Successful Acquisitions

CHAPTER 9

FIRST ASSESSMENTS

After two face-to-face meetings and numerous phone calls, you are developing a strong personal impression of the target company. Through your on-site visit, the owner’s return visit, as well as many other follow-up conversations, you have been building trust and on that basis have elicited a growing body of information. This should be reflected in an increasingly detailed Prospect Profile, as discussed in Chapter 6.

Now is the time for your A-Team to make a formal assessment of the prospect so that you can decide whether or not to embark on serious negotiations. There are two components of the assessment: evaluation and valuation. Though distinct, they are often confused. In this chapter, we begin by delineating the ...