions are on the website. The value is in four lists you build from the attendee list and your own phone.
- People you already know who will be there. Brokers, bankers, lenders and sponsors you have met before. These are your warmest meetings and the easiest to book.
- People tied to a live deal. The intermediary with a mandate in your sector, the lender who fits the deal you are financing, the sponsor who might co invest.
- People you want to meet for the first time. Firms that cover your sector or geography, chosen by what they could send you.
- People in that city who are not on the list. Owners, CPAs and lenders who live there. I covered that list in how to find everyone you know in a city before a business trip.
Most people only build list three. List one is where the money is.
Where do you get the attendee list?
From the event’s own booking platform, when it has one. At ACG DealMAX, the ACG Access scheduling platform lets you browse the full attendee list, book one on one meetings and manage your calendar. Smaller events often do not publish a list. For those, the speaker page, the sponsor page and the people who post “see you in Orlando” are your list.
The scale is the reason to prep. ACG reported that DealMAX 2026 drew over 3,500 attendees, and attendees requested more than 140,000 one on one meetings through ACG Access. Divide one by the other and that is about 40 requests for every person in the building. Illustrative math, but the point holds: a request with no context is one of forty.
Who should you meet at an M&A conference?
Meet the people who send, fund or own deals, in that order of how fast they can move one of yours. Use this table to sort the list.
| Who | Why they matter at this event | What to know before you meet |
|---|---|---|
| Broker or banker you already know | Has mandates you have not heard about since you last talked | What you discussed last time, and what they closed since |
| Intermediary new to you | Could put you on the short list for the next book | Their sector, deal size, and one recent close |
| Lender or capital partner | Decides how fast your next deal closes | Their hold size, and the deal you are financing now |
| Sponsor or buyer in your lane | Co invest, add on, or a deal they passed on that fits you | What they bought last and what they will not buy |
| Owner or operator | Possible seller, or the best intel on a sector | Their company, and any timeline they have hinted at |
Cap it at 10 to 15 booked meetings a day. Back to back tables wipe your memory by the fourth one, and the follow up you owe each person depends on remembering what they said.
How do you research someone in five minutes?
You need one fact per person, not a dossier. Here is the card I would build for each name on lists one and two. It fits in a phone note.
Name, firm, role in my deals (sends, funds, owns) Last touch: when, where, what we talked about One fact: a recent close, raise, mandate, post or hire What I want from this meeting: one sentence What I can give them: an intro, a buyer profile, a comp
The last line matters most. Walking in with something to give is what makes the follow up a favor instead of a request.
Where to find the one fact, fastest first: your own texts and emails with them, their firm’s news page, their recent posts, and press releases on deals they advised. If you find nothing in five minutes, write “ask what they are working on” and move on.
If you keep getting introduced to the same people twice, read stop being the operator who remeets people he already met. The card above is the fix.
How to prepare for an M&A conference: the three week timeline
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| 3 weeks out | Pull the attendee list. Build lists one through four. |
| 2 weeks out | Text the people you already know. Request meetings with list two. |
| 1 week out | Write a card for every booked meeting. Request list three. |
| 2 days out | Confirm meetings. Note your open slots for the people you meet by accident. |
| Night before | Read the cards for tomorrow only. |
The text to someone you already know, two weeks out, can be this short:
Will be at DealMAX in May. Still covering industrial services? Would love 20 minutes at the Lounge Tuesday if you have it.
Under 40 words, a real reason, a small ask. If you are not sure which events deserve this prep at all, start with which M&A conferences are worth it.
How is this different from conference follow up?
Prep is the input to follow up. The conference follow up system runs before, during and 48 hours after. This page is the before window in full. Do the prep well and the follow up mostly writes itself, because every card already holds the detail you will text them about.
Here is how I would run it without the spreadsheet
The hard part of prep is list one: knowing who you already know in a 3,000 person room. Your contacts app cannot tell you. It sorts alphabetically.
In FRONT OF MIND you ask Liala out loud: “who do I know that is an M&A advisor,” or “who do I know in Las Vegas.” You get the right people and why they came up. In the room, you snap a badge or a business card, or say a name and a sentence out loud, and it is filed under the event. Afterward it opens on your 10 minutes for today, with the people you met and never followed up, each with a one line reason and a drafted text of 40 words or fewer. Nothing sends without your tap.
Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them. Export or delete anytime. There is no native iPhone app yet. It runs in your phone’s browser and you can save it to your home screen.
Once you know who to meet, here is how to schedule meetings at a conference before the good slots fill.
Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who comes up before your next conference.