The AI prompt I use to find acquisition targets in minutes

Happy Thursday!

If you’re working a full-time job, finding the time to properly research acquisition targets is one of the biggest obstacles people run into.

When I first started buying businesses, this was genuinely the hardest part.

I’d spend hours scrolling through listings, manually checking financials against my criteria, researching industries, and running valuation math by hand.

Finding one legitimately good deal could easily eat up 15-20 hours spread across several weeks.

With the advent of AI, that’s changed significantly.

Whitney joined Acquisition Ace in August while on maternity leave with her third child.

Just 9 months later, she closed on a $2M commercial cleaning company in Las Vegas, putting only $90K out of pocket (including all fees and QOE).

She brought on family investors, negotiated $150K in working capital from the seller, and structured the deal to generate over $300K in cash flow after debt service. That’s over 200% ROI in year one while keeping maximum flexibility with three kids under five.

She went from corporate entertainment executive to business owner without sacrificing time with her family.

👉 Want the same kind of guidance that Whitney got (which can help you close your first deal faster)? Book a call with our team here.

Using AI to filter deals before you ever look at a listing

I now use a structured prompt with ChatGPT to do the initial heavy lifting on deal research.

Instead of manually combing through hundreds of listings myself, I describe exactly what I’m looking for and let the model surface only the businesses worth my time.

Here it is below (feel free to use this for yourself!):

“You are a business acquisition specialist helping me find small businesses to acquire. My criteria:

1. Revenue between $500,000 and $5 million.

2. Cash flow margin between 15% and 35%. This is my golden ratio. Cash flow divided by revenue should fall in this range because it indicates proper management structure.

3. Recession resistant industries like HVAC, plumbing, accounting, waste management, or essential services.

4. Recurring revenue model where customers use the service multiple times per year.

5. Existing management team or general manager already in place. So I'm not buying a job.

Analyze businesses for sale and identify the top opportunities that meet these criteria. For each business: calculate the golden ratio, identify potential red flags like declining cash flow or heavy owner involvement, and rate the acquisition attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 with reasoning.”

What makes this useful is that it removes a huge amount of manual filtering.

It calculates the ratios I actually care about, flags red flags consistently, and doesn’t get tired or excited about a deal the way a person evaluating dozens of listings eventually does.

(In Acquisition Ace, members learn how to combine tools like this with the human judgment and relationship-building that actually closes deals. If that sounds like something you’d like help with, book a call with our team here.)

Going deeper on a specific opportunity

Once something looks promising, I follow up with a more detailed request, like asking the model to build out a full acquisition memo on the top-rated opportunity, including:

• Industry context

• Competitive landscape

• Growth potential

• Risk factors

• And a preliminary valuation using a standard 2-4x cash flow multiple (2x for owner-dependent businesses, 4x for those with strong existing management)

I’ll also ask it to generate a few specific questions worth asking the broker on a first call.

What this actually changes

A few years ago, doing this level of analysis required either a finance background or months of self-taught practice.

Now, someone working a demanding full-time job can run meaningful deal analysis in their spare time, in a fraction of the time it used to take.

I’m seeing people move from first search to a submitted offer in months instead of half a year, largely because the analysis bottleneck has shrunk dramatically.

One important caveat

AI is a research accelerant, not a replacement for your judgment.

It can speed up analysis and help you avoid overlooking something obvious, but you still need to understand what actually makes a business worth buying.

You still have to make the calls, build the seller relationship, negotiate the deal, and run the business after you close.

What it does eliminate is the excuse that you simply don’t have time to look seriously at deals.

If you’d like help putting structured tools like this to work alongside real acquisition strategy, that’s exactly what the Acquisition Ace community is built to help with.

👉 Book a call with my team here to see if it’s a good fit for you.