Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro.com, a community and job-listings site for media professionals, knew that she eventually wanted to sell her company since the day she founded it in 1996.

"I always made it a point to go to conferences in my industry, meet people, and get invited to speak at events," Touby says. She also took pains to learn about boutique banks that specialized in mergers and acquisitions and find out when they would have representatives at various conferences.

"Don't sign up with any of them, but be on their radar screen, because they'll start talking about you," Touby advises. "That will generate interest from potential acquirers."

Touby was eventually approached by a number of newspaper and magazine companies, as well as private equity groups. She turned down two firm offers before finally selling Mediabistro.com to Jupitermedia in 2007 for $23 million.

For tech companies, online communication is just as important as face-to-face encounters. Jaiku's Engeström traveled around the world giving talks about what he was doing, and he also blogged about his business. Salman Ullah, then Google's director of corporate development, told a Los Angeles venture group last year that while Google responded to every email pitching a company, phone calls garnered only a 10 percent response rate.

Shop Yourself Around.
If one suitor finds you attractive, chances are that others will too.

Postini, an email-security company founded in 1999, had developed a reputation for being particularly good at filtering spam. The company had also been profitable for many years and was continuing to grow.

"We had a number of companies try to acquire us," says Postini founder Scott Petry. He declines to be specific but says that the usual suspects in the antivirus-software business came courting.

"Their focus was too narrow, though. They looked at us as only a security application," Petry says, so he turned down their overtures. But in 2006, Google approached Postini about a potential partnership, not an acquisition.

"Google looked at us holistically as a platform company," Petry says. "They were the first that saw us for the potential that we were building." For nine months, the two companies enjoyed a fruitful partnership, with Postini making its products available to Google Applications customers.

Things were going so well for Postini, in fact, that it was drafting papers to go public. Instead, Google made an offer that Petry couldn't refuse. In 2007, he accepted Google's $625 million offer to buy the company.

Stay Focused.
Even though it's important to network and be aware of what potential acquirers are looking for, continuing to stay focused on operations and growth is still paramount.

"If you're running a company that others are interested in, then you have leverage because you're doing something that they can't," says Postini's Petry. "That's powerful, and as a potential acquiree, you should be thinking about how you can maintain that and scale that, post-acquisition. Make a good product, stay grounded, and satisfy your customers."

With that sage advice, you'll be well positioned no matter what happens.