Hello and welcome to Simon Says Let’s Talk Business on Business Radio X. This is your host, Al Simon with Sandler Training by Simon Inc. On our show, we talk with smart people. We talk with high-performing business professionals, and the idea is to sharpen our skills, learn new ideas and concepts, share best practices, and get to know these smart people.
So listen carefully, take some notes, and look for the contact information at the end of the segment so that you can engage with them. In this case, with my guest Frank Williamson. As always, we will conclude our show with a sales tip from me in our Ask Al segment.
So here we go.
My guest today: Frank Williamson with Oaklyn Consulting. Founder and President, overall major guru. Frank, how are you doing?
Fine, Al. Good to be here with you.
Good to have you, all the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee. So, you have an office in Chattanooga. You have an office and a big presence in Atlanta. Fair?
Yes, we do. We’re lucky to have a few people on the ground here and a few people there. From my perspective, Chattanooga is a great place to live if you’re working in Atlanta.
Yeah, I bet. Chattanooga is a great city. I love going to Chattanooga. Great city.
So Frank, Oaklyn Consulting. It’s like a sort of investment banking kind of consultancy. Lots of stuff that you do that’s different than banks, right? It’s different than private equity firms, right? Can you tell us more about all that?
Yeah. Here’s how we help people. We help prepare business owners to work effectively with private equity firms, successors who might be buying their businesses, competitors, or complementary companies that might be the exit strategy for someone. And we help people, in an organized way, raise money when they need it to grow.
So, we’re not putting money to work, and we are not, like many of our peers in the industry of helping businesses change ownership, working on a commission. We’re just helping people work through to get to good decisions.
So, it’s a true consultancy.
This is a true consultancy.
So, for mergers and acquisitions or an infusion of capital, whatever’s needed, that kind of thing?
Exactly.
So, you’ve got a lot of different services, right?
Well, it might seem that way from a distance, but all of it boils down to how do we help people present themselves well to money people in order to get money on good terms in return for some stake in their operating business. Whether it’s a loan and that kind of stake, or whether it’s selling a business out altogether.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense because, as a business owner, I would have no idea how to go about doing that. It’s the kind of thing people do once in a career, or if people really get into the mode of doing mergers and acquisitions, maybe they do it four times in their career.
So, we find that people really appreciate that when you get to that point, you’re working with someone who’s doing it all the time because it just gives you some comfort that you know how the game’s played.
Okay. So, when you say “more effectively,” does that mean you help them with best practices? Do you actually get inside these conversations yourself? What do you do there?
Depending on what people need, we might act as an intermediary for someone and serve as a middleman. Or, in other cases, we might only do conference calls away from the table.
So, if you were working with someone thinking about what the succession plan around your business is, and it didn’t seem appropriate in that situation for there to be anyone else at the table, it was just a discussion and a relationship to work out on your own, we’re perfectly happy to stay in the background and coach where it’s useful.
Or, if it works better to have someone else present and running interference, we’re happy to do that too.
That’s a great combination, really, or a spectrum of ways you can work with people.
Do you work only with sellers, or also with buyers? How does that work?
We do a little bit of both. It’s interesting. We’re working with an Atlanta client now whose business is growing quickly, and they think they can grow even more quickly by buying a series of small businesses rather than just being out there selling.
So we’re helping them design the process to get into the market to buy businesses, convince business owners they’re a good home, and build a string of acquisitions. That’s the buy side.
Most of what we do is helping people sell a business at that point in their jobs and careers.
Interesting. So I help companies grow by growing revenue. You can help companies grow by acquisitions.
Exactly. And they’re both valid strategies.
And they’re both sales.
Because it’s hard to close an acquisition if you can’t sell the idea to the owner that life’s going to be better on the other side of that deal.
I’ll bet. Otherwise, it’s just a hassle, right?
That’s right. Otherwise, people are just talking.
I believe that.
So how do business owners best make these kinds of high-impact decisions, like buying or selling, or bringing in new stakeholders, outside investors? There’s got to be a bunch of things that people without your help would do wrong.
The number one thing I see people do wrong is that they chase one idea or one deal opportunity to see how it’s going to work out. It either does or it doesn’t.
The odds of any particular deal closing, sort of like the odds of any particular prospect closing, are not 100 percent. It’s a huge amount of work to negotiate, provide all the information, and go through all the emotional heartache to sell the business or combine it with another one.
Time after time, we see people say, “Well, here was one opportunity and I want to run it down.” It breaks down for some reason. Then they say, “Okay, let’s go do another one.” And it breaks down.
That is a prime way for everyone to be worn out, tired, and ultimately capitulate.
It’s one of the places where people fail to think about selling a business like sales. Because anyone well trained by you, good salespeople in general, would say, “I need more than one lead to make up a sales funnel.”
Yes.
It’s a hard way to make a living to have just one lead at a time. You’re going to wear yourself out.
It’s interesting how many people go after the first thing that looks promising and try to run it down rather than saying, “It’s time to go do this. Let me fill the prospect pipeline.”
Often, because they don’t know where to go to fill it. That’s one point where we help people.
I just saw what you’re talking about play out. I have an acquaintance in another city who was going to sell his business. He had a lead, someone who said, “Hey, I might want to buy your business.”
They did a lot of work. A lot of time. A lot of effort. In the end, it didn’t work out.
Then there was a second person. Same thing. Long time. A lot of effort. Didn’t work out.
Now my acquaintance is in plan B, and frankly, plan B is settling for a lot less. He’s disappointed and worn out.
If I had known this was all going to happen, I would have introduced you to him.
It makes a big difference when plan A involves understanding all my options first and then qualifying them simultaneously.
That’s also a lot of work. That’s often why people call us, because you’ve got to run the business at the same time.
You do have a day job.
It is a night-and-weekend job for business owners. You can’t let the day job break down and then expect this to work out.
Plus, there are dynamics. You don’t want rumors to get out. People get nervous.
Absolutely. Everyone needs to think about what works best in the culture they’ve built. There’s not one way.
In some organizations, you absolutely want to keep things quiet. In others, it works to adopt the same attitude as most real estate developers I know, which is to publicly let everybody know that it’s all for sale all the time. We can always talk about it.
It’s amazing how that creates comfort in some situations. People say, “Well, I know my boss is in his late 60s. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to work forever.”
When someone comes along and says, “I’m thinking about what we do with the business next,” everyone says, “Well, of course.”
It’s interesting to watch how people realize it turned out to be less of a big deal than they worried it would be.
So a good first step would be to talk to you.
Yes.
As soon as you start thinking about buying or selling, talk to me.
Yes. Talk now. It’s nice to start out with energy.
We talk to people when they’re starting to think about their options. They might want someone inside their business to succeed them. They might know the best place for the business is a competitor because size helps both companies.
They might conclude the best thing to do is wind it down.
It’s good to talk through what’s realistic and how to take an idea all the way to the finish line.
I’m curious. When would it be good to talk to competitors, and when would it not?
People who succeed best are natural networkers. They know their competitors. They’re friendly with them. They know it’s just business.
They’ve found a way to talk about, “What if we did something bigger? What if we combined forces?”
It opens up more options.
When would you not want to talk to them? When it’s easy and cheap for a competitor to take over some chunk of your business.
If you’re swapping customers frequently, it might be better if they don’t know.
I was thinking the same thing in sales. If I were up against my competitor, I wouldn’t want them telling our mutual prospect that I was considering selling.
That could be a problem.
It could be. But if you’ve been talking with that competitor all along about growth and teaming up, it defuses the issue.
Okay. Good way to address it.
Why do entrepreneurs excel at selling their products or services but struggle to sell their business?
It’s the most interesting thing.
One reason is that it’s a different market. Each of us learns to sell within the norms of our market.
If I sell enterprise software, I know how that sale works. But selling the promise of future cash flow and a group of customer contracts as one thing is unfamiliar.
That’s one reason.
Another is that it’s hard to distinguish a company from its owner. It’s easier to sell a thing than to sell yourself.
It takes perspective to separate the person from the company and the owner from the operator.
What if I’m not thinking of selling but want to raise capital? How is that like selling, and how is it different?
It’s almost the same thing.
Even a bank loan requires telling the story of your future performance. That’s similar to selling your company.
Regardless of the kind of capital, if you want money to grow, it’s the same conversation.
Compared to selling products and services, it’s about consultative selling. The people who do the best job of selling their business have a conversation about needs and how combining them creates a better outcome.
It works better when you ask about real needs.
It does.
Crazy market right now. Political environment, COVID, noise everywhere. Is this a good environment for buying or selling?
It is, but it’s not easy.
There’s a huge amount of money out there looking to buy privately held businesses. Many owners have inboxes full of offers.
The number of conversations starting is huge. The number ending is smaller.
More of the time than not, deals look good at the high level but break down in the details.
The most prepared people are getting deals done. Others are struggling at the end.
Frank Williamson, Founder and President of Oaklyn Consulting.
If our listeners want to buy, sell, or raise capital, they should talk to you now.
Yes. Visit oaklynconsulting.com or call our main number, 888-983-1617.
We’re always open to listening and talking through the environment, and we help when we can.
Oaklynconsulting.com, spelled O-A-K-L-Y-N.
Frank, pleasure having you here.
My pleasure.
Listeners, take advantage of this opportunity.
This is Al Simon with Sandler Training by Simon Inc. The show is Simon Says Let’s Talk Business on Business Radio X.
Frank, thanks for being here.
Thank you, Al.
Now let’s transition to our Ask Al segment.
If you have a sales question, send it to [email protected].
Today’s question: Why do my prospects keep ghosting me?
The listener says, “I give them the quote, and I can’t seem to get them on the phone again for weeks, sometimes months.”
Prospects are good at sounding excited. They want knowledge, power, information. Then they want to go away and make their decision.
Ghosting is prevalent today, but it doesn’t have to be.
First, stop emailing out quotes. Never give away your intellectual property and pricing unless it’s live. Face-to-face, video call, or at least a phone call.
Set expectations correctly for next steps. Inspect what you expect.
If you expect a decision by Monday, confirm that Monday is realistic. Ask, “Are you sure Monday works, or should we make it Tuesday?”
They’ll remember that.
If it’s been a while and you’re being ghosted, offer to close the file. Leave a voicemail saying, “Would it make sense for me to close your file, and you can contact me if you want to reopen it?”
Then physically remove them from your list and move on.
Frank adds that in private equity, one fund may look at 100 opportunities for every investment they makes.
That’s a one percent close ratio.
Know your environment and control the process. Have good habits like closing the file.
Stop sending proposals via email.
This is Al Simon with Sandler Training by Simon Inc. The show is Simon Says Let’s Talk Business on Business Radio X.
Our guest today has been Frank Williamson, founder and president of Oakland Consulting.
Thanks again, Frank.
Listeners, as always, good selling.