Why We Built Grey Fox Around the Cold Call

Most sourcing teams treat the cold call like a volume lever. Blast a list, open with credentials, extract financials, move on. But that first conversation with a founder isn’t a checkpoint—it’s the defining moment. In a market where capital is abundant, how you show up in that moment determines whether they take your call six months later.

At Grey Fox, we built our origination engine around the cold call. Not as a task to delegate, but as the highest-leverage opportunity to build trust. If you earn credibility in those first five minutes, you earn the right to stay in the conversation.

That mindset was forged during my time at Maine Pointe, calling CEOs of $100M to $1B companies about supply chain transformation. Success meant selling complex solutions to executives who had already heard it all. No brand alone could carry the message. You had to lead with preparation, relevance, and respect. I later brought those principles to two leading PE firms, where we built top-tier origination functions. That experience became the foundation for Grey Fox.

Our cold calls don’t come from playbooks or junior generalists. They come from sector-focused professionals who understand the founder’s business, language, and operational constraints. We don’t lead with AUM. We lead with insight.

“How has the technician shortage impacted your backlog?”
“What happens to growth when seasonal crews fall short?”
“Are you seeing increased wage pressure on your service teams?”

These questions come from real research—trade publications, regulatory tracking, wage data. When we call an HVAC contractor about refrigerant regulations or share intel on local wage trends, it’s because we’ve done the work that most firms skip.

If capital isn’t the answer, we don’t force it. Sometimes we offer recruiting strategies that have worked for similar operators. Sometimes we share insight on a competitor’s expansion. Sometimes we facilitate intros to other founders solving the same problem. We're not there to close—we're there to help. And when capital becomes relevant, the relationship already has trust built in.

Most founders experience PE outreach as templated emails about “strategic partnerships” and vague LinkedIn messages. They’ve learned to filter it out. But when someone calls with clear knowledge of their business—and offers value without asking for anything—the conversation changes immediately.

That's why Grey Fox calls convert at over 20 percent, while industry averages hover around 5. We don't treat the cold call as a tactic. We treat it as a preview of partnership. Because how a firm handles the first conversation says everything about what comes next.

The best PE firms understand what most miss: the hardest part isn't finding quality businesses—it's convincing their founders to take the call. Successful operators have learned to filter out noise. They've been pitched by dozens of firms with identical value propositions. The only way through that filter is demonstrating you understand their world before asking to enter it.

Grey Fox was built on the belief that exceptional outcomes require exceptional preparation. That's why our first calls count, why our relationships last, and why our outcomes look different.