MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
How Tullius Partners Generated 23 Qualified M&A Leads in Two Months With Targeted Cold Email to Business Owners
23 qualified leads and a 38% positive reply rate in 2 months
Leads in 2 months
Positive reply rate
Outbound channel used
CLIENT REVIEW
Hear it straight from the client
Brian Schlittenhardt
Associate at TULLIUS PARTNERS
THE CHALLENGE
Where they were stuck
Tullius Partners has spent over 45 years helping business owners navigate mergers, acquisitions, and succession, with deep specialization in facilities-services industries like commercial janitorial. But their pipeline of owner conversations depended heavily on referrals and reputation, with no predictable, scalable way to reach the specific business owners who were approaching a transition.
No predictable channel for reaching business owners considering a sale or succession
A referral-driven pipeline that was inconsistent and hard to scale
A narrow, high-value ICP that demanded precise targeting, not spray-and-pray outreach
THE SYSTEM WE BUILT
How we solved their problems
Targeting & List Building
Segmented lists were built by industry, company size, and ownership profile to isolate the specific business owners most likely to be approaching a sale, succession, or capital raise.
Deliverability Infrastructure
Dedicated sending domains and inboxes were configured and warmed to keep outreach landing in the primary inbox at scale, protecting Tullius's reputation with a discerning audience.
Messaging & Weekly Optimization
Owner-to-owner copy led with Tullius's 45-year track record and enterprise-value focus, and the account manager refined segments, angles, and cadences weekly based on which produced the highest-intent replies.
Tullius Partners has spent more than 45 years advising business owners through some of the most consequential decisions they will ever make: selling the company, raising capital, or planning a succession. In a relationship-driven, reputation-led business like M&A advisory, deal flow has traditionally come from referrals and a strong network. The problem with that model is predictability. There was no reliable way to consistently start new conversations with the specific owners who were quietly beginning to think about a transition.
The challenge was the audience itself. Tullius's ideal client is not a broad market, it is a narrow, high-value set of business owners in specific industries and size ranges. Generic outreach would have been noise. Reaching them required precise targeting and messaging credible enough to earn a reply from a skeptical, experienced owner.
Outbound System built segmented prospect lists by industry, company size, and ownership profile, then wrote owner-to-owner messaging that led with what makes Tullius different: 45 years of experience, deep industry specialization, and a risk-mitigating process built to maximize enterprise value. Dedicated sending infrastructure was configured to keep messages landing in the inbox at scale, and cadences were timed to read like a trusted advisor reaching out, not a sales machine. Each week, their account manager doubled down on the segments and angles producing the highest-intent replies.
In two months, the campaign produced 23 qualified leads at a 38% positive reply rate, giving Tullius a predictable new channel for owner conversations on top of their referral network. Instead of waiting for the right introduction, they now start relevant conversations with qualified owners on a consistent basis.
