#325 Mastering Personal Branding and Negotiation in Business Acquisitions

Hi, this is Jonathan Jay, and welcome to this special edition of Business Buying Strategies, and today we are live from our Deal Makers Retreat in Marbella, Spain. And today you're going to hear some extracts from my talk all about your personal brand and how you present yourself when speaking to the owner of a business. I hope you enjoy it.

And this afternoon I'm gonna be talking to you about the personal side of deal making. I'm gonna be talking to about how you are the brand and how you are unique and how, regardless of how many people there are out there wanting to buy a business, there's only one of you. So I'm gonna be showing you how to be the best you possible when talking to the owner of a business and when negotiating a deal. So we are gonna be talking about.

That first impression with the owner of the business and that first interaction with them, and I have to say, talking to quite literally thousands of people in your position over the years, I can tell you that this is the biggest challenge that new business buyers face.

The challenge is how do I communicate in a way to the owner that sets me up as a professional that allows me not to self-sabotage the rest of the conversation if I've never done it before, doesn't put me into a disadvantaged situation and sets the tone for the conversation to come. That allows me to negotiate in the strongest possible way. And I'm gonna be giving you some examples along the way of how to do it and how not to do it.

And I'm gonna exaggerate some of these examples really just to make the point. Maybe they're a little bit, a little bit humorous at times because I want you to see how to do it and how not to do it. And if you get this bit right, everything else flows from there. Does that make sense? So if we get the, it's, it's it's the old saying, isn't it about you know, putting your best foot forward and, you know, getting off to a good start.

If we can get off to a good start when we are having a conversation with the owner, then everything else just becomes a little bit easier. There after. See, you are the face of the deal. You are the person that they are doing the deal with. So can we now agree to forget about clever names for holding companies and about your SPV that you just set up? You know, no one cares. They care about the relationship with you, and here is a very frank piece of truth.

If they don't like you, the deal won't happen. Even if what you put together is better than someone else, if they can't imagine you owning their business, if they don't like you, the deal won't happen. Just give me a nod and a smile if you're in agreement with with it, is all about personalities. It's all about you. You don't have to be an outrageous extrovert. It doesn't matter, but you have to be likable to the person that you are talking to. Now, here's another thing.

You're not gonna win them all. , You know, , you might be surprised to know that some people don't like me. It's crazy, right? But some people, I'm not, I'm not their cup of tea, but other people, I am their cup of tea. So it's about talking to the right people at the right time in the right way. So, however good you are at the spreadsheets, if you haven't got that personality bit in there, it's not going to work. And those first impressions shape everything.

Now, who can tell me when the first, first impression will start to be formed? When is that first, first impression? What, from what moment? As you open your mouth? As soon as you open your mouth. Yes. Which is typically when they call you because they've received some sort of communication from you. And they call you, and that first contact is where they start assessing. So we've got to be reassuring.

Now, I'm going to be pretty prescriptive actually, with the way I think that you should be doing this. I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of conversations with owners of businesses. The majority go nowhere, the minority go somewhere. So you've got to do this a lot to get really good at this.

So the first thing is you need to be confident. Now, you might be thinking right now, Jonathan, I don't have the self-belief. I'm just starting out. I'm a beginner. I don't have the confidence. Well, let me tell you where the confidence comes from. The confidence comes from knowing the process. You have to know more about buying a business than the seller knows about selling the business. If you know more about buying it than they, they know about selling it, you're gonna be okay.

If you're in a situation where they know more about selling a business than you know about buying it, then you're gonna be struggling. Okay, so you get your confidence from knowing the process. Now, how do you learn the process? Well, I, as you know, I, I do these onboarding zooms with we call them kickoff zooms. You've all been on a kickoff zoom at at some point. So this is partly when you do face-to-face meetings, and actually mostly when you do face-to-face meetings.

But I think the way you present yourself just from the way you answer the phone sometimes I've noticed that people have a, almost like a throat clearing. They, they, they get a little bit hesitant in those first few words. What you need to do is to listen to yourself and say, am I one of those people that does it like a throat clearing hesitancy before I get into a conversation? Or do I cut straight to the chase?

You want to be one of the people who has the clean communication where you start saying what you want to say straight away and you don't start apologizing for the traffic noise and, and starting off what is effectively a negotiation to buy someone's business with an apology is really poor positioning. Can you see why that would be? You? You don't want to be apologizing that the moment you, you open your

mouth, . I have noticed that the most successful business buyers have what we call clarity of intent. Clarity of intent. It is where you know exactly where you want to go. So, you will appreciate that. We talk a lot of mastermind about having the end goal in mind and working backwards to where you want to be.

In fact, actually in the members' area and the training videos, you can work out the number that you want to achieve and work backwards to how many deals you need to do because it's really easy to , listen to people in the inner circle. Do five deals and 10 deals and 15, and where are you up to John? You're up to 17, 17 deals and think, think you've gotta go and do 17 deals. I'm here to tell you that one deal can change your life. One deal can change your life. So maybe you don't need to do 17.

Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you probably don't. You could just do one, and that will have a life changing effect for you. Okay? So the clarity of intention means that. When you are speaking to the owner on the phone, I have absolutely a laser-like intention of I am speaking to them because I want to assess as quickly as possible, is this a business that I'm interested in? And here is a very important number two that most people miss, which is this someone that I can do a deal with.

Now, why are the two things different? Anyone know why the two things are different? Wait, it could be a business that you're interested in, but what happens if the owner has incredibly disconnected from reality expectations? What if the owner is someone who is just very aggressive and very bullish and it's like, make me an offer and I'm not leaving my house unless you put 5 million pounds and deposit, you know, all these ridiculous.

So you are looking for not just the right business to buy, but the right owner to do a deal with. And I would say that the manner that you need to adopt is this calm, professional energy. It's where you are going to control the pace of the conversation. So the deal maker persona is all about credibility, , communication, and character. And we're gonna go into these in a little bit more depth as we go through.

The first is credibility. There is no doubt for most people, the hardest deal is which one? First one. The first one. Why is it the hardest deal? No. No track record experience. No experience, no credibility, perhaps no self-belief. You haven't proven to yourself that you can do it. And you ask anyone who's bought multiple businesses, they say, when you've done that first one, suddenly the floodgates open. You realize that anything is. Possible.

Okay. So what we want to do here is we want to establish credibility if you've got the track record, but also credibility if you don't have the track record. And I'm gonna be showing you how to do that this afternoon. In fact, you're gonna be doing an exercise around that this afternoon. So by the end of this afternoon, you will have on your notepads a, a, a scripted couple of sentences that will help you do that. 'cause I know that that worries people and concerns people, strategic language.

This is around saying we have an interest in a number of businesses and we thought yours might be interesting. So what are you doing? When I say those two things, what's happening here? We have an interest in a number of businesses. What is that telling them? You've got, I've got options. Options, options, absolutely. But what's the next part telling you? There's a possibility that we might be interested, but it's not a dead cert and we've got other options. So what are we doing here?

We're setting up a dynamic where the owner is going to sell to us rather than us sell to the owner. I can tell you right here, right now, if you feel you have to go into one of these, these conversations and prove yourself, we need to shift your mindset. Because what we need to do is to show you an actual fact. They need to prove themselves to you. And when you get that shift in mental dynamic, what happens is that the confidence level increases.

All of these things are intertwined and you need to speak with certainty. Now, look, we all have different speech patterns. We all speak in different ways. And how you communicate in your day-to-day life is entirely up to you. But I would say though, if you are going to be speaking to the owners of businesses who are potentially going to hand over their, the, you know, their, their, their business baby that's been there for the last 30 years, they need to be certain in you.

And the fastest way for someone to be certain in you is for you to be certain in yourself. Does that make sense in yourself? So speaking with certainty is very important.

So we've gotta measure tone and pace, clear, concise responses. One of the mistakes that I see people make all the time is they talk too much. They overshare, they say too many things, they add in too much detail. All we're doing in this first 30 minute conversation. Remember, the first telephone conversation is 30 minutes. Okay? Phone call, face-to-face meeting about seven days apart. Okay? No more than seven days. Yeah, if you can do it three days away, that's even better.

But 30 minutes on the phone. On the phone, you haven't got time to go into a load of detail. What you need to understand is some basic numbers, some basic ideas about their motivation, because we are establishing number one, is this the business I'm interested in buying? And number two, which is, is this someone that I can buy a business from? Is, is this someone I can do a deal with? And every question you ask them has to be a question with purpose. Don't.

Distract yourself with irrelevant questions that don't move you forward in the decision making process, I want you to imagine that at 30 minutes, that phone call is gonna be cut off. So you've got 30 minutes to find out the information that you need to assess the situation. And if you wait, waste seven minutes of it talking about your golfing holiday, you, you, you are wasting time. You think you are building rapport? I don't think you are. This is a business call.

Your rapport is built by having the confidence, having the clarity, having the certainty speaking with a smile, good tonality. That is where the rapport, because they are imagining is, is this someone who can follow through on a deal, someone who can deliver? And could this be someone who could own my business in the future? I would say that the number one personality skill that new business buyers should adopt is curiosity. Be curious. So tell me why did that happen?

So tell me, you've just had an amazing year. You're talking to me about selling your business. Why is that? Those of you who've done this for a while know that every business owner has an amazing year, that the year that they're selling the business and next year is just gonna be better. Right? Have you heard that? Yeah. And next year's gonna be better. It's just gonna get better and better. It's just gonna go through the roof. It's incredible. But you're selling now, of course you are.

Don't oversell if you don't need to. They need to sell to you. Be likable, but never needy. Now it's a fine line to be fair, because you don't want to appear to be desperate. In the members area, there are 10 hours of me talking to owners on the phone. We videoed a whole lot. It was probably a couple of years ago. We videoed 10 hours of of me talking to owners. Of me negotiating.

And the person who was videoing said to me after filming a few hours of this, she said, they all say the same thing, don't they? I said, yep. They all say the same thing. And and I said, you'll notice that when someone tells you that they're not desperate. What does that actually mean? They're incredibly desperate. And I said, just listen out for the next one. And we set up the camera. I phone the next person, da, da, da, da. They answer, we're having the conversation.

And I said, oh, I'm not desperate, by the way. And she laughed, and you can actually hear it. She could hear it on the camera. She laughed and says, here they are again. They're saying the same thing. So if you do enough of this, you'll start to realize that there is a pattern to all of this. It isn't just every event, every conversation is different. You start to see a pattern. So we've got a framework for a conversation, so the first is taking control.

The second is three key points, and the third is turn the conversation. Let me explain what this is. The take control part is this warm professional tone that you need to have the, the, the pace of speech you need to control it. So some people naturally speak very, very fast. Who are our fast speakers? A few of you, right? Okay. You know that you are fast speakers, right? You've gotta slow it down. You've gotta slow it down because you, when you slow it down, you'll gain more control.

It'll give you more time to think as well. And comments like the one that we used earlier, like, I've been looking at a number of businesses, you start to take control of that conversation. Just as an aside, this is in, in brackets if you like.

Sometimes new business buyers tell me that they are quizzed by the owner. It, and they said it felt like the owner was interrogating me on the phone. I didn't know what to say. I broke into a sweat, I panicked and I had to end the conversation. Don't worry if that's happened to you, it's perfectly normal. And the reason why it happened to you is because you didn't take control of the conversation right at the start. When you take control of the conversation, you need to be asking the questions.

If you are asking questions and they're answering them, then you have the control. And if someone is asking you lots of questions, I'm absolutely fine with you saying, oh, that's a, that's a really good question. Well, the short answer is, da da da. I'll fill you in, fill you in on the rest later. But let's talk about the most interesting thing here, which is your business. So I take it and I flip it and I turn it back to them. We'll come to that in a moment.

Now this is the part that people really find the most difficult, and I'm gonna break it down to make it easy for you. Okay? So, three key points that you want to include in your opening conversation with the owner. Sometimes people want to know what your background is. You need to decide in advance what your background is because sometimes people have such eclectic cvs you don't know where to start and you just dump everything on them. Oh, well, in 1976 I was doing this In 1984 I was doing this.

No, we don't need the cv. It's not a job interview. Okay, so my background is the answer to that question has to be something that you've already considered to be reasonably relevant to what the, the owner of the business that you are talking to. It's super easy if you running a run a plumbing and electrical business and you are talking to the owner of the plumbing and electrical business and you say, I've run a plumbing, plumbing and natural business for the last 15 years.

That's all we have to say. All we have to say. Now what happens if you have never owned a business in that sector? Let me tell you exactly what you do. Okay? You do something like this. You say before you ask, I have never owned a business in plumbing and electrical, but I have a colleague who has 15 years experience, or I have an associate, or I have a team, or I have a a person advising me who's got 15 years experience in that sector.

So even though I personally don't have that, I wouldn't be running the business because I would hear all about your amazing team that run the business anyway. And our philosophy is always to make sure those people are engaged and incentivized and motivated to do the best job possible.

So what I've done, I've picked it up, I've deflected it, and I've made it very, very clear that in actual fact, it doesn't matter that I don't have a plumbing and electrical business because I'm not going to be the person running the business now. Does that make sense? ? Okay. So the question is, what happens if you've never bought a business before? Well, I said to you earlier, everyone starts off as a first time buyer. Okay?

If you've got a motivated seller who likes you, who believes in you, that believes that you can follow through, you're not just messing them around, you can actually deliver on a deal. Makes no difference whether you bought one or five or 10.

It might to the odd person, but quite frankly, yeah, if you are a motivated seller and you can do a deal and I can get the money that I want and get outta that business, that's causing me so much stress because I'm 65 and I want to retire, then quite frankly, whether you've done this before or not is irrelevant, but I would always be very, very upfront if you are asked that direct question. I'd say, no, I haven't. But you know what? I work with a team of people who've done hundreds.

I. Collectively and I have got the most amazing advisors. And what I can absolutely assure you is that I'm not one of those people who wastes anyone's time. If I'm not interested in your business, then I will tell you, and we're part as friends, if I am interested in it then we have a very, very clear and a focused systemized approach to acquisition that will get you the deal that we agree in about 12 to 16 weeks. How does that sound? And flip it back straight on that. Okay?

You should never be thrown by the fact you haven't done it before. It makes no difference. You know, let talk to any of my inner circle guys who you'd never done it before. You'd never done it before, you'd never done it before. You'd never done it before. You'd never done it before, but now it's sort of let's just do another deal. Okay. So getting to that point is easier than you think. Does that help you? I mean, to be fair, let, let's say you're going to buy a house, alright?

And let's say you, you know, you're taking there typically by the estate agent, aren't you? And the owner of the house is there. Who, who's bought a house before? A property? Who's bought a property? Like most of you, right? Have you ever been confronted by the owner in the hallway and said, have you ever bought a house before? Well, you never have. Well, no, they don't care, do they?

If you can get the mortgage and you've got the deposit and you can do a deal quickly so they can move on, doesn't matter to them. Does it makes no difference at all. Everyone's a first time buyer at some point. In fact, the gratitude they feel for you, contacting them to buy the business that's become the millstone around their neck is so immense. It is. They're open the door and say, come in, you're interested in buying. Sit down. Let me get you a coffee. Because they want to talk to you.

They want you to be interested. They want you to help them solve the problem that they have got.

Now, the turning the conversation is that flipping that we're gonna do, which brings me to your business. Tell me how it all started. Let's talk about your business now. If anyone's ever asked an owner to talk about their business, they talk about it. How long do they talk about it? For ages. For ages, yes. And you'll have to say, well look, let's not start back at the beginning, alright? Just tell me about the last few years. Where are you now? Where are you now?

Yes. Let's get the focus on where they are now.

. But the only thing that can stop you with this is yourself. Have you noticed that with all of this, the only thing that can get in your way, if you haven't gone out there and started doing some outreach to speak to owners, the only thing stopping you is. You and maybe having some level of anxiety about speaking to the owners. . What do I say and how do I say it? And will I come across in the right way? But if you get comfortable with that, you'll feel , the breaks are off.

You need to be in the position where I could, and I'm not gonna do this, don't worry, but I could select someone at random, just pick someone at random. And I say, look, I've got this mobile number here, and it's someone who wants to sell a business. I dunno their name. I dunno. The type of business, I dunno the sector, dunno anything about it doesn't wanna sell the business. Talk to them. And you could phone them up in front of everyone, put them on speaker phone, and you'd do a sterling job.

That is the level that you need to get to that self-belief and that confidence. You can do this anytime, anywhere, and I can tell you that every single one of my in the circle group is can do that anytime the drop of out. Don't need to prepare, don't need to look at the person's website before calling. Just have a conversation. So tell me all about your business. Yes. Just get into the conversation.