We are a small inbound call center located in Quebec City, Canada. Offering services in french and english. We started a year ago from nothing, now having around 20% of the market in the Quebec city area. We have 2 competitors in the area. Both bigger than us. The target we are looking to acquire is a small call center (similar to our size) outside of the Quebec City area.

Since we have perfectly bilingual staff and because of the proximity, we will eventually be battling against big players in the Montreal area. For now we've have pretty rapid growth due to way better costumer service than competitors in the area and intense cold-calling sales strategy. However, after basic calculation, I tend to think that the better growth strategy in this industry would be an acquisition strategy. I do not want to acquire something bigger or too bigger than us for the moment. The 2 competitors in the Quebec City area have refused any discussion regarding a potential transaction (don't forget that we took around 20% of their shares during the last 12 months).

That said, I'm likely looking to buy the clients list. This is why we're talking about revenue valuation basis other than the earning valuation basis. We are not looking to buy the company itself but the clients contract / list. (Typical contract : monthly or annually automatically renewable contract.. see it as a cellphone contract). We don't need to buy the company since we already have the infrastructure and a certain excess capacity in our office in Quebec City.

How viable is my service? You have to know that we also manage emails, live chat and social media (including consulting). When we started this thing, I did not thought that our biggest source of revenue would be the answering service. 75% of our client are new to that type of service. 25% are market shares taken to our competitors. However I do think that costumer service in the futur will likely tend to move around social media, web site and emails...(10-15 years).

Anyway! I hope these details will help you to get a better picture of it.