How E78 Partners better understands its clients & discovers prospects

Everyone knows that relationships define middle market M&A, and it's especially true for the consultants and advisors that help private equity firms thrive.

Who you know, and how well they know you, can be the critical difference between winning or losing a client.

While business development teams might be thriving with outreach and new connections, they might be missing out on big opportunities with those that they’ve already connected with. It can be difficult, even, to uncover details about current sponsors.

The difference, then, is how well you know them.

Better private equity data

For Joe Kwasniewski at E78 Partners, the answer comes with higher-quality private equity data. The advisory, talent, and managed services firm has a dozen team members distributed across the U.S. who rely on Private Equity Info regularly for that information.

As an Elite subscriber since August of 2023, the firm has performed more than 5,000 searches on the database, to better understand their sponsors, improve business development pitches, and find new prospects, among several other critical business functions. It gives them access to data on 16,000 firms, 118,000 portfolio companies, 69,000 executives, and advanced features like Auto-Search and Exact Executive.

“Private Equity Info gives us intelligence that lets us better understand our sponsors,” Kwasniewski said recently on a video call from his Stamford, Connecticut-based office. “As a result, we know them, and know how to approach them and empathize with them.”

Time-saving feature set

E78's team uses Private Equity Info to gather sales intelligence to better understand current sponsors and potential partners in the private equity industry. Twelve of the firm's business development representatives use PEI to better carve out the total addressable market in a more meaningful way.

When it comes to better understanding existing sponsors, Private Equity Info provides intelligence on a PE firm’s portfolio companies, including the executives and board members involved. Firm websites don’t always have an up-to-date roster of portfolio companies and executives, Kwasniewski said.

As a prospecting tool, the team uses the database filtering tools to search by investment criteria to find firms that are the right fit. Using PEI's list-building tools, they can create and save lists, find executive contact info and evaluate roles within a firm. And, by following PEI’s up-to-date transaction activity, by way of automated email alerts, they can triangulate who is running a new platform deal.

"It gives us the right info to reach out at the right time, whether it’s congratulatory, or to share that we’ve worked in that area before,” Kwasniewski said.

Compared to other data providers, Private Equity Info is more affordable, and because of its focus on private equity data, the data is more accurate, cutting out the noise of non-actionable data sets. It not only provides opportunities to find new clients, but to better prepare for pitch meetings, as well.

“PEI is superior for our sales team. It cuts to the core. It’s far more user friendly, easy to navigate, and logically set up,” he said. “It’s the sweet spot in terms of what you’re paying and what you’re getting.”

Real world use cases

Last year, E78 launched an initiative for its business development team to connect with more local private equity firms.

Using PEI’s geography tools, Kwasniewski filtered private equity firms by region, showing him 15 results just miles from his office in Stamford. After browsing through the firm profiles for key executives and exporting that data to E78’s CRM for a quick outreach campaign, he heard back almost immediately from an executive, and was able to drive over for a meeting the following day.

That targeted research pays off: the PE firm immediately saw value in E78’s offering, introduced one of its portfolio companies, and E78 delivered a Scope of Work shortly thereafter.

“We have been able to get new partners as a result of using PEI. We’ve had more than 20 new meetings generated that are brand new conversations,” he said.

“We’ve been on the platform for under a year, with much more to come."