Helping Investment Bankers Exceed Revenue Targets While Staying Responsive
When arranging financing or advising on mergers and acquisitions, it’s impossible to say yes to every potential client. Some companies’ deals are too small. Some executives, owners, or boards are indecisive. Other deals have stories that are too complicated to justify the fee. While a client’s deal might be important to your referral partner, you have to say, “No, this doesn’t fit for me,” because doing a 12-month engagement on the basis of a success fee requires confidence that the deal will close.
But for many of us, being responsive to our colleagues and referral partners keeps the sales funnel full. That’s where Oaklyn Consulting enters as a complementary partner—not a competitor—to help you say yes more often.
We are investment bankers who work as consultants, specifically to work with organizations whose deals don’t qualify as acceptable engagements. We enable our investment banking counterparts to respond better to their referral partners, see more deal opportunities, and filter the unattractive ones to a trusted team with a white-glove approach to transaction advice delivered as hourly consulting.
As a result, you can stay focused on the deals that fit your criteria.
Why Partner With Us?
No deal is too small. The ceiling for our deal sizes is the floor established by our partners’ minimum deal fees, and the floor is effectively zero.
Simplify Your Deal Evaluation Process
As fellow investment bankers, we understand the frustration that comes when you’re unable to say yes to a referral source. That’s where we provide value—helping you maintain the strength of your relationships as you evaluate and pursue competitive deals.
A Note From Our Founder
As investment bankers, we’re wired to find client opportunities, close deals, and deliver value for our clients and partners. But not every potential client has a deal that deserves our time and attention, certainly not for a success fee engagement. Some opportunities are not ready now but will be in the future, and that’s a reason to keep covering the potential client. But other opportunities will always be too small, too unconventional, or simply too uncertain to pursue within the confines of a normal engagement. However, saying no to a deal—while necessary—can sometimes strain relationships with referral sources or leave potential value untapped.
That’s where Oaklyn Consulting steps in.
We’re not just a poor substitute for you, who wants to work on deals you cast off. We’re a white-glove service provider that specializes in “bad deals.”
I started this firm because I understood the gap that investment bankers grapple with. Deals that don’t fit the box, and aren’t big enough to justify going outside the box, are still important to someone — and sometimes that someone is important to the practice. In these cases, saying “no” without offering a solution wasn’t just leaving a need unserved; it was leaving relationships at risk.
Oaklyn Consulting solves the service problem by taking a different approach. We partner with investment bankers like you – and never compete with you – to handle impractical client situations, allowing you to maintain focus on what matters most while strengthening the relationships that keep your coverage pipeline strong. We provide hourly investment banking services, billing time and materials, and no success fees, as an alternative for clients who need good investment banking advice and feel frustrated that they can’t access it.
With decades of experience in both bulge bracket and lower middle market investment banking, and in both owner-operated and investor-backed companies, we bring skill, judgment, empathy, creativity, and a very high service ethos approach to engagements, ensuring a positive outcome for all stakeholders.
In our most successful investment banking partnerships, we are an extension of the coverage team—a trusted partner helping bankers say “yes” more often while staying true to risk management and revenue goals.
If this resonates with you, let’s connect. I’d like to hear more about the challenges you’re facing and explore how we can help create a better business development process for your bankers and referral sources.
Founder & CEO
Say Yes (More Often) With Oaklyn Consulting
Oaklyn Consulting is your trusted partner for structuring, executing, and negotiating transactions in your pipeline that don’t fit the traditional Investment Banking Model.
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