Don’t Do This When Doing Deals

The week of Oct. 21 was a week off for me.

I was on Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas cruise ship sailing around the Caribbean.

Luckily, all my businesses have general managers, so I can take time away with the family and not have to worry about the work getting done.

I did, however, attend the weekly management meeting of my private equity group, Prox Capital.

I was relaxed on the ship, drinking a beer and kicking back.

Have you ever been on a cruise ship?

If you have, you will know that the best part of cruising is waking up every day in a different place. In the Caribbean… it’s a different island.

All that week I was island hopping… Cozumel, Nassau, Roat√°n, St. Maarten.

It got me to thinking about deals.

While I love island hopping… I don’t like deal hopping.

It’s good to have multiple deals active at any one time so you can play them against each other.

But never deal hop – you know, when you start working on a deal, it gets “sticky” and you give up and move on to the next deal.

If you do that… you will never close a deal.

The goal is to stay focused, understand the challenge you’re facing and solve it.

Granted, some challenges are insurmountable once you’ve negotiated a deal…

Like a sudden and dramatic drop in revenues and profits, or the business losing a key customer. Though grounds for renegotiation, that can be easier said than done.

Fortunately, most challenges can be quickly solved.

Like when the seller wants security for the seller financing payments…

Or wants to keep the cash and other assets at closing…

Or wants to stay on in the business…

All of these (and more) are solvable.

It all comes down to negotiation.

Find out what the seller really wants. Build that into your original offer sequence and you will find the challenges fall away.

If you are struggling with negotiation, check out this amazing book by Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It.

Voss is like me. He finds out what people really want and gives it to them. All the other demands fall away.

Chris was a former FBI hostage negotiator (And let’s face it… negotiating with dangerous terrorists about to kill people is far more daunting than negotiating with a seller to close a deal).

Enjoy the read… and if you find a deal you love, stay with it.

Until then, bye for now.

Carl Allen
Editor and co-founder, Dealmaker Wealth Society