The Buyer Calling You Already Assumes You’re Not Ready

If you own a home services business doing somewhere between $3 million and $30 million — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, pest control, landscaping — you have probably been contacted by someone who wants to buy it.

Maybe more than once. According to CT Acquisitions, which advises on the buy side of these deals, sophisticated home services operators receive five to ten cold M&A outreaches per quarter.

Most owners read that call one of two ways. Either it’s flattering, or it’s an annoyance. Both readings miss what’s happening.

The call is not about you

Top-quartile deal origination programs convert roughly 1% of outbound contacts into closed deals, over a horizon of 18 to 36 months.

One percent.

That’s the number worth sitting with. The person who contacted you reached out to somewhere around a hundred businesses to close one transaction. Your reputation may be excellent and your business may be genuinely attractive, but the call itself is not evidence of either. It’s evidence that you fit a profile: right trade, right revenue band, right geography, owner probably in the right age range.

This isn’t cynicism. It’s useful information. An owner who believes they’ve been singled out negotiates differently than one who understands they’re in a funnel. The first is flattered. The second is informed.

Who is actually calling

It’s usually not a partner at a private equity firm.

Platforms run outbound through a few channels. Some maintain dedicated business development teams — an associate, tools, and travel, running $180,000 to $250,000 a year and producing two to four closed deals annually. Some work through buy-side advisory firms. Some source through trade associations and CPA referral networks.

The buy-side advisor arrangement is worth understanding. These firms are typically paid by the buyer at close, as a percentage of enterprise value, with no retainer. That’s a legitimate business model and many of them are good at what they do. But it means the friendly person walking you through the process is compensated by the other side of the table, and only if a deal happens.

There’s nothing improper about that. You just want to know it, because it’s easy to mistake a well-run buy-side process for representation you don’t have.

The part of their playbook that should change yours

Buried in the origination guidance is this, addressed to buyers about the mistakes they make:

“Most founders aren’t ready when first approached. Quarterly touchpoints over 18 to 36 months are where the real compounding happens.”

Read that again from your side of the table.

The buyer already knows you’re not ready. It’s baked into their model. They don’t expect the first call to produce a deal, or the second, or the fifth. They expect to stay in light contact for two to three years, checking in quarterly, waiting for the moment you decide it’s time — and then to be the relationship already in place when you do.

That’s a patient, well-designed strategy. And it tells you exactly how much time you have.

Because the same 18 to 36 months they’re using to nurture you is the window you need to make your business worth what you want for it. Financial history takes three years to build. Owner dependence takes a year or two to unwind. Contracts get fixed at renewal cycles. None of that compresses.

You’re both operating on the same clock. The difference is that they know it and most owners don’t.

What they’re evaluating while they wait

The economics explain the patience.

Sub-$1 million home services businesses trade around 2.0x to 3.5x SDE. Platforms above $25 million in revenue clear roughly 10x to 14x adjusted EBITDA. That spread — three to five turns of earnings — is the entire engine. A platform buys at a small-company multiple, folds your business into an entity valued at a large-company multiple, and the arbitrage lands immediately.

The capital behind this is substantial. Apollo committed roughly $2 billion to Apex Service Partners in May 2026 at a valuation near $10 billion. Blackstone acquired Champions Group in February 2026 at approximately $2.5 billion. Apex alone closed around 60 add-on acquisitions in 2025.

But the spread only works if what they buy holds together after they buy it. Which is why the same things get examined every time: recurring revenue quality, customer concentration, technician retention, and owner dependence. A business with real service agreements and a team that runs it is worth substantially more to a platform than one with the same revenue where the owner is the operation.

The two ways this goes

If you spend the nurture window getting comfortable:

You take the calls. They’re pleasant. The numbers floated sound good. Eventually one buyer moves from friendly check-in to real interest, and you engage, because after two years the relationship feels established.

You share financials. Conversations accelerate. There’s a letter of intent with an exclusivity provision, and you sign it, because by now you want this.

Then diligence starts, and it finds what was always there. Books built to minimize taxes, so reported earnings don’t match what you represented. A top customer at 30% of revenue that nobody had calculated. A lead technician with no agreement and no reason to stay. Operations that live in your head.

Now the price moves. Sometimes a straight reduction. Sometimes the cash at closing shrinks and the earnout grows. Sometimes a transition requirement that keeps you working three more years in a company you no longer control.

And you take it, because you’ve been off the market for four months, you’ve paid the legal fees, and starting over means returning to a business that still has every problem the buyer just documented.

If you spend the nurture window getting ready:

Same calls, same two years, different outcome.

Your financials are clean and consistent, so what diligence models matches what you represented. Your revenue is diversified. Your key people have agreements. Your operations are documented, so what they’re buying is a business rather than your personal involvement in one.

Diligence finds nothing, because there’s nothing to find. The price at closing resembles the price discussed at the start.

You also have your own advisors — an M&A attorney who has seen these deals, a CPA who understands earnout taxation, someone who knows what’s standard and what isn’t. A buyer with a deal team should be met by a seller with a team.

And you can walk. Not as a tactic — because your business is genuinely sellable to someone else, and both sides know it. That single fact changes every conversation that follows.

What to do with the next call

You don’t have to engage, and you don’t have to hang up.

Don’t hand over numbers. Not revenue, not margins, not owner compensation — not before you know who they are and there’s an NDA in place. A serious buyer expects this.

Don’t sign an NDA unread. Some carry exclusivity, standstill, or non-solicit provisions unrelated to confidentiality. Short read for an attorney, worth the call.

Ask who they work for and how they’re paid. Straightforward question. The answer tells you whether you’re talking to a principal, an employee, or a commissioned intermediary.

Ask what they’ve closed. How many businesses in this trade, how many in Washington, what happened to those owners afterward, and can you speak to one. Serious buyers answer directly. Pipeline-builders get vague.

Ask about structure, not just price. How much at closing, how much in earnout, how much in rollover equity. A stated $4 million can mean four million at closing or two million with the rest contingent on performance you won’t control.

Then use the clock. If you’re not ready — and most owners aren’t — say so honestly. You’re not exploring a sale right now, you’d be open to a conversation down the road, and you’d like to stay in touch. That’s true, it’s professional, and it costs you nothing.

Then go find out where your business stands, and spend the next 18 to 36 months making the answer better.

They’re playing a long game whether you participate or not. The only question is whether you use the same time to prepare or to drift toward a conversation you’re not ready to have.