At Mergers & Acquisitions’ The Best in M&A Speak virtual event, where we announced the winners of the 2021 Top 10 Middle-Market Deals of the Year, business development professionals discussed their experiences as the country opens back up after a year of quarantine. The panelists included: Joe Burkhart, managing director and head of business development at Saratoga Investment Corp.; Amy Margolis, head of business development at CI Capital Partners; and Courtney Tuttle, managing director at Jefferies; and the discussion was moderated by Amy Weisman, managing director of business development at Sterling Investment Partners. Weisman is one of our 2021 Top 25 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A.
“We spent a lot of time optimizing our website for SEO, doing a bunch of content marketing, and it really has paid off,” says Burkhart, referring to Search Engine Optimization. “Our page rank will now show up much better than before. We put a lot of effort into our whole online presence during Covid.”
“There’s been a huge rush of deals recently, and we’re finding that private equity is having a hard time, in some cases, absorbing,” acknowledges Tuttle. “So I’m hearing from my clients that they’ve got to pick earlier which deal they care about before they lean in, but we’re finding that if you’ve got a good business in this environment, it’s going to do very very well.”
“One of the things I have found very beneficial, and several of our investment professionals have as well, is industry conferences that various investment banks host,” notes Weisman. “While you’re not in person yet, you do have the opportunity to have one-on-ones; you have the opportunity to attend company presentations. That company may not necessarily be the right fit, but the industry is, or you can glean some information that can be helpful and give you ideas as to where to dig in.”
For the full discussion, watch the video above. And click here for 2021 Top 10 Middle-Market Deals of the Year.
