How to identify transaction-ready companies for your origination workflow
Finding companies that are approaching transactions can be complex. But it doesn’t need to be. If your sequencing and messaging are strong, and your offer is attractive, then it could be a timing issue.
This is especially common across advisory firms that rely on SIC codes and financials to segment their market. The former is a dated, notably flawed method of defining what companies actually do, whilst the latter is a lagging indicator, making it almost impossible to get ahead of the curve.
However, even if you’ve mapped your addressable market with a 5000-strong list of companies your team could theoretically work with, it doesn’t mean they’re ready to work with you. Approach too early, and a company won’t be ready to engage. And if you’re too late, which is far more common, the company will have already signed a deal with your competitor.
In this article, we’ll outline an optimal origination workflow, explore what outreach-ready looks like in practice, and demonstrate how to nail your timing.
What an ‘outreach-ready’ origination workflow looks like
Origination doesn’t need to be a numbers game. Contrary to conventional wisdom, you want to end up with a shorter, leaner list of contacts rather than an expansive one. This is because deal origination is about timing and relevance, rather than volume.
That’s not to say that mapping your addressable market isn’t worth it. It’s the place Beauhurst clients in the advisory space typically begin. However, it’s what you do after assembling this list that matters.
Beauhurst’s outreach-ready origination workflow can be viewed across three layers:
Layer 1 — Account Basics
Define the type of companies you want to work with, including sector, size, location, and their stage of growth. Leaning into sectoral, market-cap, or geographic specialisms can help narrow your focus.
This is where most firms stop, and why they end up losing out to more proactive competitors. The problem here is that whilst, for example, a list of 500 care homes in Manchester may represent your addressable market, it lacks context and therefore doesn’t equate to useful outreach intelligence.
Layer 2 — Targeting
Next, you should narrow that list of companies to those that are structurally likely to need your services. This means complete corporate structure and ownership information, detailed investor timelines, director age profiles, and valuation history.
Taking the time to map out how each service line’s ideal client differs from the broader firm client type can be a significant differentiator here — a company that’s right for your transaction team looks quite different from one that’s right for your restructuring practice, even if both sit within the same addressable market.
The key differentiator is layering in information that can’t be gleaned from publicly available data. Think unannounced fundraisings, patent filings, and recent changes to board composition that haven’t yet made the news.
Layer 3 — Trigger Signals
Trigger signals are where timing enters the picture, and they’re the key to developing a successful origination workflow.
For example, a non-executive director in your personal network with three exits worth of experience joins the board. You won’t find this information in the press or on LinkedIn until it goes public.
If you’re an advisory firm focused on M&A or transaction services, a secret signal like this could be the difference between being first in the room or late to the negotiating table.
How the Beauhurst origination workflow works in practice
On Beauhurst, you can filter your company lists to receive notifications as soon as a company matches your criteria, alerting you to precisely the right moment to reach out.
Combining a series of these criteria, or signals, is the key to achieving a true, outreach-ready origination workflow. Here are three common ways that advisory clients use the Beauhurst platform.
01. Family-owned business thinking about succession planning
Example account basics: Care homes, £5m–£15m revenue, 8+ years old, no prior investment or M&A activity, based in Manchester.
Targeting: £800k+ cash on the balance sheet, a director-shareholder over the age of 60, age diversity across the board, and 10–20% scale-up growth.
Trigger: The company files a voluntary audit of full financials despite being below the threshold — and hires a new Finance Director in the same quarter.
Businesses that have been around a long time and recently started scaling, with age diversity on the board, are often family-owned companies thinking about succession planning.
If they’re filing a voluntary audit when not required to, this is often to appear viable to potential acquirers. Hiring a new financial director at the same time is likely related to sorting out internal finances to get the business ready to sell and achieve the best possible valuation.
02. Investment Banker / Wealth Manager
Example account basics: Cleantech companies in London, £30m+ turnover, £1m+ EBITDA, equity-funded, at growth or established stage.
Targeting: First raised equity five to seven years ago, most recent pre-money valuation of £50m+, hasn’t raised equity in the past 12 months, graduated from an accelerator with a high exit rate.
Trigger: Beauhurst’s network search flags that a contact in your personal network has just joined the company’s board, as one of several new directors and non-executives with a track record of exiting businesses.
A profitable company with a strong valuation whose first investors joined over five years ago will likely be feeling pressure to exit, based on the typical investor horizon of five to seven years.
Graduating from a selective accelerator programme increases the likelihood that both the appetite and the capability for an exit are there. Not having raised equity recently suggests the company isn’t looking to grow further via institutional capital. Instead, they’ll potentially look for an exit.
Non-execs and directors with exit experience tend to join boards at precisely this stage to help navigate a transaction. Knowing this ahead of time enables a far warmer introduction, and an immediate reason to call.
03. Venture Capital Lawyer
Example account basics: Biotech companies at seed stage, based in Cambridge, that have hit growth or innovation signals on the platform.
Targeting: Raised less than £200k in equity to date, unannounced deals, and hasn’t raised in the past 12 months.
Trigger: The company graduated from an accelerator programme in the past 12 months with a specific focus on preparing businesses for Series A investment.
Growth and innovation signals are strong indicators of a company with both the ambition and potential to scale. A small, silent raise of under £200k is likely to have been friends and family — essentially a pre-institutional round which means it’s almost certain that no specialist VC lawyer has been involved yet.
Not having raised in the past 12 months also suggests they’ll need to raise again soon. Graduating from an accelerator that prepares companies for Series A is a signal that they’re now actively looking to raise and have a realistic chance of doing so — meaning the legal support they’ve never needed before is about to become urgent.
Transform intelligence into outreach
Once you’ve perfected your search on Beauhurst, you can save the results as a Collection — a list of the companies, people, funds, or fundraisings from your origination workflow.
This can be a static list or a dynamic Collection, where new origination targets are added as they meet your criteria and removed when they fall outside of those parameters.
From this point, when a company undergoes any kind of event from a new senior hire or patent filing, through to an accelerator attendance or appearance in the press, you’ll always be the first to know.
What’s more, you can also sync Beauhurst data directly with your CRM so the entire firm has visibility across the origination workflow.
Build your origination workflow with Beauhurst
The best origination strategies are built on better timing, not bigger lists. Any firm can pull a list of 500 companies from a directory or contact database. What separates the advisors who win mandates from those who don’t is knowing which of those companies needs you right now, and getting there before anyone else does.
Beauhurst gives you the signals to do just that. Map your market, refine it to the companies that may need your services, and set up trigger-based alerts to perfect the timing.
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