Reaching Owners Who Get a Better Pitch Than Yours Weekly
Deal origination email reaches business owners who get approached constantly, often by people with a worse thesis but a noticeably better mail merge. Anything that reads as templated confirms to that owner that the sender isn't serious about their specific business, and that impression is very hard to walk back once formed.
Lemlist vs Instantly for m&a advisory & growth strategy is really a question of how much research backs each send, since this audience has seen every generic version of this email already.
Vendors Covered in this Article
Disclosure: We may earn a commission if you buy through some links on this page. It doesn't change what we recommend.
Step One: Build the List From a Real Thesis, Not a Filter
The strongest origination lists come from a specific investment thesis, a subsector, a size range, a geography, not a broad database filter on SIC code and revenue. Start by writing down exactly why a given owner's business fits the thesis, in a sentence specific enough to put directly into the first email.
Step Two: Choose Lemlist for the Core Outreach
Because the list should already be narrow and thesis-driven, Lemlist's personalization tools fit the mechanics well: a landing page or image referencing something specific about the business, and a LinkedIn step for owners who are more reachable there than through a general company inbox. This isn't a volume motion, and the tool choice should reflect that from the start.
Step Three: Use Instantly Only for Early Thesis Testing
If a thesis is new and unproven, a wider first pass can help validate it before investing research time in each individual owner. Instantly's rotation across warmed inboxes suits that narrow, temporary use case, testing a thesis at volume, not running the actual origination motion once the thesis is validated and the real, personalized list is built.
Step Four: Write the Follow-Up Before You Send the First Email
A single message with no follow-up plan gets far fewer replies than one carried through a properly sequenced follow-up1, and for a busy owner, the second and third touches often land better than the first simply because timing matters as much as content. Draft the full sequence, not just the opener, before the first send goes out.
Step Five: Respond to Interest Immediately, Not Eventually
An owner who replies with interest is often testing several advisors informally before picking one to engage seriously, and leads contacted within the first hour qualify at roughly seven times the rate of ones contacted even a little later2. A slow response to a warm reply can lose a deal to whichever firm answered first, regardless of which firm had the stronger thesis.
A Worked Example: Writing the First Email From a Thesis
Say the thesis is regional manufacturers with revenue between $15 million and $60 million facing a founder succession question in the next three to five years. A generic version of this email talks about growth strategy for manufacturers. A thesis-driven version references something specific: a piece of public information suggesting the succession question is live, an executive's age and tenure visible on a company bio page, a recent local news mention of retirement plans, or simply a direct, respectful question about ownership transition plans.
The goal isn't to guess at private information, it's to demonstrate that the outreach is grounded in a real, specific thesis about this exact business rather than a mail-merge field. An owner who receives an email like this recognizes it as different from the dozen generic acquisition inquiries sitting in the same inbox, even before deciding whether to reply. That specificity costs an extra ten minutes of research per name, which is exactly the trade a thesis-driven origination list is built to make.
Why the List Should Shrink Over Time, Not Grow
A common mistake in origination is treating list size as the main lever: if response is low, add more names rather than sharpening the thesis behind the existing ones. The better instinct, once a thesis is validated, is to shrink the active list to the owners who fit it most precisely and put more research time into each one, rather than continuing to widen the funnel indefinitely.
A firm running outreach well over time usually has a smaller active list a year in than it did at the start, not a larger one, because the process of running real conversations sharpens the thesis and rules out segments that looked promising on paper but never actually converted. That discipline, cutting names that no longer fit rather than only ever adding new ones, is worth reviewing quarterly with the whole origination team, not something left to happen on its own without anyone actually owning the decision or the quarterly review itself.
The five steps of a thesis-driven origination motion, in order:
- Build the list from a specific investment thesis, such as a subsector, size range, and geography, not a broad database filter.
- Use Lemlist for the core outreach, with a landing page or image referencing something specific about each owner's business.
- Use Instantly only to test a new thesis at volume, and stop once the real personalized list is built.
- Draft the full follow-up sequence, not just the opener, before the first email goes out.
- Respond to any expression of interest immediately, since a slow reply can lose the deal to whichever firm answered first.
What Good Looks Like
An advisory firm running origination well starts every list from a specific thesis rather than a broad filter, writes the full follow-up sequence before the first send, and responds to any owner's reply within hours rather than days.
Building The Capability (5-Stage Skill Ladder)
How to Get Started
Disclosure: We may earn a commission if you buy through some links on this page. It doesn't change what we recommend.
Lemlist fits a thesis-driven origination list well, since referencing a specific, real detail about an owner's business is what separates this from the generic pitches they already ignore.
Apollo is useful for building an initial thesis-fit list of owners and firms before the research phase narrows it down to real prospects.
Frequently Asked Questions
How different should each email really be if the thesis is the same across the list?
The thesis can repeat, but the specific reason it applies to that owner's business shouldn't. Reference something true about their company: a recent expansion, a specific product line, a visible growth pattern, rather than restating the general thesis as if it were personalization.
Is it worth testing a new thesis with a broad volume send before building a real list?
It can be, as a narrow, temporary step. A wider test pass helps validate whether a thesis gets any response before investing research time in a full personalized list, but it shouldn't become the ongoing origination process once the thesis proves out.
How fast should an M&A advisor respond when an owner replies with interest?
Right away. An owner who replies is often testing several advisors informally, and leads contacted within the first hour qualify at roughly seven times the rate of ones contacted even a little later. A slow response can lose the conversation to whichever firm answered first.
Sources
Where we quote a benchmark, we show its source. Other figures in this guide are estimates or general guidance, so check them against your own numbers.
- Reply lift from a single follow-up email. Backlinko x Pitchbox — analysis of 12M outreach emails, 2019.
- Qualification advantage of responding to leads within 1 hour. Harvard Business Review, 'The Short Life of Online Sales Leads' (2011), via Motarme summary, 2011.
Related Guides
Lemlist vs Instantly vs Smartlead: Cold Email Outreach & Deliverability Comparison
Compare Lemlist, Instantly, and Smartlead: cold email deliverability, multi-inbox rotation, mailbox warmup, multichannel prospecting, and pricing.
Deal Outreach Can't Afford a Silent Spam Folder
Confidential deal outreach and banker introductions in M&A advisory depend on reliable email. How InboxAlly and Mailreach fit that world.
Recording Calls on Live M&A and Growth Strategy Deals
A checklist for M&A advisory and growth strategy firms on whether and how to record deal calls with Fathom or Fireflies without breaking confidentiality.
Why M&A and Growth Strategy Firms Should Skip the Platform Debate
M&A advisory and growth strategy firms rarely need Gainsight or ChurnZero. Here's why, and what to track instead across deal-based relationships.
Apollo vs ZoomInfo for M&A Advisory and Growth Strategy Firms
Private-company data is the real test for an M&A advisory or growth strategy practice. Here's how Apollo and ZoomInfo compare on ownership and revenue signals.
Splitting Success Fees Across an M&A Deal Team
Success fees land in lumps, months apart, split among an originator, a deal lead, and an analyst. Here is how to model that split, and which tool fits.