Two Things We Never Do
Why we don’t run “conferences” or “training sessions”
Many sell-side advisory firms and investment banks may guide their clients through the selling process yet still expect them to do much of the leg work, including high-stakes personal presentations and/or negotiations with potential acquirers. They may even suggest that their clients attend “executive conferences” or “management training” sessions, as if becoming an expert at business sales is the clients’ job.
We believe that selling your business for you on the best terms possible based on your preferences and objectives is our job.
In our experience, most business owners are great at leading their businesses, however, understandably, not as good as we are at finding great buyers and structuring and negotiating great deals—naturally, since that’s what we specialize in.
That’s why we don’t expect you to go to school to help us help you. Instead, at Hill View, we’ll ask you for the information we need to guide you to the best possible result for your situation, your family, and your future. You’ll make all the ultimate decisions—and we’ll be the experts who do the rest.
Why we won’t mass-market your business
Some advisory firms that undertake M&A and business sales processes seem to think that emailing information about clients’ businesses or putting them in a public database is a good way to go. One such firm, for example, says that it sends a teaser on each client to 15,000 or more “contacts,” presumably in the hope that someone, somewhere will take notice and then the phone will ring.
We respectfully disagree with this shotgun approach to marketing a business, because while it may be efficient for an advisory firm, and it certainly could be a reasonable way to stir up low-ball offers, we don’t believe it’s the best way to get the best results for sellers.
In our view, a highly targeted, person-to-person approach to specifically screened potential buyers, whose interests we know, is the way to achieve and proactively extract excellent terms for our clients. While it may not be the route to the absolute highest number of offers, when you are selling your business, you don’t want a bunch of mediocre or marginal bids—you want a proper array of excellent and actionable paths forward.
As a further tenet of our business, our approach is more discreet, which is important to many sellers. Our approach takes a different kind of work on our part, including maintaining our specialized network of highly motivated acquirers and capital providers who we actually know, along with individualized marketing for each of our clients.