You are asking someone to contemplate parting with their life's work, usually before they have considered it. Almost everything that goes wrong here goes wrong in the first paragraph.
Start a private conversation with the Acquisition Concierge, already scoped to approaching an owner. Pick a starting point, or describe your situation directly.
For most founders, a business is not an asset with a price; it is thirty years, a reputation among people they see socially, and the livelihoods of staff they hired personally. An approach that treats it as an asset, leading with a valuation, a process, or urgency, reliably produces silence, and often a closed door that stays closed. What works is slower and less transactional: evidence that you know what the company actually does, a clear account of who you are and why you are interested in this business rather than a category of business, an explicit assurance about confidentiality, and no request beyond a conversation. The goal of a first approach is a second conversation. Nothing more.
Owners describe the same handful of reasons for engaging, and the same handful for not replying. Neither list is about price.
Something specific and accurate about what they do. Generic praise reads as a mail merge and is treated as one.
Who you are, what you own, and why this company. Anonymous approaches are assumed to be intermediaries fishing.
A stated commitment that the conversation stays private, the first concern of nearly every owner approached.
No deadline, no process, no exploding interest. Pressure signals a transaction rather than a relationship.
Interest in the staff, the customers and the name. For many owners this outranks price and is rarely mentioned by buyers.
A conversation with no obligation. Asking for financials in a first approach ends most of them.
How the Institute helps with an approach.
Owners in a given industry know one another. A clumsy approach is rarely contained to the company that received it.
"We admire what you have built. We are not running a broad search and there is no process here, we are exploring whether there might eventually be a thoughtful way for our two organizations to work together." No price. No deadline. No ask beyond a conversation.
No. A number in a first letter does two damaging things at once: it converts a relationship overture into a transaction, and it anchors an expectation before either party knows anything. If the number is low it is insulting; if it is high you have bid against yourself before diligence. Owners who are ready to discuss value will raise it themselves, usually in the second or third conversation, and at that point the honest answer is that a range depends on what the financials show.
Find out before you approach, because approaching the wrong person can end the conversation permanently and noisily. Multi-owner private companies frequently have shareholders with sharply different appetites, one ready to retire, another mid-career, a family member not in the business at all, and an approach that reaches them out of order can create internal conflict the owner blames on you. Where ownership is unclear, an introduction through a trusted mutual contact is usually safer than a direct letter.
Persistent over years, not over weeks. A reasonable cadence is an initial approach, one follow-up after several weeks, and then a genuine pause, a note perhaps annually, ideally attached to something real like an industry development or a piece of news about their company. Owners consistently report that the buyer they eventually transacted with was the one who stayed in touch politely and without pressure over a long period. Frequent follow-up reads as a process working a list, which is precisely the impression that closes doors.
When information is about to be exchanged that genuinely needs protecting, usually when the owner is ready to share financials, and not before. Leading with a confidentiality agreement makes a first approach feel legalistic and transactional, which is the opposite of the intended signal. At that later point, keep it mutual and narrow: a heavy agreement with non-solicits and exclusivity attached is a common way to make an interested owner reconsider whether they want to do this at all.
Describe the company and how you would approach it. The Concierge will work through the framing with you.