Case study · Account sourcing

An account-sourcing engine that scores who is ready to sell

The best acquisition targets are founder-owned businesses that sell before they ever hit a banker. The system that finds them maps a fragmented market, scores every company on a two-factor Fit + Sell-Readiness model, then verifies the top names live in Clay before anyone picks up the phone. A worked example on a residential and light-commercial HVAC thesis across the US Sun Belt.

Apollo.io

Grata

Clay

Signal scoringFit + Sell-ReadinessData governance

Jump to the shortlist Get in touch

companies mapped

Tier A shortlist

owner emails verified

re-checked live in Clay

The problem

Origination is a search problem, not a contact problem

The best acquisition targets are not for sale. They are founder-owned operators with no banker, no data room, and no listing, the kind a buyer wants to reach before a competitive process starts. The hard part is not sending an email. It is knowing, out of hundreds of look-alike companies, which handful is actually approachable right now, and being honest about how confident you are in that read. An origination team that treats every company the same wastes its most expensive resource: a principal’s time on the phone.

The engine

Six steps from thesis to a principal’s call list

Define the buy-box thesis→ Discover (Apollo / Grata + public web)→ Enrich (Clay)→ Score: Fit + Sell-Readiness→ Verify live in Clay→ Route to principals

The buy-box for this worked example: residential & light-commercial HVAC / mechanical, roughly $5–30M revenue, US Sun Belt and Southeast, founder-owned, no prior institutional capital. Discovery uses paid databases plus public sources; enrichment and scoring run through Clay. The verification step, highlighted, re-checks the top names against live data before anyone acts on them.

The scoring model

Two factors, one honest number

Every company gets a score out of 100, built from two halves and then discounted for how much I actually trust the data. The split keeps a great-fit company that shows no signal of selling separate from a smaller company whose owner looks genuinely ready.

Fit Score /50

Firmographic match to the buy-box: sub-vertical, revenue / size band, Sun-Belt geography, and recurring-revenue mix (maintenance plans).

Sell-Readiness /50

Inferred ownership signals: owner tenure (by founded year), founder / family ownership with no successor, and the absence of a recent professionalizing hire (GM / CFO / President).

Confidence adj.

Subtract for thin data: high −0, medium −7, low −14. A company cannot rank highly on a guess.

Tiers

A ≥ 80 (high / medium confidence only) · B 63–79 · C < 63.

Sell-Readiness is inferred, never claimed. A high score means the public signals line up the way they tend to before an owner sells, not that anyone intends to sell.

The shortlist

From 43 companies to a call list a principal can work

Origination is a filtering problem, not a contact problem. Each step below is a real cut: score every company on fit and readiness, keep the strong ones, confirm the owners are reachable, then spot-verify before anyone dials. A principal spends time only on the names that survive every gate.

Companies mapped

The full thesis-fit universe, scored from public signals.

↓ 74% filtered out

Tier A shortlist

Strong firmographic fit and strong inferred sell-readiness.

↓ owners confirmed

Owner emails verified

Reachable decision-makers confirmed, not guessed.

↓ live verification gate

Re-checked live in Clay

Spot-verified the moment before a principal dials.

The two-factor Fit + Sell-Readiness model that produces this shortlist is in the scoring section above; the full ranked list of every scored company is below. The funnel is the whole story in one view: a principal works the 11, starting with the verified names, instead of dialing 43 cold.

The ranked list

The same map, as a call list

Sorted by total score. Company identities are removed; this is the structure a principal works down, not a directory. One company was disqualified outright (already PE-owned), so 42 are scored here.

ID	Sub-vertical	ST	Fit	Sell	Adj	Conf	Score	Tier
T01	Multi-trade home services	TN	50	42	0	High	92	A
T02	Multi-trade home services	TX	50	38	0	High	88	A
T03	Multi-trade home services	NC	50	38	0	High	88	A
T04	Multi-trade home services	TN	50	38	0	High	88	A
T05	Multi-trade home services	SC	50	38	0	High	88	A
T06	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	46	35	0	High	81	A
T07	Multi-trade home services	FL	42	39	0	High	81	A
T08	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	AZ	46	35	0	High	81	A
T09	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	42	38	0	High	80	A
T10	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	GA	42	38	0	High	80	A
T11	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	GA	42	38	0	High	80	A
T12	Multi-trade home services	AZ	46	33	0	High	79	B
T13	Multi-trade home services	FL	46	31	0	High	77	B
T14	Multi-trade home services	GA	46	31	0	High	77	B
T15	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	GA	46	38	-7	Med	77	B
T16	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	NC	46	30	0	High	76	B
T17	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	NC	46	29	0	High	75	B
T18	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	42	38	-7	Med	73	B
T19	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	NC	46	27	0	High	73	B
T20	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	SC	39	34	0	High	73	B
T21	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	50	29	-7	Med	72	B
T22	Multi-trade home services	AZ	46	33	-7	Med	72	B
T23	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	33	38	0	High	71	B
T24	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TN	46	32	-7	Med	71	B
T25	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	46	24	0	High	70	B
T26	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	AZ	50	20	0	High	70	B
T27	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	42	27	0	High	69	B
T28	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	GA	29	38	0	High	67	B
T29	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	46	27	-7	Med	66	B
T30	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	GA	50	16	0	High	66	B
T31	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	42	29	-7	Med	64	B
T32	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	SC	33	38	-7	Med	64	B
T33	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	34	36	-7	Med	63	B
T34	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	FL	42	27	-7	Med	62	C
T35	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TN	42	24	-7	Med	59	C
T36	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	SC	39	26	-7	Med	58	C
T37	Multi-trade home services	NC	39	25	-7	Med	57	C
T38	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	37	24	-7	Med	54	C
T39	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TX	34	25	-7	Med	52	C
T40	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	TN	42	16	-7	Med	51	C
T41	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	NC	37	19	-7	Med	49	C
T42	Residential / light-commercial HVAC	AZ	27	22	-7	Med	42	C

ST = state. Adj = data-confidence adjustment. A medium-confidence target carries a −7 penalty, which is why some high-fit companies still land in B or C.

The verification pass

Before a principal dials, the score gets tested

Every row above is first-pass scored from public signals. That is enough to rank, not enough to act. So the top names run a live verification pass in Clay, owner and tenure re-checked, recent leadership hires pulled, ownership confirmed. I re-ran three of my own Tier A targets. Here is what moved.

Held · Tier A

Verification 1 — confirmed

A second-generation, family-owned multi-trade operator with a recurring maintenance club. Clay confirmed the ownership and tenure and found no recent professionalizing hire. The score held.

Refined · Tier B

Verification 2 — re-checked

A 36-year solo founder with no successor: the strongest sell-readiness signal of the three. But Clay showed a smaller headcount than my first-pass estimate, so the size half of Fit is now uncertain. It drops to B pending a size verification. Strong signal, honest doubt.

Pulled · Tier C

Verification 3 — demoted

Live Clay could not verify the owner, the tenure, or the family-succession story. Unverifiable ownership triggers the confidence penalty, so it falls to C. The score followed the evidence, not my assumption. The gate did its job.

“I re-ran three of my own Tier A targets live in Clay. One held, one shrank on size, and one I had to demote because the ownership data did not hold up. The score follows the evidence. An inferred signal is scored, never presented as fact.”

Why build it in-house

The same work, owned instead of rented

A black-box list you rent

A retainer, a black-box list, and someone else’s definition of a good target. The scoring logic stays hidden, the buy-box cannot be tuned as the thesis shifts, and the relationships live on the vendor’s side. When the retainer stops, the pipeline stops.

A tunable model you own

A transparent, tunable scoring model, a market map that refreshes on a schedule, and verified owner contacts that sit in the CRM, not a vendor’s. Built on Clay and automation instead of headcount, so it runs in-house at low ongoing cost and improves with every pass.

Origination as a system, not a list.

Define the buy-box once, and the market map, scoring, and live verification run on a schedule. The output is a shortlist a team can work on Monday, not a directory. See the rest of the stack, or get in touch.

Get in touch See the CRM enrichment build