What to say in a cold email to a business owner about selling

To get a business owner to respond to your cold outreach, many different things have to be in place. Obviously, the list quality has to be there. But in this post I want to talk about what to say, assuming you already have a good list built.

Do not open with your credentials

There are many different things you can say to an owner. You probably have your own judgment of what the seller wants, and you frame your outreach around that. That is the right way to approach it.

But a quick story from one of our campaigns. We were opening with the credentials of the advisor: their successful track record, or a statement about results. It fell flat. We sent it to about a thousand owners, and not one of them said they were interested.

In one test on the same list in the same week, an opener built on a proof number (“82% sell above market”) got 0 interested owners out of 995. A plain question got 2 out of 945.

I speak with advisors all the time, and I ask them, what can we mention in an email to position you differently, to make you stand out? I often hear things like: we have been in business more than 20 years, we really care about our clients, we only serve this industry.

One owner put it plainly in September 2026: “You have a good sales pitch, but I get 3-4 of these a day.”

That is fine, and it is good to know. It is a fact you can mention on a call or once things progress. But on a cold email that statement holds no weight, because owners hear it all the time. You are not the only advisor who cares about their clients. You are not the only advisor who has been in business for 15 or 20 years. And you are probably not the only advisor serving that industry, unless you are really niche. In that case it works.

That is the thing with cold outreach. People react differently to things a warm audience would react well to.

Open with a question instead

Then we switched to a question opener. Instead of making a statement or leading with straight credentials, we asked a question. A question makes someone think of the answer in their mind and keep reading the rest of the email, because it opens a curiosity loop instead of dropping a statement.

I am not saying a statement never works. It has to be super specific and very relevant to what they are going through, and most of the time you cannot predict that. If you can, you should be doing a one-to-one approach where you research every single thing going on in the business that you can see from the outside.

Once we started asking questions instead, we got to about one interested owner for every 334 we contacted. That is across 5,012 owners and only 15 interested, so it is a direction, not a law.

My explanation, after dozens of campaigns and tens of thousands of owners reached: you ask them a question they are already asking themselves, or have thought about. That is relevant. You show them you understand what is going on in their mind and what kind of questions they might be asking. That makes them keep reading, and it makes them more likely to respond, because you piqued their curiosity.

Give them a reason you are writing

Another very important one came from a different set of campaigns.

We were running sell-side campaigns for advisors and buy-side searches for buyers at the same time. The sell-side was still performing. We were getting about 1 interested owner for every 412 we emailed. But on the buy-side we were getting about 1 interested owner for every 97 we emailed. That is about 4 times better.

Our process was pretty much the same. The lead list was built the same way. The sourcing, the screening, finding the owners, the succession signals, all of it was done the same way. But the buy-side was ripping, and the sell-side was doing well, just not as well.

So I asked myself, what is the difference? Is it the market? Is it the type of owner? I looked into it, and the only thing that stood out was what we were pitching.

For the sell-side advisor we were pitching: let’s have a discussion so I can help you sell your business. On the buy-side we were mentioning a specific buyer. It was not “let me help you sell your company for a good price.” It was: I have a buyer who is interested in companies like yours, and your firm seems to be a fit. Would you be open to a quick 15 minute conversation before I make an introduction, to see if it makes sense?

Then it hit me. When you can mention a buyer, that means intent. What made the difference was the intent of our email and how specific it was. We were no longer emailing them because they were, say, a manufacturing firm and we wanted to help them sell. We were emailing them because a buyer was searching for exactly their type of company.

The replies were warmer too. Of the owners who wrote back to a buyer, 37% were interested. Of the owners who wrote back to an advisor, 19% were.

On the sell-side, name your buyers

We took that and implemented it on the sell-side as well. Obviously there was no specific buyer, because it is a sell-side mandate. But we started mentioning the buyer network the advisor had. For example: I work with a network of, say, 3,000 buyers. So instead of speaking with just one private equity firm or one buyer with one offer, we can help you get multiple offers.

Instead of coming from a place of lack, you get an abundance of options. You can speak with different buyers and decide which terms and which price fit you best. You become the one running the process, instead of them running the process on you.

That started getting way better replies. We got to about 1 interested owner for every 155 we emailed, against about 1 in 478 for every other sell-side opener. Most of those emails went out in one month, so the gap may be smaller than it looks, but the direction held.

One business owner wrote back in October 2026: “If you have an interested buyer and some offers ready to share send them over. Otherwise, I am not interested at the moment.”

Skip the flattery opener

Openers like “you have spent 20 years building this business” are the same problem as the other statements. Yes, it is personalization. But personalization does not matter as much as you think here, because it adds nothing to the conversation. It is flattery. The owner already knows they have been in business for 20 years.

That is something you can use in your content or your follow-ups. For a cold opener it is not the best way to go about it. Go direct, introduce yourself, clearly state why you are reaching out, and ask if it makes sense to have a quick introduction.

Compare your opener against ours

Out of the first emails we sent to 41,353 owners, these are five of the opener types and what each one got. The lists, clients and months differ between rows, and rows with under 20 interested owners are small samples, so read them as direction, not a lab test.

Put it together

So if you are doing outreach right now and not getting interested replies, implement what I have told you here.

Put the email in this order.

First the opener: a question. Then introduce yourself: I’m an advisor, I have a network of this many buyers, I do this and this. If you are on the sell-side, that is where your network of potential buyers goes.

Then comes a proof point. If you can state one clear win, mention it here, after the introduction, not as the opener. You say: I helped this owner do this. For example, let’s say an owner came to you with an offer of $1 million, and after you ran the process they sold for $2.5 million. Any specific result like that is great.

Then the call to action: does it make sense for us to chat, or meet face-to-face?

If you are on the buy-side and you have a buyer, do pretty much what I described here, but be even more specific about the buyer.

If you are still working out where sellers come from in the first place, start with how M&A advisors find off-market sellers beyond referrals. And if you would rather not run this yourself, here is how we run owner outreach for M&A advisors.

And keep that call to action small: a quick 15 minute introductory chat, nothing too crazy, or a face-to-face meeting if you are doing local outreach.