It is 2017 and in my 11 years in the business I have 215 deals and worked on probably another 225 or so. 50% close rate is what I run. To some that seems like a horrible number but when you consider that in this industry the average close rate is closer to 20% you may want to check yourself and your assumptions. But it begs the question? Why do deals die or fail to close?
The circumstances of deal closure are many and I have seen them all: Financing, poor records, Pirate Ships (yes pirates ..think Captain Phillips), death, divorce, divorce attorney’s, personal injury attorney’s, remorse, fear. The list can go on and on. But in short I can sum it up to lack of teamwork and control.
You see the moving parts of a transaction are many and someone must control the parties and the flow so that things are done in alignment without creating waves and while meeting a timeline. One closing attorney calls it “bird dogging”. Someone must be that person who dots every i and crosses every T and follows up and double checks. It is an annoying role but someone must assume that role. When there is resistance to being bird dogged things will go wrong (Murphy’s Law).
The business broker should be the bird dog. What is involved in “bird dogging?” Well the wikipedia definition of a bird dog is a dog that searches out prey (the thing that can go wrong in our case), searcher, sniffs out prey, pursues with determination. To the seller and the buyer you want that person on your team working diligently to eliminate the threat of deal busters