Author: coreykupfer

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Authentic Negotiating

How to Negotiate Salary with a Potential or Existing Employer

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Joining a new company can be a challenging time. Do you accept the first compensation offer or counter to see if there is room for improvement? Last week I wrote about employers having some leverage, but not all, in a salary negotiation.

Do you know how to use your leverage in a salary negotiation? Ideally, you have prepared for the negotiation with a list of quantifiable value that you bring to the position. A list of past accomplishments, along with any additional experience you bring to the team, will help you own your value and contribution.

When preparing to negotiate your worth, plan to set aside some time for quiet reflection. You need to do the inner work necessary to clarify your vision of what you want. For example, why you want a raise? Having clarity is essential to identify what a successful outcome looks like ahead of time. Why do you want a higher salary? Don’t stop your inquiry at “I want more money.” Why do you want more money? For example, “I have kids and I want to be able to pay for them to go to college.” Why do you want to pay for their tuition? “I never had the opportunity to go to college and I want to be able to provide that for them.”

There it is. That’s your purpose, that’s what you’re negotiating for: to send your kids to college and to provide them an opportunity that you never had. You can see how much different that answer is than “I want to make more money,” and now you’ve positioned yourself in a way that your supervisor can connect to; depending upon your supervisor, now the negotiation may not be adversarial but collaborative instead. It will also open up other options that will allow you to achieve your underlying purpose that you may not have thought of had you focused only on making more money. For instance, in the example above, maybe your employer has a college scholarship fund that is outside your department’s budget. Instead of getting a larger raise, you get access to scholarship money or, maybe, your boss has influence over scholarship or grant funds outside the company.

Now that you have a salary number, make sure you have done the same work as to other elements of your compensation package. Maybe you can negotiate more PTO in exchange for less of a raise. Could you negotiate a four-day work week to give you more time to work on a side project, and supplement your income that way? You need to know what other options could be on the table, and which of them you are willing to accept.

Develop your negotiating skills even further by following the steps I detail in my book Authentic Negotiating: Clarity, Detachment & Equilibrium – The Three Key to True Negotiating Success & How to Achieve Them and go to www.coreykupfer.com to take a 5-minute Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz to see where you stand and get immediate feedback.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

How to Negotiate with a Potential Employee

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Unemployment rates are still at 4.1% from the latest Department of Labor findings and employees expect competitive salary and benefits. As a decision maker in the hiring process, you have leverage but, in a tight job market, you do not have all of it.

Before you have selected a candidate for the open position, you will want to go through the deep work necessary to find the clarity on who you want for this position. As a master negotiator, I teach my clients to use my CDE method—Clarity, Detachment, and Equilibrium.

The inner work that brings clarity is not something you can do on a whim. You will want to allow enough time and energy to really dive into the motivations of the company and the team to create the most authentic offer.

Detachment comes when you remove your emotion and biases from the outcome. It is especially helpful to consider the negotiation not from a one-sided – or even a win-win – perspective but rather from a place of meeting each party’s needs. Once we bring in the concept of winning, it is easy for the ego to get engaged and for us to lose the clarity and detachment we need.. If you are able to maintain clarity and detachment, it leaves the negotiation open to mutually beneficial options for the employer and the employee.

Creativity in the offer and listening to how the potential employee responds to the offer will guide you in the next steps. For example, if the salary offered is base plus commission, it is possible that the base could be higher with a lower percentage going forward for the commission. Also consider flexibility in schedule if it serves the company as well as the employee.

With the next steps also comes the need for equilibrium. As the decision maker for the company, you will want to know the parameters available. Equilibrium, or balance, will inform your actions and help you make the best decision for your team and prevent you from getting thrown off or triggered during a negotiation. Maybe something a candidate says triggers you in some way. That could be a good indicator that you shouldn’t hire that employee but it also could be that you got triggered due to some past experience or personal issue that should have nothing to do with evaluation the candidates qualifications.

So, do whatever it is that gets you centered and clear – for some it is meditation or prayer, for others its exercise or calling a mentor or friend or practicing in the mirror or, maybe, doing something unrelated that you enjoy and will put you in a good state of mind. You can also use anchoring right before you go into the room – think about a time when you felt confident, strong, on your game – envision that experience in full color and with all your senses. Then take a deep breath and bring that energy with you into the room.

If you found this helpful and want to hear more, join me May 16th in New York City for my Authentic Negotiating Workshop at SHRM’s Speaker Select Series. The series is open to HR professionals and those in Talent Acquisition, Employee Engagement, Internal Communications, Talent Management and/or Learning and Development. Online registration is available until May 15th.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

Start Living on the Creative Plane

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

I’ve talked before about the pitfalls of “winning,” in a previous entry. In it, I explore the differences between winning and success (defined as achieving your objectives). Winning is superficial and often an ego-based feeling, and only leads to the need for another win. Success is complete and satisfying.

Winning versus success is a worthwhile conversation in negotiating-adjusted terms, but the underlying principle is much more universal. One of my mentors draws a line between existing on the competitive plane versus the creative plane. It’s that dichotomy I’d like to unpack a little more in this piece.

Wallace Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich in 1910, and his message remains as important now as it was then. Wattles was speaking to an audience living through the peak of the industrial revolution, an audience who saw plutocrats enrich themselves off of the exploitation of their employees. These “Titans of Industry” behaved competitively to hoard their fortunes. They took and took expecting money and resources to dry up. They were going to take as much of it from everyone else as they could before there was nothing left.

Sure, operating on the competitive plan can make you wealthy, and if wealth is your only objective, then by all means, operate on the competitive plane. But, as Wattles says, “Riches secured on the competitive plane are never satisfactory and permanent; they are yours today, and another’s tomorrow.” How can one ever find peace of mind with that knowledge and mindset? It’s impossible.

So, how do we elevate to the creative plane, become creators, and resist falling into the competitive mindset when the forces around us all seem to be pulling us into that limiting allure? Let’s see what Wattles would advise.

Know that you do not have to take away from any one. Where the competitive mind sees scarcity, the creator knows there is actually abundance, and they have the power to will it into their possession. Creators have no need to cheat, manipulate, exploit, or otherwise take advantage. When a creator gets—creates—what he or she wants, it’s not at the expense of anyone else. On the contrary, their enrichment creates more for all.

Live in a state of gratitude. According to Wattles, true poverty isn’t a material designation, but rather a condition of the spirit. He says of the above mentioned competitive plutocrats that, “the private lives of most of this class will show that they have really been the most abject and wretched of the poor.” True poverty, Wattles says, is a lack of gratitude. His writing on this topic veers into the esoteric, but the underlying idea is that gratitude connects us to and brings our minds into harmony with the creative energies of the universe, which in turn creates abundance in our lives.

Appreciate the power of your thoughts. To Wattles, this is how we summon and direct the creative energies with which we are in harmony. The Buddha said, “With our thoughts we make the world.” This is exactly what Wattles is driving at. The competitive mind thinks only of scarcity and limitations, and so the world—their reality—looks inhospitable to all but the wealthiest among us. It’s a barren world. Oppositely, the creative mind never even considers limitations. The creative mind has a crystal clear mental picture of exactly what they want. Their thoughts are directed with unwavering purpose towards the realization of that picture, and so then are their actions.

The impact that Wallace Wattles has had on my life and philosophy is second to only my father. It’s impossible to read his writings without feeling inspired to change and live with him on the creative plane. If you’re ready to ditch the competitive mindset and join me on the creative plane, check out The Science of Getting Rich.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

The Pygmalion Effect: Part Two

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

In Part One, I shared the story of Nancy, a former client who was letting her expectations impede what was otherwise shaping up to be a fair and beneficial acquisition deal for both sides.

Nancy was holding expectations of the deal and of her counterparts that were preventing her from making progress on the deal. She was at the table for a reason—at one point, this buyer was a good fit to acquire her company. But when the time came, skepticism got the better of her. In fact, the more she pushed back, the more she was threatening to compromise her objectives.

I had to get real with Nancy. I told her, “We did a good job getting clear on your objectives, and you’ve been composed, but if you’re thinking that these terms aren’t being offered in good faith, that’s on you, not them.”

I explained to her the Pygmalion Effect. It’s a proven phenomenon that states when we hold higher expectations; we actually manifest increased performance and more positive results. Conversely, and this is what Nancy was exposing herself to, the Golem Effect posits that when we hold low expectations, performance sees a downtick and we see more negative outcomes. Both are self-fulfilling prophecies.

What could Nancy have known about the Pygmalion Effect that could have helped her?

The energy we hold within ourselves matters. I thought we were on solid ground. Nancy had warmed to my authentic negotiating approach with relative ease, but only she knew her truth. The positive work we’d done to prepare for negotiations was being undermined by the negative energy Nancy was carrying, and inevitably putting out into the world. If she’d understood that her inner being has power to impact the outside world, she could have identified her low expectations and negative feelings as a problem early on, then she and I could have addressed them and come to the table with the high expectations that we should have been holding the whole time.

Those low expectations probably already rubbed off on her team. The Pygmalion Effect isn’t limited to our personal pursuits and outcomes. Studies have shown that our expectations of others effect how they perform and the attitudes they carry. In our specific example, the acquiring company was growing tense and weary of Nancy’s mistrust. Her low expectations of them were in turn affecting their mood and their willingness to negotiate. What Nancy might not have known is exactly how long she’d be carrying this negativity. If it was well in advance of the deal, it’s likely her team noticed and started to grow concerned, lowering morale. It’s a huge precept of leadership – the perceptions and expectations leaders hold of their followers are going to greatly influence how those followers think, behave, and perform. By holding low expectations of this acquisition, Nancy was putting a previously positive and productive team at risk.

She had no reason to carry low expectations. Nancy was onboard with clarity, detachment, and equilibrium. Nancy knew what she wanted and never got triggered. She didn’t understand that by doing the inner work that we did in preparation for this deal, high expectations were implicit. Low expectations are a nonstarter because in choosing to embrace authentic negotiating, Nancy was putting herself in complete control of the outcome – whether it was this deal or another, making the exact right one for her business was always going to be in her control.

Eventually, Nancy and I got on the same page and she understood that with our approach, there was nothing to worry about. But, her story shows how not embracing the Pygmalion Effect can creep in and shake even the sturdiest foundations. What’s more, it points to the fact that to be an authentic negotiator and make CDE work for you, you have to be all in. You have to believe and embrace it as a way of being. In fact, it wasn’t until after the first deal didn’t go through and she saw herself repeating the pattern with a second potential buyer that Nancy was able to see how she was sabotaging her objectives. Only then did Nancy go all in and we were able to close the perfect acquisition deal for her and her team.

The Pygmalion Effect is a concept that’s shaped much of my life and thinking. For a deeper dive into some of my other influences, check out the thinkers who’ve impacted me: https://www.coreykupfer.com/resources/

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Negotiating

The Pygmalion Effect: Part One

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

In any negotiation, we bring with us a certain set of expectations to the table. We expect each material point to be contentious. Traditional tactics have us prepared with all the classic manipulation tricks because we expect the same from our counterparts. We get caught in this inauthentic loop that often leaves both sides wondering what they really got out of the deal.

My authentic negotiating approach came about as a response to that absurd cycle. I knew deep down that deals could be more and compromise wasn’t a foregone conclusion. The foundational principles of clarity, detachment, and equilibrium make up our inner North Star when we’re at the table. With them, we stay focused on our objectives, avoid getting triggered by checking our egos, and remain in complete control throughout the negotiating process.

Like with most anything in life, just going through the motions of becoming an authentic negotiator won’t get it done. It’s not a method as much as it’s a new state of being. With that comes not just a change in our behaviors at the table, but the mindset that we carry with us.

I was working on a mid-market acquisition deal a few years back, and my client—we’ll call her Nancy—was being acquired by a larger marketing firm. It was a tough decision for her, but the deal had too much potential and the timing was right.

Once Nancy and I had agreed on that, I took her through the CDE steps, and she seemed to get it. From the start, she could clearly define her main objective—she wanted this acquisition to be more of a partnership and for the overall company she’d built to not change very much. With this bigger company’s resources, Nancy and her people could do the work they wanted. With the talent and expertise of Nancy and her team, the larger company could attract a market sector they’d struggled to attract in the past. It added up to a mutually beneficial deal, but it wasn’t long before Nancy revealed her deep skepticism.

While she kept relatively cool at the table, in our asides and breaks, Nancy voiced concerns that the company was negotiating in bad faith, that they just wanted her client list, that they had no intentions of holding up their end of the deal. At the same time, she didn’t want to walk away. After agreeing with our counterparts to break for the day and regroup tomorrow, Nancy and I talked about what was really holding her back.

Her expectations were way off. While I didn’t doubt the work she had done to get clear on her objectives, she was holding low expectations of the other party. Being crystal clear on what you want while being detached from the outcomes means that you should be coming to the table with high expectations of yourself, your outcome, and even your counterparts. When you know what you want and that you aren’t going to make a deal that doesn’t satisfy your objectives, there’s no reason to carry low expectations.

Although it is possible there was a basis for Nancy concerns, two things were true. First, I didn’t see the basis for these concerns – certainly not at the level held by Nancy. Second, it was clear to me that this filter of fear and low expectations existed for her from the start of the negotiation even before the other party said much. So, Nancy had convinced herself to expect the worst of her counterparts, to expect the worst of the deal she was going to get—and the ultimate endgame of that deal. It colored every aspect of the proposals that were coming from the other side. To her, the offer just kept getting worse and worse, even though my general feeling was that things were moving along as expected.

Nancy did not apply the Pygmalion Effect. In next week’s piece, I’ll unpack the Pygmalion Effect and its impact on how we negotiate. It’s an important underlying concept to my Authentic Negotiating approach, and once we understand its power, we can use it to improve ourselves and our results at the table. In the meantime, see how far along you are on the road to becoming an authentic negotiator. My quiz will give you the benchmarks you need to start improving: Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference

Learning How to Unlearn

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that we’re really attached to what we know—or think we know. Adding to this is the sheer breadth of information available to us these days means that we’re all working off personalized information streams. There’s no common denominator anymore it seems.

That’s especially foreboding when we’re presented with new information. I’m a huge proponent of lifelong learning. I think it’s one of the most important things we can do for ourselves personally and professionally. My fear is that as a society, we’re conflating information consumption—more often than not, information that confirms our biases—with actual learning. That is folly.

To truly learn, we have to be willing to unlearn. If all we do is seek to confirm what we already think or know, there’s no room for growth. If we want to commit to learning, we should be constantly questioning what we know, seeking challenging information and comparing it with our preconceptions of certain things.

Learning should be a constant process of clearing the furniture out of the room in our minds and then rearranging it based on the new pieces we acquire. That’s what I had to do when I decided to commit myself to authentic negotiating. There was no shortage of information that would validate the conventional techniques and tactics I’d learned, and it would have been far easier to dig my heels in on those concepts.

But, the obvious upside of authentic negotiating and authenticity in general was too much for me to ignore. I asked myself, “If you were just learning how to negotiate today, what would you tell yourself to do?” I’d cleared out the room, and authenticity became the centerpiece. We should approach all learning and growth this way but, why don’t we?

The Dunning-Kruger effect.

This is a phenomenon that once you hear it, you’ll notice it everywhere. In short, it states that many of us don’t know enough about a topic to realize how much we don’t know. Right away you can see how this immediately takes real learning off the table. If you’re satisfied with your expertise (or lack thereof) on a given subject, any new information will seem farcical and indulgent.

The Paradox of Expertise.

The site psychologytoday.com makes a good distinction between learners and knowers. At some point, perhaps for most of your life, you were a learner, maybe even a great one. Eventually that shifts and you become a knower. And this is where we run into the paradox. The better we are at learning, the more we’re able to know, and so the faster we become knowers. Learning then has to be a constantly iterative process, one that never ends. The best way to avoid the paradox is to simply never allow yourself to become a knower.

Instrumentalization.

We live in a hyper-specialized world. Whether it’s a specific area of law or a unique coding language, our experience and training effectively make us instruments of our chosen professions. So, we’re drawn to information that’s specific to what we do, and only engage with learning that can enhance our strengths. Personally, I find some of my best ideas and greatest inspiration when I allow my mind to wander, allow myself to be intellectually curious, and see what I can learn from other disciplines. Sometimes we have to unlearn the very basis of who we think we are to get past our own instrumentalization and become more well-rounded people.

Unlearning is a necessary part of the learning process. We shouldn’t recoil at the suggestion of changing our minds, but rather we should be excited by the prospect of refining our understanding of anything and everything. The human capacity to learn is something to be celebrated, but more and more I fear we’re letting it wither on the vine. If you’re ready to unlearn the ways you’ve ordered your life and let authenticity transform your life the way it’s transformed mine, let’s make an appointment: https://www.coreykupfer.com/workshops/

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference

Living an Integrated Life

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

We’d all benefit from more hours in the day. This is especially true for entrepreneurs. When I was getting my firm off the ground, it was a near round-the-clock undertaking. When I wasn’t working on the business I was thinking about the business. It was an obsession, but one born of passion and my own innate desire to create.

I have loved my entrepreneurial journey because I was always clear on why I was doing it and how I wanted my life to look. Yet, if an alien landed on earth tomorrow, I’m not sure they’d opt for entrepreneurship as their chosen path. Things like founder burnout, the struggle for work-life balance, and even the apparent conflict between mindfulness and being in action, often impact the entrepreneurship conversation in ways that I don’t think are all positive.

There is a lot of reading we can do about solutions, but to me, we’re missing the problem; we’re not getting to the root of the root.

We’re not leading integrated lives.

I started my business because I never saw myself doing the 9-to-5 grind, and I didn’t want to answer to anyone. I wanted my life to fit into my job, and vice versa, seamlessly. The two were never at odds with each other because to me they never represented segmented aspects of what I was doing. My life is my life and all that it includes. It’s not this thing I get to once work is done. That’s the value of living an integrated life—you’re putting yourself back in control.

How else can we benefit from living integrated lives?

Our experiences stop being zero-sum. When we’re holding a work-life balance context, we can’t fully give ourselves to either. When we choose to live an integrated life, enjoying our families and taking an overdue vacation aren’t stealing from our work. Working a few weekends, or spending a few nights late in the office aren’t robbing from our personal time. We can enjoy our life without feeling anxious or guilty.

We open ourselves up to inspiration. American mythologist Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” Living an integrated life to me means following my bliss. Sometimes that means immersing myself in my work. Other times it can mean pursuing my hobbies and exploring new ideas. When we detach from the obsessive pursuit of “balance” we can source inspiration from all areas of life. Rather than bootstrapping inspiration like it’s something to be called upon as needed, we invite its possibility into our life and allow ourselves to be inspired organically.

We find equilibrium. Balance and equilibrium might seem close in definition, but not to me. The way I see it, seeking balance is reactionary. Something feels imbalanced so I am going to take the following actions to even the proverbial scales. Those decisions and those actions aren’t coming from a place of inner-truth, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t experience the fulfillment we were seeking when we pursue superficial balance. Equilibrium, however, is a state of inner being that we own and can return to. An integrated life is always pointed towards our equilibrium because those energies originate from our desire to return to our equilibrium.

I’m a passionate believer in the power of an integrated life. I believe it’s a byproduct of authenticity and can be a truly transformative change for people—regardless of profession—to make. If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on how we can and why we should all strive to lead integrated lives, check out my recent video on the subject, https://youtu.be/NImtBXSFEbc.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

You’re Approaching Your Business Relationships Wrong

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

What’s holding you back from making the most of your network?

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

-Maya Angelou

You probably read that quote and thought, Surely, a poet like Maya Angelou wasn’t talking about business relationships. You’d be right. She almost certainly wasn’t. Yet, I think within that thinking is the fundamental issue at the core of how we approach our business relationships. For whatever reason, we give ourselves permission to treat these relationships differently. We try to be different people to our business contacts than in our day-to-day lives; we compartmentalize them, and we have maladjusted expectations of ourselves and our counterparts in these relationships. All that adds up to an inauthentic relationship. Considering our business relationships have the power to shape our career and our long-term success and, thus, shape our lives, this is an issue that needs some focused attention.

I’ve written about how we can build better business relationships before. The subject is one of great importance to me. But sometimes we need to identify what we’re doing wrong before we can correctly implement the best practices I advise. So, what are you getting wrong?

You Botch the First Impression.

Our society puts a ton of weight into the first impression. For good reason, I think. In a world of gray areas, first impressions are refreshingly binary. If you’re not making a good first impression, you’ve made a bad one. Like Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, we believe them the first time. But, that begs the questions, did you take care to show that person who you really are? In these pressure-packed first moments we go crazy trying to impress the person in front of us. Insincere charm, flashy spending, or even an old foe – mirroring, will all more than likely come off as fake and contrived to the person you’re trying to impress. And just like that, you’ve botched the first impression. The far better option is to be your authentic self. Show that person who you really are. Chances are good they’ll be impressed by your confidence and candor. Embracing authenticity is how we really make a good first impression.

You’re Compartmentalizing.

This is a symptom of “work-life balance” thinking. The idea is that our business should rightly remain separate from our personal lives if we’re to find fulfillment in both. To me, that’s a scarcity mindset that suggests one siphons positivity from the other and vice-versa. Now, imagine approaching your business relationships with this in mind. How could you even begin to give this relationship everything it needs to succeed? With this mindset, you can’t. That’s why I’m an advocate for work-life integration. I became an entrepreneur so that my work could fit into the life I wanted to lead. The same goes for the relationships we want to have. If we feel a push and pull between our personal relationships and our business relationships it means we’re keeping both at arm’s length. With an integrated approach, our business relationships become normal parts of our lives, like anything else. We can then enter into them fully and authentically.

You’re Engaging in Transactional Thinking.

This is our biggest downfall when it comes to how we build business relationships. Increasingly, we seem to have forgotten the simple virtue of being decent for the sake of being decent. There’s a line of thinking that questions the value of any relationship that doesn’t pay material dividends immediately or in the very near future. That’s a toxic mindset. Any authentic relationship must be built on complete trust. If you’re only giving this contact your time and attention because you want something from them, you’re creating a zero-sum context—if I don’t get what I want out of this relationship, this person has won, and I have lost. That’s fear, that’s ego, and that’s transactional thinking in the most cynical way possible. Instead, I always advise giving first, and then handing the relationship over to trust. Trust that you’re acting not out of expectation or selfishness, but because it’s good to give and to be of value to this person. Trust that the energy your actions put into the universe will come back to you and, eventually, the relationship will give you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

We can get granular about the things we get wrong—the way we choose to speak, appearing aloof and disinterested, more concerned with our phones than the person in front of us, being anxious and neurotic—but, they are all, in some way or another, the result of one of the three business relationship pitfalls discussed above. If you want to learn more about how you can avoid these blunders and build better, authentic business relationships, check out my video: Building Authentic Business Relationships.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference

Removing the Anxiety from Your M&A Deal

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

An M&A deal is a huge project, regardless of the size of your business. Some companies shy away from the prospect of a merger or acquisition because it seems too daunting. They fear their ongoing business will grind to a halt, or that all their time and effort will be wasted when the deal inevitably falls through. These fears shouldn’t dissuade you from making a deal that can help you grow or sell your business.

I had a long-time client named Miguel who, after many years, had finally found a buyer for his business. Understandably, he wanted to be sure he got the perfect deal before selling. He came to me and said, “Corey, I’ve got a buyer for my company. I want to sell it, and I want to do it as a reverse triangular merger” (the buyer creates a subsidiary company and then merges it into the company they are acquiring). He seemed more sure of the structure of the deal if he did chose to sell than the decision to actually sell his company.

In another world, Miguel would have gone ahead with the reverse triangular merger unquestioned. But, my job was to lead Miguel to his objectives in the best way possible. So, I asked him, “Okay, Miguel, I’ve done reverse triangle mergers. No problem if that is the way we end up going, but why do you want to structure it that way?”

Miguel’s response was one I had heard before, “My friend did his deal as a reverse triangular merger; it worked out really well, and he saved a bunch of taxes.” Still, I stopped him and said, “That’s great for him—but his deal is not necessarily your deal. Why don’t we talk about where you are now, and then let’s talk about your objectives and where you want to be by the end of the deal? That will get you more comfortable with the decision of whether or not to sell and then we can decide on the best structure.”

And that’s what we did. As it happened, the reverse triangular merger wasn’t the best kind of deal for what Miguel wanted to achieve. In the end, the deal looked nothing like a reverse triangular merger, but, Miguel achieved all of his objectives, and happily sold his business.

Sometimes all it takes to go from hesitation to a profitable deal is gaining clarity on your objectives and your options. I’ve identified four things you can do as an owner that can help you lose the uncertainty of doing an M&A deal and set your business up for success.

Get clear on your objectives. From the overarching goals (are you a buyer or a seller?) to more minor line items in a deal, as the principle owner, you need to take the time to do the inner-work of identifying exactly what you want your deal to accomplish before moving forward. In the above example, Miguel wanted to do three things: receive fair value for his business, limit his tax exposure, and reach terms that would ensure the continuation of his business – that it wouldn’t be stripped for parts. Once we sat down and hashed out those terms, things got easier and Miguel become more comfortable with his decision to sell.

Find a strategic counterpart. You shouldn’t jump at the first buyer or the first seller that meets your acquisition needs. They might end up being the best fit, but drilling down on your strategic vision for the deal will help ensure that you find the right partner. This is especially important because an M&A deal isn’t always an exit scenario for an owner. In any deal, but especially if you will continue to be involved in the company post-deal, you need to be absolutely sure your counterpart is a perfect fit for your long-term goals, as well as a fit culturally.

Remember that due diligence will bring it all to bear. Whatever remaining questions or concerns you have should be answered during this process. While you’re deep into the M&A process at this point, it’s rare that an unconditional offer will have even been submitted much less a deal signed before completing an exhaustive due diligence period. Meaning, if your findings don’t leave you completely comfortable (regardless of which side of the deal you’re on), you can still walk away. This due diligence process will help clarify what you should be looking out for.

Stay detached from the outcome. Probably the most difficult and most important thing you can do for your M&A deal – especially if you’re a seller. With any deal like this, there’s going to be a lot of back and forth that might push some of your buttons. Even if the relationship to this point has been completely amicable, it’s still business and we’re all negotiating with our best outcomes at heart. If an offer doesn’t come close to the value you’ve got in mind for your business, don’t take it personally. You’ve done the work to get clear on your value and objectives – it’s on the other party to come to terms. As long as you stay detached from the outcome and are willing to accept that a deal might not get done, you’ll eventually land the deal that’s right for your business whether it is the one you are currently negotiating or not.

With global M&A trends on the rise, industry leaders are expecting the biggest year for deals in recent memory. Being prepared and approaching these big deals with a calm and cool mindset can make all the difference for your business. As an entrepreneur, I’ve made sure that at Kupfer & Associates, we’re bringing sharp business acumen to the M&A negotiation process – an approach that understands the needs and goals of today’s business owners. Let’s get M&A right.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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When is the Right Time for Your M&A Deal?

During-Brainstorming-16
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Just because the forecast on M&A this year is promising doesn’t mean you can or should make a deal. Sometimes the market won’t align with your business cycle. If you are thinking of negotiating a sale of your business or a merger/acquisition this year, make sure the time is right for you, not just the industry at large.

When is the right time for an M&A deal? There’s no blueprint. For the most part, timing is case-by-case. That said, in my experience, there are similarities that one can point to and suggest that it could be high-time for a deal.

The life cycle of any business is relatively predictable, right? At least with small to medium-sized businesses, we have the founding/startup of the business, then rapid growth, followed by slower growth, a plateau, and then, eventually, the downturn. To identify when—in which phase—you want to seek a deal, you first need to identify your objectives. What I’d like to do next is explore the objectives that match up with each phase. The hope is that, by the end, you’re able to identify when you should look for a deal or, if you know you’re ready for a deal, what kind you should seek.

Founding/Startup

There aren’t many options for you at this point. It’s proving time. Unless you’re coming from a major shop, have a superb reputation in your industry, and are bringing with you a huge catalog of clients, you likely won’t find many buyers—assuming you want any buyer to begin with—and you likely lack the capital for any serious acquisition. Time to grind and build the value of your business.

Rapid growth

This is a tricky time. Things are on the upswing and it feels like it might never end. Still, you’ve got to take the long-view and be open to a deal. Test the waters. There’s a chance your business might be at peak value during this phase. It’s also likely when you’re feeling most prideful and optimistic about the company you created. If you find the right buyer—someone who will honor your vision and will preserve a lot of the critical aspects of your business—it might make long-term sense to sell right now, even if it feels unnecessary in the moment. Conversely, this might be a bad time for you to consider an acquisition. The process can be long and complicated. During this phase, your business needs your full attention as visionary and leader. Don’t lose that momentum unless you’ve identified a glaring need.

Slow Growth/Plateau

I consider this the “Goldilocks zone” of M&A. It’s when founders have the most clarity about their business’s value and place in the market. It’s also when founders have the most M&A options available to them. Your company’s value is probably still pretty close to its peak and, in a perfect world, you’ve reached the proverbial fork in the road. You have the assets and capital to consider an acquisition. Are you better positioned for an acquisition that leads to sales growth? Buy a competitor. You might be better positioned for market growth. Buy a complementary service. If you’re committed to continued growth, now is the time to buy and jumpstart growth again. If you feel like you’ve accomplished everything you wanted in creating this company, you can likely find a willing and suitable buyer.

Downturn

It’s important to be realistic about your business. Perpetual growth is something enjoyed by exactly zero companies. Growth is never linear, and your business will inevitably head toward a valley after it’s time at peak. At this point, you have a choice to stay strong through the downturn and consider what’s next for your business—which likely means a growth-oriented acquisition. Truthfully, it’s at this phase when many founders choose to sell their business. There’s still great value to be had in selling, and knowing entrepreneurs the way I do, it’s likely you’re eager to get onto your next project rather than pushing through something that you feel has reached a positive conclusion. If that sounds like you, start seeking potential buyers that suit your exit plan.

These observations are more than just hypothetical. They’re based on my experience working on M&A deals with businesses of all sizes and values. For a closer look at the M&A work we do at Kupfer & Associates, check out our website: http://kupferlaw.com/mergers-acquisitions/. If you’re the owner of a privately held small-to mid-market business, the halfhearted attention you’re likely to receive from a mega-firm will make it difficult to achieve your M&A objectives and get the best deal for your business. Having a dedicated team that possesses the experience and wisdom of a major firm while being committed to making you a priority can make all the difference. You need the right negotiator and deal-maker on your side.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!