If you are about to buy a business and meet with the seller(s) for the first time, and are wondering what you should talk about with them, what questions you should ask and what you should be looking for in this crucial first meeting, then this article will be a huge help to you.
Listen: The thing to keep in mind is you should definitely NOT cut it short. Why? Because what you’re trying to do is get to know the other party, and cutting it short means you're going to walk away with less information you can use. The only exception to this (obviously) is if you find out the business is not something you want to buy.
In fact, years ago, we used to sit down for the first meeting for maybe an hour. Today we go two, three, four hours if it looks good on the larger businesses. The thing to remember is if you do nothing more at your first meeting than establish rapport and a relationship with the seller, you’re going to be very well off. Reason why is because if you try to get financing or you want him to do certain things, they’re not going to do it unless they know you.
Now, here's the interesting thing about this: When you do this, when you sit down with them and start talking, what’s going to happen is you’re probably going to spend about 12 to 15 minutes discussing things that are important -- such as numbers and the business and stuff like that -- and the rest of the time you’re going to be talking about family, sports, whatever you want to talk about to get to know the other party. Kind of like if you were just sitting at the bar over a drink.
And you’re going to find that as it goes on, it’s going to become better and better. You're going to learn more about the seller, his real motivations for selling and other little "odds and ends" that will give you an enormous advantage later on when it comes to making the deal. |
