Why Serious Buyers Never Bet on a Single Deal
If you’re searching for a business to acquire, here’s a hard truth: the buyers who succeed almost never pin their hopes on a single opportunity. They build a pipeline — evaluating multiple deals simultaneously, comparing opportunities against each other, and making data-driven decisions about where to invest their time, energy, and capital.
Think of it like a sales funnel, but in reverse. Instead of qualifying leads who want to buy from you, you’re qualifying businesses you might want to buy. And just like in sales, volume matters. The more opportunities you evaluate, the better your chances of finding the right fit at the right price with the right terms.
At GoSBA Loans, we’ve helped facilitate over $320 million in SBA-funded acquisitions in 2025 alone. We’ve seen firsthand how the most successful buyers operate — and they almost always run a disciplined acquisition pipeline. In this guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how to build one.
What Is an Acquisition Pipeline?
An acquisition pipeline is a structured system for tracking, evaluating, and advancing multiple potential business acquisitions at different stages of the buying process. It borrows heavily from project management and CRM methodology, giving you a clear view of:
- How many deals you’re actively reviewing
- What stage each deal is in (initial review, NDA signed, financials received, LOI submitted, due diligence, closing)
- Which deals are worth pursuing further and which should be dropped
- Where your time and resources are being allocated
Without a pipeline, you’re essentially wandering from one listing to the next, reacting emotionally instead of strategically. With a pipeline, you’re running a process — and processes produce results.
Step 1: Define Your Acquisition Criteria Before You Start Looking
Before you look at a single listing, you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. This sounds obvious, but most first-time buyers skip this step entirely. They browse BizBuySell or get a broker email and react to whatever catches their eye.
Your acquisition criteria should include:
Financial Parameters
- Revenue range: What’s the minimum and maximum annual revenue you’ll consider?
- Cash flow / SDE range: What seller’s discretionary earnings level supports your lifestyle needs and debt service?
- Asking price range: Based on your available equity injection (typically 10-20% for SBA loans), what purchase prices are realistic?
- Profit margins: Are you targeting high-margin service businesses or lower-margin but higher-volume operations?
Industry and Operational Fit
- Industries you understand or have experience in
- Industries you’re willing to learn with proper transition support
- Geographic preferences: Are you relocating or staying local?
- Employee count: Do you want to manage 5 people or 50?
- Owner involvement: Is the current owner working 60 hours a week, or is the business semi-absentee?
Deal Structure Preferences
- Asset sale vs. stock sale
- Seller financing expectations (SBA often requires 5-10% seller note)
- Transition period: How long will the seller stay to train you?
- Real estate: Is the property included, leased, or a separate transaction?
Write these criteria down. Score them by importance. This becomes your evaluation framework — the lens through which every deal gets judged.
Step 2: Create a Deal Scoring System
Once you have your criteria, turn them into a scoring system. This doesn’t need to be complicated. A simple 1-5 scale across your most important factors works perfectly.
Here’s an example scoring framework:
- Financial health (1-5): Are the financials clean, growing, and verifiable?
- Industry fit (1-5): Does this match your experience and interests?
- Growth potential (1-5): Are there obvious opportunities the current owner isn’t pursuing?
- Valuation reasonableness (1-5): Is the asking price in line with market multiples?
- Transition risk (1-5): How dependent is the business on the current owner?
- Location and lifestyle (1-5): Does this fit your life?
- SBA lendability (1-5): Will this deal pass SBA underwriting?
That last factor — SBA lendability — is one most buyers overlook. Not every business qualifies for SBA financing, and if you’re planning to use an SBA loan (which most acquisition buyers do), you need to evaluate deals through that lens from day one.
This is where GoSBA’s 50+ lender network becomes a massive advantage. We can quickly assess whether a deal is likely to get financed — before you spend weeks on due diligence only to discover the business doesn’t qualify.
Step 3: Build Your Pipeline Tracker
You don’t need fancy software. A simple spreadsheet works. Create columns for:
- Business name / listing ID
- Source (broker, BizBuySell, off-market, referral)
- Asking price
- Revenue and SDE
- Industry
- Your composite score
- Current stage (Initial Review → NDA Signed → Financials Received → LOI Submitted → Due Diligence → Closing)
- Next action and deadline
- Notes
Update this weekly. Review it before every call with a broker or seller. It keeps you organized and prevents deals from falling through the cracks.
Step 4: Manage Your Pipeline Stages
Stage 1: Initial Review (The Quick Filter)
This is where volume matters. You might review 50-100 listings to find 10-15 worth a deeper look. At this stage, you’re spending 5-10 minutes per deal, checking it against your criteria and doing a quick gut check.
Kill signals at this stage:
- Asking price way above market multiples
- Declining revenue trends
- Industry you have zero interest in
- Location that doesn’t work
- Owner is the entire business (no transferable value)
Stage 2: NDA and Information Request
For deals that pass your initial filter, sign the NDA and request detailed financials. You’re now spending 1-2 hours per deal reviewing tax returns, P&Ls, and asking initial questions.
Stage 3: Deep Financial Review
This is where you dig into the numbers. Recast the financials, calculate true SDE, verify revenue trends, and assess whether the business can support SBA debt service. At this stage, it’s smart to get your SBA lender involved.
GoSBA can pre-qualify deals at this stage — for free. Our team reviews the financials, runs preliminary numbers, and tells you whether the deal is likely financeable before you invest more time.
Stage 4: LOI (Letter of Intent)
If the numbers work and you want to move forward, submit an LOI. This is where pipeline management gets critical, because LOIs often come with exclusivity periods.
Stage 5: Due Diligence
You’ve agreed on terms. Now you verify everything. This typically takes 30-60 days and involves accountants, attorneys, and your SBA lender working in parallel.
Stage 6: Closing
Final loan approval, document signing, and ownership transfer.
When to Walk Away vs. When to Go Deeper
One of the hardest skills in acquisition is knowing when to cut a deal loose. Here are clear signals for each:
Walk Away When:
- The seller refuses to provide clean financials or keeps making excuses about documentation
- Revenue is declining and the seller can’t explain why or has no credible turnaround plan
- Customer concentration is extreme — one client represents 40%+ of revenue
- The valuation is unreasonable and the seller won’t negotiate
- Your gut says no — experienced buyers learn to trust this instinct
- The business can’t support SBA debt service — if the cash flow doesn’t cover the loan payment with adequate coverage ratio, it’s not financeable
Go Deeper When:
- Financials are clean and growing
- The business has diversified revenue across multiple customers and channels
- There are obvious growth opportunities the current owner isn’t pursuing
- The seller is motivated and realistic about pricing
- The transition plan is solid — the seller will stay and train you
- Your SBA lender confirms the deal is financeable
Managing LOIs and Exclusivity Periods
When you submit a Letter of Intent, the seller will typically ask for an exclusivity period — usually 30-90 days during which you have the sole right to negotiate and conduct due diligence.
Here’s how to manage exclusivity strategically:
- Don’t grant exclusivity too easily. Make sure you’ve done enough preliminary work to justify taking a deal off the market.
- Keep your pipeline active. Even while in exclusivity on one deal, you can still do initial reviews and sign NDAs on others. You just can’t submit competing LOIs if you’ve granted reciprocal exclusivity.
- Set milestones within the exclusivity period. Break due diligence into phases with go/no-go checkpoints.
- Get your financing pre-qualified early. Nothing kills deals faster than discovering late in due diligence that you can’t get the loan.
This last point is crucial. GoSBA pre-qualifies buyers before you even find a deal. That means when you submit an LOI, you can include a pre-qualification letter — giving the seller confidence that you can actually close.
How GoSBA Helps You Run a Better Pipeline
Most buyers work with a single bank or lender. If that lender says no, they’re stuck. GoSBA is different.
- 50+ SBA lender network: We match your deal to the right lender based on industry, deal size, geography, and borrower profile. Different lenders have different appetites — we know who wants what.
- Pre-qualification on multiple deals: Evaluating three deals at once? We can run preliminary numbers on all of them simultaneously, so you know which ones are financeable before you invest weeks of effort.
- $320M+ funded in 2025: We’re not theorizing about what works. We’re actively closing deals every week across dozens of industries.
- 100% free service: GoSBA is paid by the lender, not you. Our deal evaluation, pre-qualification, and lender matching costs you nothing.
- Free business plan and financial projections: Every GoSBA client receives a professionally prepared business plan and financial projections — a $2,500-$5,000 value — at no cost. This is required for SBA loans and dramatically improves your approval odds.
Putting It All Together: Your Acquisition Pipeline Action Plan
- Define your criteria — Know exactly what you’re looking for before you start
- Build your scoring system — Create a simple, repeatable framework for evaluating deals
- Set up your tracker — Spreadsheet, CRM, or project management tool
- Get pre-qualified with GoSBA — Know your buying power before you make offers
- Feed the pipeline — Review 10-20 new opportunities per week
- Advance ruthlessly — Move good deals forward fast, kill bad deals faster
- Submit strong LOIs — Include your pre-qualification letter and clear terms
- Close with confidence — With the right lender already matched, closing becomes execution, not prayer
Ready to Build Your Acquisition Pipeline?
The best business buyers don’t wait for the perfect deal to fall in their lap. They build systems that surface great opportunities, evaluate them efficiently, and close them with the right financing.
GoSBA is your financing partner throughout the entire pipeline. Whether you’re evaluating your first deal or your fifth, we’ll help you understand what’s financeable, match you with the right SBA lender, and prepare the business plan and projections you need to get approved.
Our service is 100% free to you — always.
