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.

If your search has stalled, stop adding cold names and spend 30 days working the people who already know you: investors first, then owners who said not now, then deals that died at LOI, then brokers and advisors. A stalled search fund usually has its next deal sitting in conversations it already had.

Here is the scene. Month 14. Your last LOI died in diligence in the summer. Your outreach tool is still sending, reply rates are falling, and your investor update this quarter has a lot of “building pipeline” in it. You are working hard. The work is just pointed at strangers.

This page is the recovery plan. The general sourcing playbook is in deal sourcing for searchers, and the scoring sheet behind week one is in the search fund network audit.

Is a stalled search normal?

Yes, a slow search is normal, and the data says timing matters. The Stanford GSB 2026 Search Fund Study reports that acquiring a company typically takes around 20 months, with an aggregate acquisition rate of 58 percent since 1996. So most searchers do buy, and it takes a while.

The IESE and Stanford International Search Funds 2024 study adds the warning. Searchers who acquired signed their first LOI around month 7 on average, compared with month 9 for those who ended without a deal. And nearly 40 percent of searchers with no LOI in their first 12 months did not acquire.

That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to change what you do this month.

Stalled search fund: what to do in 30 days

Here is the plan for a stalled search fund, what to do week by week. It works through contacts you already have before it touches anyone new.

Week	Who	Goal
1	You and your investors	Audit the list, reset the buy box, get specific intro asks
2	Owners who said not now	Reopen every real conversation from the last 18 months
3	Deals that died at LOI, and brokers	Revisit fallouts, give brokers your new buy box
4	Advisors and peer searchers	CPAs, attorneys, lenders, searchers with deals that did not fit them

Week 1: audit and reset with your investors

Start with the people who are paid to want you to win. Run the audit first: every owner, broker, advisor and investor in one sheet, scored, with the top 50 marked.

Then call your investors one at a time. Three questions:

1. Is the buy box too wide, too narrow, or wrong?
2. What did you see in my last LOI that I should have seen earlier?
3. Which two people in your network should I talk to this month?

Question three is the one that matters. Investors with a general update do little. Investors with a named ask make introductions.

Thanks for the call. Narrowing to commercial services in the Southeast, $1.5M to $3M EBITDA. You mentioned Dana at the Atlanta bank. Would you be open to a quick intro?

Week 2: reopen every not now owner

The owners who said “not now” are your best list. In the IESE and Stanford study, the average searcher had personal conversations with 159 owners before acquiring. Most of those ended as a maybe. A maybe a year ago is a different answer today.

Go through every real owner conversation from the last 18 months. Not cold replies. Conversations. For each one, find what has changed in their world and open with it.

Saw you brought on a general manager this year. Congrats. When we talked last spring you said you weren’t ready to think about a sale. Is that still true, or worth a coffee?

Some will say no again. A few will say “funny you asked.” Mark every answer with a date. For the long version of one courtship, see the 18 month seller.

Week 3: revisit LOI fallouts and brokers

Go back to every deal that died after you signed. The IESE and Stanford study lists why deals under LOI did not close: problems found in diligence (63 percent of searchers), valuation (48 percent), seller retraction (38 percent), competitive bidding (32 percent), and investor support (27 percent). The study also says keeping a pipeline active in parallel is pivotal.

Valuation gaps and cold feet are not permanent. A seller whose number was too high may have had a soft year. A seller who backed out may have had the conversation with family that he was avoiding. A short note a few months later can reopen it.

No agenda, just thinking of you. Hope the year has been good to the business. If the timing ever looks different, I’m still here and still interested.

Then brokers. Every broker you have not spoken to in 60 days gets your new buy box in one line, plus one deal you passed on and why. That proves you are still active and still decisive. If it has been longer, texting a broker after six months has the wording.

Week 4: advisors and peer searchers

The last week goes to people who see owners before brokers do. CPAs, estate attorneys, wealth managers and lenders hear about succession before anything is listed. Send each a specific description of the owner you are looking for, not your whole thesis.

Then peer searchers. Other searchers see deals that do not fit their box every week. Offer a trade: you send them what does not fit you, they send you what does not fit them.

By day 30 you want three things: a tighter buy box your investors agree on, a dated list of owners who said “later” with when, and at least one live owner conversation past coffee.

Why does the 30 day plan fall apart?

It falls apart because week two and week three need dozens of personal notes, each with a real reason, and the reasons are scattered across your inbox, your phone, old call notes and LinkedIn. Illustrative math: 60 owners, 40 brokers and 20 advisors is 120 people with 120 different reasons, inside one month, while you still run your current conversations.

That is not a discipline problem. You already work hard. It is a research problem.

Ten minutes a day to restart it

That is why I built FRONT OF MIND. It opens on your 10 minutes for today, and each person has one line saying why today: an owner posted, their company was in the news, a follow up is due, you met at an event weeks ago and never followed up, 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. Ask Liala out loud, “who do I know that is an estate attorney in Atlanta,” and get the right people with why. It runs in your phone’s browser and saves to your home screen. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them, and you can export or delete anytime.

More on the buyer side in the hub, deal flow for business buyers.

Start free with your first 25 contacts and see which owner comes up first.

See how it works