Episode 182: How to Prepare for Deals with Corey Kupfer

Congratulations on finding a deal!  Now what?  Whether the deal is a company you’re going to acquire, a buyer for your business, a joint venture, a strategic alliance, or licensing, you want to be prepared to make yourself deal-ready; think of it as even being pre-prepared.  In today’s solocast, I discuss some practices to help prepare yourself and your team to get you deal-ready and how to minimize unforeseen issues that may arise.  1 – Pre-Due Diligence To prepare for a deal, do pre-due diligence on your end to avoid unforeseen issues during the actual deal process.  In this process, your goal is to find and solve any issues beforehand.  The counterpart in the deal will look at financials, past litigations, team members, company history, and much more. Different deals have different levels of diligence and tackling this head-on, will prevent a great deal of stress and help your deal to be executed and integrated much more smoothly. 2- Manage Resources Keep in mind what resources, in terms of team members and outside sources, you need to make the deal. Depending upon the size and type of the deal, you may need to pull in more people from your firm or hire professionals outside your company, such as advisors, accountants, lawyers, consultants, or investment bankers. Once you’ve decided which people you need, make sure they have time and availability to help you. Doing deals takes time and you don’t want to risk someone not being available when you need them most or have it interfere with other projects or tasks for which they are responsible.   3 - Plan The Integration Stage Successfully preparing for a deal also means preparing for the integration once the deal is complete.  The integration happens post-deal, but to prepare for it, you want to consider what resources and implementations the integration will need, such as team members, finances, strategy, communication, and even cultural integration.  This may include some very difficult decisions, which you want to execute or plan for beforehand instead of during the actual integration. 4 - Do Your Research There is preparation in terms of your own due diligence on the deal’s counterpart.  Do research on them; not only from the legal and financial regulatory due diligence but also the cultural and personality differences that you may have to bridge.  Research thoroughly so you are aware of all potential legal risks and what their objectives are. Figure out what the working relationship is and how that’s going to affect the culture of your company.   Preparation Will Save You Time & Money During the deal process, most business owners are also concerned with running their company and managing the day-to-day processes, so the more advanced planning and strategic thinking you can do, even before you have a particular deal in mind, the easier the process will be. When you get a particular deal, you can deal with deal-specific items that you couldn’t do in advance, but at least the general ones are done. Get yourself deal-ready to avoid wasting time, money and energy.   Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.   If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal-Ready Assessment today!