Running a search fund’s broker pipeline without building a CRM habit
Searchers live on LinkedIn and in brokers’ WhatsApp groups. Most give up on their CRM by month three. Here is a lighter way to keep the pipeline honest.
This walkthrough is an illustrative composite built from common dealmaker workflows. Names, firms and figures are invented. It is not a customer story.
The search
Priya is eight months into a self-funded search for a B2B services business. Her deal flow comes from about forty business brokers, a handful of operators she met at conferences, and her own LinkedIn outreach to owners.
She started with a CRM. She stopped updating it in month three, like most searchers she knows, because every listing and every follow-up already lives in a message somewhere else.
Make the record where the work happens
The fix is not more discipline. It is putting the record where the conversation already is.
Connect the channels brokers use
LinkedIn for owner outreach, WhatsApp for the brokers who prefer it, Telegram for one regional broker group. All of it lands in one list.
File listings from the conversation
When a broker sends a teaser, Claude can suggest it as a deal with the message attached. Priya decides whether it makes the desk. Most do not, which is the point: the desk only holds what she chose to pursue.
Keep the broker, not just the deal
Brokers matter more than any single listing. Their contact details, picked up from introductions, stay in her Rolodex with the conversation they came from, so the next teaser from the same broker starts with context.
Next steps on one desk
Each live deal shows the people involved and the next step. Her weekly review with her investors starts from the desk, not from scrolling five apps.
Use it alongside what you already have
If you keep a CRM for investor reporting, keep it. Merger is the place the day-to-day conversations and decisions happen. You can also connect an AI assistant to read your saved contacts and deals through the Merger API and MCP server.