• 35:57
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
commercial due diligence, M&A transactions, customer base, market analysis, risk reduction, investment decisions, customer satisfaction, market positioning, proactive approach, customer concentration, human intelligence, future opportunities, financial due diligence, buyer scrutiny, seller preparation
SPEAKERS
Tom Herman, Damon Pistulka
00:00
Music.
Damon Pistulka 00:08
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I am excited for our guest today, because we have none other than Tom Herman from VEDA Intel with us here today, and we are going to be talking about commercial due diligence for M A transactions. Tom, thanks for being here today.
Tom Herman 00:30
Thank you for having me. Damon,
Damon Pistulka 00:33
it’s gonna be fun. Gonna be fun, my friend. So Tom, like we always do, let’s start off by learning a bit about you and how you started your path and ended up doing commercial due diligence for trend, for M and A transactions, yep,
Tom Herman 00:51
going way back to college, I happened into this course called economic geography, Which kind of brought everything you know, business and kind of climate and and culture and all these different aspects of, you know, kind of the world together to kind of explain, you know, why things happen the way they happen in the business world. And I just got fascinated with business, and, you know, I was, at that point, environmental science major, so I kind of changed gears and then got into market research and consumer research, and that’s kind of really what launched me on the path. And my first job right out of grad school was working for a publicly traded retailer, a drug store retailer, and was part of their initial market research department that they started up, which was started because they had a big issue. They entered a market in southern Pennsylvania, and they opened a whole bunch of stores without doing any real diligence at all. They didn’t understand the competition, the consumer, you know, habits, and they didn’t really know what they’re getting into. And and I got ending up having to close, you know, over a dozen stores and took a bath, and it was, you know, bad situation. So they decided they needed to get a lot smarter in their process in terms of evaluating markets and locations. And so my first job was, you know, kind of figuring out where to put stores, what markets to enter. Wow, you know how to how to position the company for success as it was growing, and we ended up hoping a ton of stores, you know, really good track record with the group that we, you know, the Real Estate Group and the research group working together. And that was kind of the start of my career and and ever, ever since then, everything I’ve done has been to support either investment decisions or disposition strategies. So it’s, you know, it’s market research and due diligence to support, you know people that make deals, or you know people that kind of put their money on the line. So it’s really all about reducing risk and identifying opportunities. Yes,
Damon Pistulka 02:51
so it’s it’s interesting, because people walking through business don’t normally think about commercial due diligence for an M A transaction. People have heard of due diligence, probably because, you know, it’s common. Buyer goes in, they’re going to look at the company, but explain what commercial due diligence is and how that differs from maybe some of the other more traditional financial diligence or operational diligence that I that a a buyer or a seller of a company may work on, yep.
Tom Herman 03:26
So commercial due diligence is really addresses the customer and the market. You know, the financial due diligence, which is a critical piece, looks at the finances that typically is looking at what’s currently happening and what has happened. Commercial due diligence looks more at what’s happening now and what is likely to happen in the future. So that’s the big difference. And there’s all sorts of other types of due diligence. They’re important, you know, it and operations and, you know, HR, and you know, there’s a lot of a lot goes into, you know, making a significant investment decision. But, you know, our focus is strictly commercial, you know, customer and market. So it’s all about understanding, you know, when you buy a company, you’re buying a customer base, basically, and it has previously provided revenues to the company that you can look at through a qv just to see where the you know, the company stands in terms of even on all that. But what you don’t know going into a deal is what the customer base is going to do going forward. You’re hoping that it continues to deliver revenues such that your valuation, you put on it is, you know, is appropriate, and hopefully, you know you can build on that. But you know, without a customer due diligence study, you know, you’re really kind of taking a risk, that you know, the customer base will stick around. They’ll continue to, you know, patronize the company and and hopefully grow. Yeah, same with the market, if you’re buying into a company in a marketplace that might be undergoing changes, or the company you’re buying isn’t positioned very well competitively to compete going forward. You know, those are all things you. Need to know going into it so that you can either avoid an issue, price the deal right, or at least be prepared to make changes immediately upon deposition. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 05:12
there was a lot there. You said it quickly. I was trying to write some notes here, because I think first of all, let’s, let’s back up a little bit and talk about so we’re talking about that commercial due diligence, about the customer and the market around the business. So who typically is going to benefit from this service?
Tom Herman 05:36
Well, I mean, pretty much, you know, if you’re a buyer, you want to make sure you’re understanding what you’re buying. Okay, if you’re a seller, you want to make sure you’re positioning your company in the best possible way to attract, you know, the most number of bidders or interested parties and to drive the value that you’re looking for. So, you know, the way we look at it is, it’s important on both sides of the table. You know, really both, both sides should be, be doing, you know, customer in the market, due diligence, the approaches are a little different. On the on the buy side, it’s a little bit more defensive. You’re trying to identify risks and also opportunities. On the sell side, it’s more proactive. You’re trying to position your company in the right possible way. And it’s really all about telling a value story, explaining why your company is positioned well to continue to be successful, and show it in the best possible light going forward. So I really we do work on both sides of the table, so we know what buyers are looking for and what they’re going to scrutinize. So we can help sellers be prepared. You know, we always say that you want to deal from a position of strength. So on the sell side, you want to make sure you’ve addressed all the common things that buyers are going to key in on, so that you don’t have to be reactive. You’re more proactive in presenting the information without them even having to ask for it. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 07:06
that’s a great point. So how many times do you get contacted by a seller and or has it happened where a seller gets into a in a process and they go, Wow, I just don’t even know what they’re asking for here, and we need some help putting it together.
Tom Herman 07:24
Yeah, that happens a lot. We were working with a manufacturer who was selling a division, and it was a successful division doing well, but they really couldn’t explain where their company sat in the marketplace. They didn’t know what their market share was. They really didn’t understand, you know, there was some changes happening in the market in terms of new technology and possibly some new market entrance from overseas. And so they really didn’t understand exactly how to present the opportunity to the marketplace. So we were brought in to kind of figure all that out and kind of lay out a value story that explains where the company has been, where they are today, and how they’re going to position themselves for the future. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 08:04
so when, when you’re doing that, what are some of the things I mean, because even at a even at a small deal level, buyers are interested in this. They’re asking these questions. So what are some of the main things, if I’m a seller and I want to think about how to present my value. What are some of the things that you typically will uncover in your commercial due diligence on a sell side assignment?
Tom Herman 08:35
So the every company is different, so what we like to do on a sell side is start with an assessment, kind of look at all the aspects of the company that kind of outward facing aspects of the company. So, you know, we do an assessment with customer base, identify any concentration issues that’ll automatically be an issue. Yeah, you know, that’s a big that’s a big one, and then also understand customer satisfaction and customer we call it customer stability, like, how sticky is your customer base going forward? Yeah, that’s important to assess. But also we just look at everything that the company presents its website. It’s messaging, it’s competitive positioning, it’s it’s differentiation, how they explain that, you know, we try to identify how strong their story currently is to the marketplace, and ideally we’re engaged early enough so that we can actually identify areas that can be cleaned up and improved prior to going to market. Once you’re in the market, you know it is what it is, and there’s not much you can you can do if you you know, if you start preparing a year or more in advance, there’s a lot you can do to improve the look and feel the company prior to actually hitting the market. So, so the assessment is important to understand, you know, what’s the low, Where’s, where’s the low hanging fruit that you can clean up, you know, quickly and cost effectively to improve, you know, the markets per se. Of the company. So that’s a that’s a big one. You know, that’s a great place to start. Yes.
Damon Pistulka 10:04
So in those situations, do you often get people to come, like, come to you early on and do it, or is it more? Is it you typically don’t have enough time to really do what you want to
Tom Herman 10:17
do? Yeah, both. Yeah. It’s yeah. There’s some advisors we work with that are really on board with the concept of really creating value for their client before going to market. And obviously we love them a lot of times it’s pretty tight, and there’s not a whole lot you can do. I mean, you can clean up a website, literally in a couple of weeks. You can you can address messaging and differentiation a little bit. There’s a bunch you can do with short time frames, but obviously you can do a lot more with more time, especially like customer concentration, if you identify that early enough. There are steps you can take to deal with that. And then also if you can’t, obviously, some companies have really long term clients that are a big portion of their business. In those cases, you may not be able to diversify in time, but what you can do is quantify the strength of that relationship using one on one interviews, satisfaction surveys, things to really lay out the strength of that relationship such that the buyer will see that. All right, this is a big this isn’t just a customer. It’s like a strategic partner. Effectively, yeah, if you can, if you can deal with the concentration issue in that way, you can get past, oftentimes, get past it. That
Damon Pistulka 11:33
is a great point and and a a step that not many people would understand how to really quantify, like you said, is the strength of a relationship with your largest customers, because that would be a huge thing to help overcome a concentration issue,
Tom Herman 11:52
right? Yeah, and to understand, you know, we kind of do a customer relationship mapping exercise, where we look at every touch point between the company and the customer, and talk to each of those people that interact with the company, and just document, you know, satisfaction levels and how the how the relationship works, and it just, it tells a great story that gives a buyer a lot of confidence that, okay, this isn’t just, you know, the owner of the company and you know the customer golf buddies, and as soon As company sells the, you know, the clients gone. And, you know, if you can spell out exactly how that relationship works and how well it works, you know, that goes a long way.
Damon Pistulka 12:30
Yeah, so what are some of the things that you’re going to be looking at in some of these, in these situations that people might not even think about, hmm, or typically think about,
Tom Herman 12:52
well, it seems like a lot of people aren’t thinking, thinking about a lot of this stuff, but, you know, just kind of mapping out, you know, the Strength of the customer base.
Damon Pistulka 13:01
That’s that’s a big one. Yeah, to me,
Tom Herman 13:03
that’s the biggest one, because every you know, everyone knows you’re counting on your customers for revenue and to understand how well you’re satisfying your customers and how and why they choose you, you know, over other options. And you know, a lot of companies will will do a QV, primarily on the buy side, they’ll do a qv. But also, you know, some proactive sellers will do a sell side QV, and they look at the financial aspects of of the deal. But what they don’t often do is add in the, you know, the kind of forward looking customer and market you know, aspects. So, you know, you can spend a lot of money on a QV, as you know, yeah, and, but you can spend a little bit more and add in, you know, the dimension of your customer and market to understand what’s the future look like. I mean, it’s, it’s great to understand the the current state of the financial, you know, position of the company. You know where it’s been and where it is now. But you know, what are the, you know, what you know, what kind of security you have going forward? You know, like, without understanding the customer situation, it’s kind of as a level of risk there that you’re kind of hoping that everything continues so well.
Damon Pistulka 14:18
And you make a, you make a great point here, and you said it, and probably, probably didn’t even know know it, because you talk about a lot, is what does the future look like? And that’s really the bet that that people want, or the question that buyers and sellers want to answer. Because if they can predict that and say, This is what it’s going to look like, even better than the next person, or better than they could yesterday, to be able to really give it some some depth, that’s a huge thing, right?
Tom Herman 14:48
Yes. I mean, if you think about if you’re a buyer, and the seller presents to you their financials, but they also present to you, you know, a full report on their customer base in terms of satisfaction. And you know transcripts, and you know summaries of one on one interviews and to show that the customers are satisfied, they’re loyal, you know, they’re they’re continuing to spend you lay all that out that the buyer is going to be like, All right, this is great. This looks really promising, you know, so. But a lot of, you know, a lot of deals don’t have that information presented on the, you know, on the front end, you know, yeah, yes, you know, it’s definitely better, you know, to be proactive and offer that up, then have the buyer request access to the customers late in the process and do their own work. And you maybe they confirm it, or maybe they don’t, you know, and then then you’re kind of now dealing from a position of strength. That’s
Damon Pistulka 15:44
true, because if a buyer is coming to do it, and let’s talk about that, because we’ve been talking about the sellers, talking about the commercial due diligence for these M A transactions, but when a buyer comes into it, are they just trying to make a good purchase
Tom Herman 16:02
for sure, they’re trying to avoid risk and try and try not to overpay. So one of the big things that buyers will do is try to really shrew. Buyers will try to validate, you know, sales projections that the seller is, you know, presenting. So in the way, the best way to do that is to actually call on those clients that they’re saying are going to continue to provide revenue or even grow, and we actually call under the guise of a customer satisfaction survey, that sort of thing. So it’s totally third party, and there’s no mention of transaction, of course, yeah, and we just, you know, talk with them about their satisfaction and their their future, your plans to continue spending, or increase their spending, or buy a new product, whatever new product the company’s introducing, whatever it happens to be, and we can validate whether what the seller is saying is actually true. And we’ve had situations where, you know, sellers have presented, you know, significant increases to revenue projections. And we’ve done work to question that, and we found that what they’ve said is not exactly what the customers are saying. So, and that obviously comes back into, you know, the valuation, and, you know, the negotiation and all that so, but if you’re, if you’re the buyer, you you want to know, you don’t want to just take the seller’s projections at face value, that that’s not really
Damon Pistulka 17:28
well, yeah, I mean, because you’re talking about millions of dollars on the line, you’re talking about it could be, you know, many different things that are going to be a problem. And it’s, it’s really a challenging situation when you, I mean, you just can’t make a mistake at that point, because there’s very few ways to get, get out of it the or come out of it the wrong way, especially if you overpay significantly. So, you know, I think that sometimes when people are selling a business, even people have done it before. They really haven’t put themselves in the shoes of the person buying the business or the group that’s buying the business and go, Okay, our reputation, our investors, money, our future, oftentimes, is on the line if we do this wrong, so we need to make sure we do it right.
Tom Herman 18:22
Yeah, for sure. And on both the sell and the buy side, it’s always good to identify additional opportunities that the company might not be pursuing right now, but show them as opportunities for future growth. And that’s great to do on the sell side, be proactive and show them the other market segments or markets that can be entered or whatever, that can increase the company’s, you know, trajectory going forward, and on the buy side as well, you want to look at, you know, how’s it, how’s the company doing now, and what’s the customer base look like, and is the market stable? Is it growing? Is, you know, are there threats coming into the marketplace we need to be aware of, but then also, what are opportunities for us to grow this business beyond what the company existing is doing. And that’s, that’s the other thing that we do, that’s, you know, that that’s a real value add to, you know, especially for a buyer going into an acquisition, to, know, okay, the company’s in good shape. And here’s what our 100 day plan is going to be based on these opportunities that we want to start to pursue,
Damon Pistulka 19:19
yeah, because you know, uncovering those opportunities as a buyer or as a seller is huge both sides, especially even if you’re sitting as a buyer, it’s a big deal as a especially because if you have that information, it’s not Something that you have to tell anyone right and it and and certainly it shouldn’t affect the value of the business that much today, because, if it would, the the current owner should be realizing some of that value already and heading down that path. But it is such a big deal to be able to uncover that stuff as a. Hire to find those new opportunities that might not be there. Now,
Tom Herman 20:06
yeah, absolutely, yeah, that’s and like you said, you don’t have to let anyone know that. You know that you’ve spotted them, but you know a lot of buyers, you know that are adding on to a existing platform, that you know they know what their plan is for the business in terms of how they’re going to direct the business, but, but, yeah, it’s good to have a plan.
Damon Pistulka 20:24
Yeah. Well, and the other thing I was thinking about too, as you were mentioning that, is the fact that a buyer, especially an investment buyer, is going to look at different opportunities with much different lenses than the current owners may. Because if you have, if you have a long time owner of a business, or family owner, or even another group that is nearing the end of their time with that business, their investment, their additional investment in that business may be limited, or they may not have a real appetite to do that, but the new buyer may look at the same business, but the same opportunities that everybody knows are there and go, we want to invest the money and take that opportunity, but even though they passed it by, yeah,
Tom Herman 21:18
yeah, you’re exactly right, depending on where they are in their, you know, business life cycle, and the owner, where the owner is, yeah, there could be opportunities they’re just sitting there that they just don’t have the, you know, attention span, or the, you know, the you know, the desire to pursue them, yeah, Mm, hmm, yeah, yeah. But they can be presented on the sell side as just, like, ready to go, you know, here, yeah, yep, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 21:39
That adds, that adds to that, and that would on both sides. It’s a good thing if you identify them either way, because it’s something that that could add to the value for the buyer later, could add you to the seller today, or just get a deal done faster or with with a little better terms. I mean, because in reality, the thing that I think is is really cool about doing the kind of work that you do, or or work around an M A transaction, is that the stakes are so high that the investment in the work that you’re doing, even when you look at even like a quality of earnings, Q, A, V, people talk about those a lot. I mean, you can easily spend, I even on a smaller business, spend $50,000 on one but it can be the difference between you getting the deal done for $25 million or not, and so, so you look at the return on your investment, it’s a go, no go decision on a lot of these things, or in the case of even in that situation, Just say it reduced the sale price, or the offer price by $2 million if you didn’t do it, or you did it right, and you spent $50,000 would you spend $50,000 to get $2 million yeah, I think so, yeah,
Tom Herman 22:53
that’s what we always say. You know, you can spend five figures to save seven figures. I mean, that’s great, you know, yes,
Damon Pistulka 22:59
yes, it is. And that’s when, when business people that have these that own these businesses, that see these kind of things at the end, they often don’t, unless they’ve been through the process and understand it. Investment buyers know, because they’ll invest in this stuff day in and day out, because they see the value that brings to these transactions. It’s it’s interesting that this is one of those times when it’s not like buying a piece of equipment, and I can do a million dollars more business and my margin is 35% and make $350,000 it’s just opposite of that, right? I might spend $350,000 and get millions back. So, yep, yep, pop here today. There we go. Got it back. So as we’re looking at some of these things, what are we talked about, customer concentration and that, that’s a big one. Now, when you’re doing these and you’re trying to project what’s going out into the future, you’re looking at current customers, you’re looking at overall industry. What are some of the things that you’re really trying to put into this crystal ball to give them my idea what’s going to happen.
Tom Herman 24:22
Yeah, I think, you know, customer satisfactions are really great measure. If a customer base is satisfied, they feel like they’re getting, you know, value that they’re bargaining for. And, you know, the service is good, and there’s no real red flags. That’s, that’s the biggest one. I mean, really, you know, if you’re taking care of your customers, that’s, you know, that’s a great sign. And also at the same time, and we’ve had this happen where you’re working on the sell side, doing a proactive customer, you know, study identifying issues, you know, and if you could identify those issues ahead of time, you can do something about them. And you’ll want to do that, because. You You won’t want the buyer to find those issues out at the, you know, kind of, you know, toward the end of the thing. So
Damon Pistulka 25:05
Well, yeah, and if they this is one of the things too, that it’s why we preach about diligence preparation and normal, I’m not talking about commercial due to like you’re doing, but diligence preparation, you know, making sure all the numbers are right, making sure that you’ve got everything put together, making sure that it’s well organized, so that people can find things easily, making sure just all that like you’re saying if, if a buyer comes down to a point and they say, Well, can you get this and you give it to them, and it’s not right, there is nothing worse than that, because it’s like, Aha, what else is wrong now? Yeah, it’s like this that just opens a little crack to go in and really do a deep dive into something, that maybe there’s nothing there, but you’re going to waste a lot of time and put a lot of doubt in that buyer’s mind.
Tom Herman 25:56
Yeah, we say the exact same thing, that if a buyer sees one little thing, they’re going to assume there’s 10 more.
Damon Pistulka 26:03
That’s a good way to say it. They’re
Tom Herman 26:04
just going to keep going. Yeah? So the more you can address up front and be bulletproof going into the process, you will really benefit from that. Yeah. So proactivity is the key on the sell side, for sure. Yep.
Damon Pistulka 26:19
What are some of the most interesting things that you’ve learned while you’re doing this commercial due diligence, like you were out researching this, and then they’ll not mention any names, but you know what? What were some of the things you got? Wow, I never knew that, or I wouldn’t have expected we would figure that out. Yeah,
Tom Herman 26:34
so we we talk to people, but part of our process is, it’s called human intelligence gathering. So, you know, if we’re working in an industry we work in, we’re industry agnostic, so we work in different industries, all across the board. And our team, we have, you know, industry experts that we bring in to, you know, to deal with certain things, like if it’s a medical device or something, and part of what we do is not just interview customers, but we’ll interview people that actually use the company’s product, you know, whether that, whether that’s, you know, an engineering company, or a doctor or or some nurse specialist or something, and we find out very interesting information from talking to you these human intelligence sources, if you will. So yeah, that’s where the most interesting stuff comes from stuff that you can’t find out anywhere else, other than the people that are actually using the products Day of the Day. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 27:25
yeah, yeah, that that would be a great source of information for sure. Because even your customers, the the if you’re selling to distributors, they might not know. But you know until you really talk to the person that’s got it in their hands, because a lot of this stuff, honestly, if you talk to a customer, it could be the hospital chain or the buying group that’s buying it for the hospital. If we’re talking about medical devices, and they don’t they’ve never even seen it. They don’t even know what you’re talking about. All they could tell you is, yeah, they delivered it like we wanted, on time, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you go into the hands of the people that uses it, the nurses, the doctors and whoever else. They’re going to tell you exactly how much they like it,
Tom Herman 28:06
right? And they’ll tell you things like, oh yeah. We were approached by another rep that sells us competitive products, and we’re thinking about it, you know. So, I mean, you find a lot of information that oh yeah, people love to talk, you know, like,
Damon Pistulka 28:18
yes, yes. Oh, that’s cool. That’s cool. So what have you learned about this that’s been changing over the years that you that really is interesting and exciting to you? What’s changing with with commercial due diligence?
Tom Herman 28:35
You know, I sounds kind of strange, but not a whole lot. I mean, what we do? I tell people, it’s not rocket science. It’s just doing, you know, getting your, you know, self into the process of understanding what’s happening. It’s really, you know, technology, you know, AI has helped a little bit in terms of, you know, we do a lot of one on one interviews, and they’re, they’re videotaped and audio recorded and all that. And AI helps us summarize those and process those quicker. So it’s helped us to be more efficient. But, you know, other than that, you know, it’s, this isn’t rocket science, you know, it’s, it’s just doing the hard work of talking to people and analyzing data. And you know, it’s just someone has to do it. And most, you know, M and A advisors don’t have a commercial due diligence function because it just isn’t practical to, yeah, staff that and so, and they, you know, they, they may do some high level stuff internally, but you know, most don’t have the capabilities and the bandwidth to do what we do. So, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s not, you know, technically crazy stuff. It’s just doing the work and not, not overlooking anything, you know, uncovering every rock and and trying to understand and explain what’s happening.
Damon Pistulka 29:46
Yes, yes. So look at it. I was going to look at one thing here real quick because I did just a new question came my head. So I. So in this now, you’ve been in research for a long time, research and helping this stuff. So what are some of the changing demands you see from the customers that were different, because the things they’re asking you to find out, are those much different, or is that pretty much staying the same too?
Tom Herman 30:18
Yeah, it’s pretty much staying the same. I mean, the questions that we’re trying to answer are pretty okay, standard over over time. You know, it’s really, you know, what are, what are the customers going to do going forward? And yeah, in asking them their purchase intentions. And obviously you can’t take it for, you know, absolute fact, but, oh yeah, you have to ask the questions and understand, you know, why they’re answering them the way they are. If they’re satisfied, then there’s a good chance that their purchase intentions are going to be pretty accurate going forward, you know, unless something changes with you know, that’s the other thing, you know. If you can ask all the right questions, if the ownership, the new ownership group, doesn’t, you know, or changes things, or doesn’t follow through, and, you know, then all bets are off at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 31:04
It’s such an interesting thing, because it’s not something that a business person, that doesn’t isn’t involved in M A transactions would think about. But as we’re talking about it, if you’re buying a business or selling a business, it is something that would be very valuable to understand that customer base better and uncover opportunities, no matter what side you are on, because it all creates more value for that business long term, right?
Tom Herman 31:38
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you need to know what you’re buying, and you need to know what the potential is of what you’re buying. So, yeah, yeah, it’s, I mean, nobody wants to buy a business that’s going to be flat forever. I mean, that’s no fun. You want to buy something that you think you can prove it and, you know, grow it over time and pursue new opportunities with it. And, you know, but if you don’t really have a plan, it’s hard to do that. So, yes,
Damon Pistulka 31:58
yes, that’s for sure. That’s for sure, got Tom it is, is just so interesting talking about this, because there’s, you know, we talk, you know, in business, you run the business, you might talk about customer satisfaction. You might have your metrics to talk about satisfaction, but you really very you are likely not going at the level that you’re going to be going into it, the customer, the market, the overall market. How are things moving and globally even and this day and age. So how much, when you’re doing these things, typically, how much is the global influence starting to play into the markets.
Tom Herman 32:42
It depends on the industry, so, you know, and the size of the business. So, you know, like the lower middle market, probably not so much for the most part. Some of the bigger, bigger businesses that we deal with, you know, that have global competition. You know, there’s, you know, like, medical products, a great example, oh yeah, devices, there’s a lot of European companies that are looking to the US to come in and, you know, and become a real problem for some of the established US companies. So you really need to understand what’s happening and, and that’s, you know, human intelligence comes in, into play in that to kind of figure out what exactly is happening. You know,
Damon Pistulka 33:20
wow, Do people ever come to you just, I mean, not in an M A transaction, and go, Hey, we just want to understand our customers better.
Tom Herman 33:28
Yeah, yeah. We have, yep, yep. That happens quite a bit, because
Damon Pistulka 33:32
I, because I was just sitting here thinking, you know, that would be valuable information, no matter what, to be able to go out and look at the customer, the market where, and just to try to as you’re as you’re running your business, to prepare or identify stuff that you might not see or know. Yeah,
Tom Herman 33:50
no, 100% Yeah. In fact, we did a lot of that. We kind of niched down. We were doing a lot of M and A stuff, but also some other stuff, but we’re primarily doing M and A stuff, but we still do stuff for existing clients, yeah, that are not M A related for the exact reason you say yeah, yeah, yeah, because
Damon Pistulka 34:06
it’s a good thing to know. Every once in a while, I’m sure if you can see how your customers opinions are changing, market demands, just different things that are moving
Tom Herman 34:18
absolutely, yeah, it’s critical. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 34:20
that’s a huge thing, huh? Cool. Well, if someone wants to reach out to you, Tom, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?
Tom Herman 34:28
Best way is to visit our website, which is just VEDA intel.com, V, E, D, A, I N T, E, L, l.com, and you can schedule an appointment there. You can email us anything that’s awesome. Yeah, awesome.
Damon Pistulka 34:42
Well, Tom, it’s been really interesting learning more about how you’re doing commercial due diligence for m and a transaction is the process you use, the kind of things that you you are doing when you’re doing this, and the things you’re discovering and how it helps both sell. Dollars when they’re preparing their business for sale or getting ready for that sale, and how buyers use it to make smart decisions when they’re buying a business.
Tom Herman 35:08
Yep, it’s critical. Yep, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 35:11
yeah. Well, thanks for being here today. Tom I appreciate it. I want to say, if anyone, when you’re listening, if you got in here late, go back to the beginning and start this over. Because if you are in a business and you’re considering a sale or purchasing a business, this could be one of the keys to really making that a good decision, or avoiding a bad decision, or just getting ready to go the right way. So go back to the beginning and start this over. Tom, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us on this commercial due diligence for M and A transactions, we’re going to close down right now. Everyone and Tom, hang out with me and we’ll finish offline.
Tom Herman 35:53
All right. Thanks. Damon, you.