Deal sourcing · 01 of 03
No single database covers your buy box.
We keep a directory of 200+ primary sources and pull the ones that actually fit your criteria, then standardize, resolve, enrich, and validate. The 5% no one else has is the whole point.
Why coverage is the hard part
Every new source is 95% redundant. We are buying the other 5%.
Pull a niche licensing board on top of the databases you already have and 70–95% of what comes back is duplicate. Most teams see that and stop. That marginal slice is exactly where the companies no one else is calling live, so we keep going: every source in our directory whose coverage plausibly overlaps your criteria goes into the run, however small its unique contribution.
Which turns the job into a data engineering problem. Two hundred sources arrive in two hundred shapes, with the same company spelled five ways across them.
Select the right sources
We read your criteria against the directory and pull every source whose coverage touches it, from the big databases down to a single state licensing board.
Standardize
Every source arrives in its own schema. Each one is normalized into the same field structure before anything downstream touches it.
Resolve to one company
Entity matching across name variants, DBAs, and addresses collapses the redundant 95% into a single record per business.
Enrich
A metered cascade fills owner name, direct line, and email only where they are missing, so we pay for gaps rather than re-buying data.
Validate
Two-layer verification on every email and phone. Anything unverified never reaches a caller.
The result is a list built for your mandate rather than exported to it: one clean record per company, most of them absent from whatever your competitors bought off the shelf.
Where it starts
The list is built against your criteria.
Every sourcing run starts from a mandate record: the industries you buy in, the geography, the size signals that mark the right company. That record drives the whole build.
A generic database exports the same records to every buyer in your category. The owners on that list already heard from the last three.
The source directory
We publish the directory.
199 named sources across 11 families, each with what it yields. This is the library, not the run: a mandate draws the subset whose coverage matches its industries and geography, which is usually a few dozen.
The mainstream databases are where we start. The registries and licence boards are why the same contacts do not reach every buyer in your category.
Apollo · ZoomInfo · LinkedIn Sales Navigator · Google Maps / Google Places · Yelp · Angi (formerly Angie's List) · HomeAdvisor · Thumbtack · ThomasNet · Better Business Bureau listings
Broad and fast. They establish that a company exists. Every buyer in your category can buy the same export, so on their own they are a floor, not a list.
Entity & officer filings · Contractor & trade licensing · Healthcare & clinical licensing · Professional & financial registries · Federal regulatory & safety · Franchise (FDD) registries · Transport, energy & environment · Liens, distress & timing · Trade bodies & certification · Directories & marketplaces
189 primary sources, mostly bulk downloads and open APIs. Which of them apply depends entirely on your mandate. This is where a company gets an owner with a name.
| Source | What it yields | Family |
|---|---|---|
| Apollo | Broad role-and-firmographic coverage as the first pass | Mainstream databases & local directories |
| FL Sunbiz: Division of Corporations | Officers, directors, entity age (SFTP bulk) | Entity & officer filings |
| California CSLB | Licensee/qualifier name, class, bond (free bulk) | Contractor & trade licensing |
| NPPES / NPI Registry | Every licensed provider nationally + authorised official | Healthcare & clinical licensing |
| NASBA CPAverify | Aggregated state accountancy licensees | Professional & financial registries |
| DOL OSHA IMIS | Inspections, citations, injury flags (bulk/API) | Federal regulatory & safety |
| NASAA FRED / EFD | Federated multi-state FDD filings | Franchise (FDD) registries |
| FMCSA MCMIS company census | Every registered carrier, fleet size (free bulk) | Transport, energy & environment |
| TX SoS UCC bulk | Secured-lender liens = debt and asset signals | Liens, distress & timing |
| USDA Organic INTEGRITY Database | Certified organic operations and contacts | Trade bodies & certification |
| BizBuySell | Owner actively selling, direct intent | Directories & marketplaces |
| ZoomInfo | Company graph for larger, role-defined targets | Mainstream databases & local directories |
The narrowing
We start with the block and carve away every company outside your mandate.
The raw universe carries dead registrations, companies outside the mandate, and contacts that fail verification. Each stage removes a layer.
The verification gate
Every contact clears three gates before anyone dials. Email twice, phone once.
Email, first verifier
Clean accepts. Invalid or disposable rejects. Catch-all escalates to the second verifier.
accept · reject · escalateEmail, second verifier
Verified clean: accepted. Fails verification: rejected, and the record falls to the next provider in the cascade.
independent of gate 1Phone verifier
A line-type lookup runs on every number. Mobile, landline and VoIP are separated. Dead lines drop; appended mobiles are manual-dial only.
every number, no samplingTwo verifiers disagree often enough that a single pass ships bounces. A provider labelling a number as a cell is coverage; the line-type lookup is what proves the line.
One record, end to end
What actually happens to a single company.
One fictional record, marked SAMPLE, walked through every step of the build in order.
- Entity foundPrecision Parts Inc. · TX · active, filed 2004SOS FILING
- Entity enrichedPrecision machining · 18 yrs in business · est. $3–8M revenueENRICHMENT
- Owner foundJ. Morales, managing member. County DBA agrees.COUNTY DBA
- Filtered against criteriaNAICS 332 · TX · 10–50 employees. In mandate.MANDATE
- Email and phone sourcedj.morales@[domain] · 555-0142SOURCED
- Email verified twiceGate 1 catch-all, escalated. Gate 2 verified clean, accepted.EMAIL GATE
- Phone verified555-0142 · cell · confirmed reachablePHONE GATE
- Added to outreach sequenceOne verified record enters the sequence.COMMITTED
Fictional record. Phone is 555-01xx.
Multiply that by the count. Inside fifteen business days of agreeing criteria, we hand you the counted universe and fix the number in writing.