Building a real deal pipeline

Serious buyers don't evaluate one deal at a time, they run a pipeline. A healthy pipeline at any moment looks like:

- 15–25 routes you're tracking passively (mailing-list level interest)
- 5–8 in active conversation with the seller
- 2–3 under NDA reviewing books
- 1 under LOI

That ratio matters because 70% of deals die between LOI and close for reasons that have nothing to do with you: seller's spouse vetoes the sale, financials fall apart in diligence, a key account cancels, the seller decides to "wait one more year." If your pipeline is one deal deep, you're one bad day away from starting over.

How to build it. Spend 2–3 hours a week on sourcing forever, not just when you're shopping. Subscribe to broker email lists. Join 3–4 regional Facebook groups. Set Google Alerts for "pool route for sale" + your metro. Cold-email pool service owners over 55 in your county, many are quietly thinking about retiring and have never listed.

Track in a CRM (even a spreadsheet works): seller name, route size, asking, recurring %, last contact, next action. Buyers without a tracking system forget to follow up, and most routes sell to whoever stays top of mind for six months, not whoever offers the most on day one.