The deals must flow

Howdy Girdleyworld! 

Call them “customers” or “contracts” or “signatures” — you don’t have a business if you don’t have deal flow.

Here are 10 ways to find more deals. 

Maybe you’re a service provider. 

Maybe you’re an owner/operator running sales for your business. 

Maybe you’re a private investor.

Whoever you are, you live or die by closing deals. 

And to get better deals, you need to get more in the first place. It’s all about maximizing your surface area, so you see deals that your competition never even notices.

The more (and better deals) you get to see, the better your results.

So here are 10 ways to increase your deal flow. 

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My friend Chris Powers runs a real estate private equity fund, and has a genius scheme. 

He knows that real estate brokers have all the deals, so he pays them an extra commission for bringing him a deal. Brokers are coin-operated, so this works like a dream. 

His firm has now transacted over $2bn. His system works.

An incentive doesn’t always have to be cash. Think outside the box: where does your business come from, and what do they want?

A picture’s worth a thousand words, and a ten minute conversation face to face is worth a thousand emails. 

Find out where your target niche hangs out, then physically go there. It might be conferences, trade shows, even a local meetup or bar. 

Just show up. And be a real person – don’t just go to shove your business card in people’s hands. Be your authentic self. 

You’ll instantly stand out from the zillion cold callers. 

Humans have bad memories, so we often reach out to what is recent.

You’ve probably forgotten most of the people you’ve spoken to in your life. But I bet you remember who you spoke to last.

So the next time you find someone who’s in touch with your audience, create a system where you’re in touch regularly. 

Call, email, text – whatever works, and 6-weeks or monthly is a good cadence. Try it and adjust.

Every chance you get, tell people what you’re hunting for. It doesn’t matter where.

A friend of mine used to have “Buying Wonderful Businesses” in his Twitter profile, his LinkedIn profile, his Facebook account, his email signature, his business card — everything. I have friends that mention their businesses in real life at every event. 

Social media, parties, your local Chili’s — the best deals can come from odd places!

Deal flow that doesn’t match your target is a waste of everybody’s time. 

If you can only move on a certain kind of deal, make sure that’s obvious and easy to find. Name your price, amount, stage, market, industry, whatever.

The narrower your parameters, the quicker you can be “that person” for your specific target. 

My buddy Levi James’s company Harbor Capital does a great job on this. People can count themselves in or count themselves out immediately:

I’m an introvert (no, really!). But I can reach people that might have deals I like by giving out useful knowledge. 

Twitter, LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts — I spend a lot of time giving stuff away for free, and then I get to tell people who I am and what I’m looking for. 

Making lots of free stuff is also a great way to be persistent and tell unlikely people.

This is the pro-level version of “Get out from behind the keyboard”.

My friend Matt Willes told me this technique: 

When he wanted to expand his network in a particular city, he’d make a list of every broker/CPA/lawyer in the area and take them all to lunch, one by one. After an hour with him, these people saw Matt was great.

And the deals flowed.

Sub out “broker” for whoever controls the deal flow in your niche, then run this play. 

(The part Matt does intuitively here is Be a real person. Can’t overstate that one.)

Know people who might have deal flow for you? Bring them together for a useful, good event.

Spend the time to make sure the event is really valuable, really fun, or (ideally) both. If that sounds intimidating, there’s a great book that breaks down how to do this well.

Or get ambitious, and look at stuff like Capital Camp (“Serious investing conversations in shorts and sandals” or HoldCoConf (we’re going to a baller ski resort in Utah). 

It puts together incentives — networking, food, drink, activities) and “get out from behind the keyboard”.

There’s a famous spot in San Antonio where all the self-storage developers officed. Like-minded people hustling out of a single place. Working their own projects, but in parallel. 

I wanted that. So I started a coworking space called Rainwater. 

We rented out spaces to people who were solving the same problems. Now not only do I have a great place to work, but deals get shared over hallway chats and coffee all the time!

Build a repeatable, scalable process to hunt for deals. This might be tech, or human resources, or a combination of the two. 

Entrepreneur Sara Moore was looking for a business to buy and needed a way to cover more ground, so she hired 50+ interns off Craigslist. Over the next year, they looked at 400,000 businesses. (Her story is wild.)

With some hacks (or by outsourcing with a company like Near), it can be affordable!

So there you go: 10 ways to increase your deal flow.

I’ve either used or seen used every single one of these. 

At the end of the day, they all boil down to two principles: be a real person and give people something they value. 

So get out there and find your deals!

Have you found a great way to get more deals? I’d love to hear it. I read every reply that comes in (even if I’m slow sometimes).

Have a great week!

Michael