How we helped Winston Dunn close 4 M&A deals and generate 20-50% more opportunities

About Winston Dunn

Winston Dunn is a specialized consulting firm serving the insurance industry. They advise agency owners on M&A transactions and place executive talent at insurance firms nationwide.

Winston Dunn's challenge

Finding sellers in the insurance M&A space is known to be very competitive. Insurance agency owners are highly sought after, receiving countless emails and calls daily, making it challenging to break through the noise and start meaningful conversations.

While Winston Dunn was already conducting internal outreach through their administrator (reaching around 20,000 contacts per month), they wanted to:

• Generate additional qualified opportunities beyond their internal efforts
• Increase the volume of conversations with potential sellers
• Enhance their outreach effectiveness without overwhelming their internal team
• Find agency owners genuinely interested in M&A discussions
• Have more time to be able to actually sign deals instead of spending time on sourcing contacts

"The most difficult thing to do is to find the sellers or the ones that would be willing to get into a conversation with you. I have my own internal administrator that sends out a lot of emails each month, and so we generate our own activity, but I wanted to try to generate further activity."
- Ron Lieberman, President at Winston Dunn

Insurance agency owners are, in Ron's words, "the pretty girl at the dance and everybody wants to dance with them."

Solution

Ron received an outreach email from Hypergen that stood out from all the noise in his inbox. After deciding to explore a partnership, we developed a comprehensive, tailored outreach strategy to grow their pipeline:

• Targeted Prospect Sourcing - We identified insurance agency owners and decision-makers that matched Winston Dunn's M&A criteria, focusing on property and casualty agencies, benefits insurtech, and specialized insurance operations across the United States and Canada.
  
• Customized Messaging - Collaborated closely with the client to develop outreach copy that resonated with insurance agency owners while maintaining credibility. The approach was more direct than Winston Dunn's internal messaging, which proved effective.
  
• Refined Targeting Over Time - Through consistent feedback and collaboration, we continuously refined our targeting criteria. As Ron noted, "The questions that you ask to try to refine the leads as we work together have been good to get stuff more on target."
  
• Optimized Email Deliverability - Used technical expertise to ensure emails reached decision-makers' inboxes in a highly competitive inbox environment.‍
• Data-Driven Approach - Provided monthly reports with detailed graphs and analytics tracking campaign performance, reply rates, and lead quality by company size, industry segment, and geographic location.

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Client experience

Winston Dunn has valued the professional, collaborative approach throughout the 16+ month partnership:

"The team has been excellent, I would say. Very professional support. Takes the time to listen to the clients, tries diligently to deliver the best results, uses a lot of data and graphs to show the results that come in on a monthly basis."

The results exceeded expectations from the start:

"The amount of qualified leads that I was receiving from your company on a monthly basis was above my expectations from what I thought it would be. So I was happy with the level of activity we're getting."

Ron particularly appreciated the systematic approach to lead management:

"Follow through on all leads has been terrific as far as making sure that either myself or Hypergen is reaching back out to any potential lead that hasn't developed yet into something to see if it can be developed into something."

The team's flexibility and responsiveness have also been key to the partnership's success:

"Very accommodating with scheduling in regard to times that work for me. And in the event where times had to be changed or rescheduled, very willing to reschedule times that work as well."

The partnership has already been going on for 16 months with no signs of stopping

Results

Since partnering with Hypergen, Winston Dunn has achieved significant measurable results:

• 4 M&A deals closed directly from Hypergen-generated leads
• 2 additional deals scheduled to close by the end of the year
• 400+ leads generated over the partnership
• 20-50% more qualified opportunities compared to internal outreach efforts
• 6-8 projected deals expected to close in the following year from the current pipeline
• Consistent monthly lead generation averaging 25 leads per month

"I believe we've closed at least four deals so far to date. The pipeline remains very strong. And my hope and my anticipation would be for 2025 for us to hopefully maybe close somewhere between 6 to 8."
‍- Ron Liberman, Winston Dunn

When comparing results to Winston Dunn's substantial internal outreach efforts (20,000 emails per month), Ron estimated:

"If I had to guess, I'm probably getting anywhere from 20 to 50% more from you than I was doing internally."

The quality of leads has been particularly noteworthy, with most qualified leads coming from companies with $5-10 million in annual revenue, followed by companies in the $10-50 million range, the sweet spot for Winston Dunn's M&A practice.

"Presentations and the results, very professional, very telling, and helpful in the process."

Through this partnership with Hypergen, Winston Dunn has established a scalable lead generation system that delivers qualified opportunities month after month, allowing Ron and his team to focus on what they do best - closing deals and serving clients.