Playing it cool is not the way to go according to one of the most well-known private equity roll-up strategists, Bradley Jacobs. Per an article in the WSJ, Jacobs acquired more than 500 companies as he built United Waste Systems Inc., United Rentals and XPO Logistics. Asked what mistakes he had learned from, he responded as follows:
“In the first 100 of so deals I did, I had a much lower success ratio of closing than I did in the next 400 deals because I foolishly spent a lot of time not calling back the sellers, not proactively chasing the sellers, paying too much attention to posturing and trying not to seem too eager to do the deal.”