There Is No “Normal”

Every deal is different.

Every opportunity is different.

Every buyer is different.

Every seller is different.

Every advisor is different.

Hmmm, I wonder why there are so many ways for deals either to get done or collapse? <<insert sarcasm here>>

What keeps things so exciting in our day-to-day work lives are the variables we deal with and trying to figure out how to manage specific situations when really there are no deals are exactly the same.

We want to figure out a “normal” to improve our odds of success, but how we handle one customer may have a different results from the last customer who was under very similar circumstances.

Out of the hundreds of deals we’ve closed (and hundreds of deals that fell apart) over the years, we develop general “rules” to live by. But sometimes those rules come back to bite us, so we adjust and do our best to create consistent outcomes.

How could we ever anticipate….

Getting a call the day of closing that the buyer isn’t going to show up because his wife threatened divorce that morning?

Sellers backing out of a deal because of a life-changing event that forces them to keep the business?

When the wife of the owner had to sign closing docs for her husband because he was going to “IRS jail”?

A landlord making it almost impossible to get a new lease?

The bottom line is that we can’t. Things happen that we couldn’t have imagined. All we can do is dig in and try to figure out how to make it work…and sometimes see if we can salvage it at all.

If we can’t, we just have to move on to the next opportunity. Fortunately for us and our customers, there are hundreds of opportunities out there every year.

There just isn’t a “normal”.

If you or someone you know is interested in buying or selling a business, please contact one of our Apex Business Advisors today!