Deal origination for private equity and M&A in the DACH region
CegTec is the outreach agency for PE firms, family offices and buy-and-build holdings in the DACH region that want proprietary deal flow without building an origination team.
PE firms and investment holdings in the DACH region compete in auctions for the same brokered deals, while the succession wave in the Mittelstand creates bilateral off-market opportunities that never reach a teaser. Building proprietary pipeline takes systematic, sector-specific owner outreach, not more headcount on the investment team.
Challenges in Private Equity & M&A
- 01
No proprietary deal flow
An in-house origination team is expensive and its output uncertain. Without systematic owner outreach, the pipeline stays dependent on intermediaries.
- 02
Auction dynamics inflate multiples
Brokers show the same deal to every fund. Bidding only in auctions means structurally overpaying and losing the bilateral negotiation advantage.
- 03
LP pressure on a thin pipeline
Capital needs to be deployed, but partner reviews see too little visible runway. Origination KPIs are missing from LP reporting.
- 04
Research consumes investment managers
Manual target research and first contact eat most of the week. That time is missing in due diligence and deal execution.
- 05
Add-on sourcing needs sector depth
The interesting buy-and-build targets sit in the long tail: family-run, below the broker radar, with no adviser relationship. Generic lists never find them.
- 06
Integration crowds out sourcing
As soon as an add-on is being integrated, sourcing bandwidth disappears and the pipeline dries up. Feast-and-famine instead of continuous deal flow.
Our approach
Sector-specific, direct owner outreach via email and LinkedIn, written peer-to-peer and tailored to your sector thesis, with qualified owner conversations as the output instead of raw contact lists.
Visibility where owners, advisory boards and advisers look for buyers, with structured content that also surfaces as a source in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answers.
A LinkedIn presence that positions you as a serious, sector-literate buyer. Owner trust is built before the first conversation, not during the LOI process.
Case study from Private Equity & M&A
ProSeller AG — B2B pipeline scaling DACH
How CegTec reached over 2,700 decision makers at resellers, distributors and manufacturers in the DACH region for ProSeller AG in 6 months, with a 28.7% reply rate and 41 qualified sales leads.
The campaign funnel in numbers
Source: linked case study, 6-month campaign.
Common questions
Does direct outreach even work for M&A deal sourcing?
Yes, when it is run peer-to-peer. Owners do not respond to generic prospecting, but they do respond to sector-literate, respectful succession conversations at eye level. That is exactly what our sequences are built for.
We already work with M&A advisers and brokers. Why add outbound?
Brokered mandates reach every fund at the same time. Direct owner outreach opens bilateral off-market conversations that never enter an auction process. It complements the intermediary channel rather than replacing it.
Do the owner relationships stay with us?
Completely. We initiate conversations, you lead them. Every contact runs under your name, and all relationships, data and follow-up processes remain with the fund.
How sector-specific can you source?
The narrower the thesis, the better. Instead of screening tens of thousands of companies, we identify the relevant targets in your segment and address their owners in sector vocabulary, not templates.
Does this replace our investment team?
No. Your investment managers receive pre-qualified owner conversations instead of doing cold research themselves. Their time goes into due diligence and deal execution, where it generates returns.
Is direct owner outreach GDPR-compliant?
Yes. We exclusively use business contact data from publicly available sources, document the legal basis for every contact and consistently apply opt-out mechanisms.
What results are realistic?
As a reference for the engine: in a multi-segment campaign for ProSeller AG we contacted 2,777 decision makers, reached a 28.7% reply rate and generated 41 qualified conversations. In an M&A context we define the success metric together: qualified owner conversations within your sector thesis.
Terminology
- Off-market
- A transaction initiated bilaterally, without an auction process or broker mandate.
- Deal origination
- The systematic identification and first contact of potential acquisition targets.
- Add-on
- An acquisition for an existing platform investment as part of a buy-and-build strategy.
- LOI
- Letter of Intent, a non-binding declaration of interest preceding a transaction.
Further playbooks for Private Equity & M&A
The perfect outbound stack
Tools plus process for predictable lead generation.
Data-driven outbound playbook
Make campaign decisions with data instead of guessing.
Objection handling for B2B
Handle objections so they close deals instead of losing them.