About Options 2 Exit
Options 2 Exit is a US-based sell-side M&A advisory firm helping lower-middle-market business owners sell their companies. The firm focuses on service businesses - roofing, HVAC, interior and exterior services - doing over $10M in annual revenue. The same team also operates State 17 Capital, a buy-side arm that introduces sellers to a network of vetted buyers.
The Challenge
Options 2 Exit was running outbound through Instantly across a large number of rotating inboxes. Only positive replies were flowing into Attio. Everything else - bounces, opens, campaign activity, negative responses - was invisible to the team. The existing Attio workspace had been set up iteratively and contained legacy lists and partially configured records.
With a growing sales team joining and new hires planned, the team needed a clean CRM foundation before scaling.
Full outbound visibility. The team was flying blind on anything that wasn't a positive reply. Account managers had no way to know who had been contacted, when, through which campaign, or what happened. As volume scaled, leads were falling through the cracks.
Two brands, one workspace. Options 2 Exit (sell-side) and State 17 Capital (buy-side) share the same team and the same contact universe. A roofing company owner reached through the buy-side might be a better fit for the sell-side advisory - and vice versa. The data model needed to support that fluidity without creating duplicate records or losing context.
Buyer-seller matchmaking. The long-term vision was to use Attio to match sellers with the right buyers from a network of vetted acquirers, each with a defined buy box. That required modeling buyer criteria - revenue, industry, geography, check size - as structured data in the CRM from day one.
Our Approach
Novlini operates as an embedded GTM and RevOps partner on a monthly retainer, with a boosted setup month to build the foundations.
Month 1 - CRM Foundation
Full audit of the existing Attio, Instantly, and Clay setup. Legacy lists cleaned. Data model rebuilt from scratch.
The dual-brand architecture was resolved with a single workspace and unified Companies and People objects shared across both brands. A dedicated Buyers object was created with buy-box attributes - revenue range, target industries, geography, and check size - modeling the full buyer universe as structured data. Clear rules defined for when a record moves from the buy-side pipeline to the sell-side pipeline, and how to handle contacts that exist in both.
Instantly integration reconfigured to capture all campaign activity into Attio - not just positive replies. Every email sent, bounce, and response is now mapped to the correct Company record. The team has full outbound visibility for the first time.
Clay enrichment refined around the personalization signals the team uses in copy: company founding year, review count, services offered. Pipelines, stages, ownership rules, task automations, and SDR dashboards configured and ready for the incoming team.
Full team enablement delivered: live walkthroughs covering the CRM, pipelines, and daily workflows.
Ongoing Retainer - GTM Operations
Novlini remains embedded as the GTM and RevOps partner on a monthly retainer. Ongoing workstreams include intent signals (sellers signaling an exit on LinkedIn, buyers announcing acquisition criteria), likelihood-to-sell scoring in Clay, phone system integration via Aircall, and outbound campaign operations in Instantly.
The long-term roadmap is buyer-to-seller AI matchmaking: using Attio AI to match incoming seller profiles against the buy-box database built in Month 1, and surfacing the right buyers automatically. The data model was built to support this from day one.
Technology Stack
Attio - unified CRM, dual-brand pipeline, buyer database, matchmaking foundation
Instantly - outbound sequencing (full activity now synced to Attio)
Clay - lead enrichment and personalization signals
Aircall - phone system (in progress)
The Results
Options 2 Exit went from a partially configured CRM with significant blind spots on outbound activity to a clean, unified workspace ready for a scaling sales team.
Full outbound visibility - all Instantly campaign activity mapped to Attio records, not just positive replies
Dual-brand architecture live - sell-side and buy-side pipelines in a single workspace with clear routing logic
Buyer database structured - buyer profiles with buy-box attributes modeled as queryable data
SDR-ready CRM - pipelines, dashboards, task automations, and team enablement delivered
Matchmaking foundation built - data model designed from day one to support AI-driven buyer-seller matching
"We're a lean team in financial services. We signed up for Attio to streamline our CRM with AI but didn't have the bandwidth to fully unlock the platform. With limited support from Attio's team, we found Novlini. The experience has been nothing short of impressive. A fully custom build-out, numerous integrations, and a team that truly understood our needs. They worked across multiple teams on our end and went above and beyond at every step. We wouldn't hesitate to recommend them."
Griffin D. - Options2Exit ★★★★★
Why It Matters
M&A advisory firms running high-volume outbound have a visibility problem that most CRMs are not built to solve. When you are sending thousands of emails per month across rotating domains, the CRM needs to capture everything - not just the conversations that go well. The leads that bounce today might be the right fit six months from now. The contact who said no to the buy-side might be a perfect candidate for the sell-side advisory.
Building the right data model from the start - one that reflects how the business actually works across two brands, two pipelines, and a long nurture cycle - is what makes the difference between a CRM the team uses and one they work around.
