What to call someone paid to go find houses for a buyer

A common situation: someone gets paid a flat fee by an owner to find and lock up a property that owner wants to buy. That's wholesaling, sort of, except the buyer is known before the phone ever gets picked up and the fee sits on an invoice instead of buried in a spread. The label matters more than people expect. Say wholesaler, and some people hear cold calls and the conversation is over. Say acquisition service or buyer's sourcing, and other people hear something vague and expensive, sometimes followed by the question of whether that's just an unlicensed agent. Depending on the state, that question isn't rhetorical, since who can be paid for what in a purchase varies, and it's worth having a real attorney in the relevant state confirm where a given setup sits. The case for calling it wholesaling: it's honest, the skill really is wholesaling skill, and buyers who already work with wholesalers know exactly what's being offered. The case for calling it acquisitions: it describes what the client is actually buying, which is time and pipeline, and it makes the flat fee read as a fee instead of a markup. With a buy and hold owner who has never bought off market before, the framing that tends to land better is acquisitions, since it sets the expectation of a service rather than a transaction they need to interrogate.