3 Bullet Points Gets The Deal Done

A great deal just got done after about 4.5 months of ups and downs, in and outs, soothing nerves and tempering excitement. (Well maybe not so much tempering excitement…we love that!)

We have to keep emotions in check as we’re working with buyers and sellers. In our industry, 50% of deals fall apart for various reasons after an offer has been accepted.

In this latest deal, there were several advisors on both sides that couldn’t help but to raise blood pressure and point out that their clients were going to get scr****(taken advantage of), the price was going to get renegotiated, the person on the other side was an enemy to watch rather than a partner to work with, and surely the other side had no intention of completing the deal.

The lawyers and accountants argued back and forth for several weeks about one main calculation. Neither buyer or seller understood what their advisors were talking about.

How did we resolve it?

We got the buyer and seller on the phone, agreed to the calculation, the seller wrote it in the agreement encompassing three short bullet points, scratched the pages that the advisors were arguing about, and the buyer signed off. And that was just to get due diligence started!

Of course without the desire of both sides to get a deal done, it would have crashed very early based on advisor paranoia. Understanding that there will always be pitfalls to overcome makes the process a “little” easier to handle.

The best part of this transaction was taking both buyers and sellers out to a nice dinner at the end of the first day of the transition. And even though it took time to get there, both the buyer and seller are very happy!