Peter Lehrman is the CEO of Axial, the leading private deal network connecting business owners, buyers, and M&A advisors in the lower middle market. Under Peter's leadership, Axial has become essential infrastructure for the self-funded search community — facilitating thousands of transactions and providing data-driven insight into deal flow trends across small business acquisitions.

At SMBash 2026, Peter goes beyond the basics to cover Deal Sourcing 201: the winning methods for finding off-market deals in today's competitive SMB landscape. Drawing on Axial's unique data and his years at the center of lower middle market deal flow, Peter shares the sourcing channels and relationship strategies that the best buyers are actually using — and how to build a proprietary deal funnel that doesn't rely on what's already on the market.