Murphy’s Law – “If something can go wrong, it will.”
In this case, a deal killer or Murphy’s Law surrounds the concepts of communication and being mindful of a proven process.
The Vant Group was engaged to assist the buyer in a business transfer purchase. They hired us to find a business, and quickly, the buyer ended up finding a business on his own through another source as it was not yet on the market for sale. We met with the buyer and seller and had a great meeting. We indicated at the meeting that we would offer him full price, and the seller was pleased with this arrangement.
The seller, who was not our client, called us back the same day and told us that he was very impressed with the meeting and wanted to know if he could use our services moving forward in the future or at least utilize us for advice. Every aspect of this business transfer deal was going quite smooth.
Here is where Murphy’s Law comes into play, and here is how one simple step can kill a deal.
We, our team at The Vant Group, assumed (and assuming will always make an ass out of you and me) that the seller understood that we wanted the business and would provide the LOI to the seller after we had done some very preliminary work up front. The meeting and follow-up had been effortless and with the business not even being on the market, we felt we were already ahead of the game. Well, the assumption was incorrect. Because he did not hear from us, and he did not want to be pushy to call us for our letter of intent, he did not know that we had an LOI already written up. We were under the impression that we were all on the same page.
Since we did not keep up our usual constant communication with him for where we were in the process, another buyer came along and offered him full price, and he signed the deal. So, though from our end, we did everything within a reasonable amount of time, what we did not do is make a simple phone call or send an email saying, “We are on it, let us know if you have any questions. We will get you an LOI.”
Murphy’s Law (as we state here, it is communication or lack thereof that kills deals) came into effect; because if we had done things in our usual manner, even though we were under the impression that it was a done deal, it would not have slipped through our fingers.