Sign Illinois Banking Confidentiality Agreement Secure

Industry sign banking illinois confidentiality agreement secure

Today we're going to talk about one of the greatest fears that potential clients have. They're getting ready to sell their manufacturing company and that is maintaining confidentiality while your business is for sale. So here's what you need to know: The entire industry pretty much operates the same way. My firm does a few things differently because we ONLY deal with manufacturing companies. So for most of our clients the disclosure to their customers, their employees, their competitors that they're for sale could cause immeasurable damage to them. As a manufacturer I'm sure you're aware of this. And, you know, it's something that as people get ready to sell their business, it really strikes fear into their heart. So here's how most of the industry works. Right? So everybody will put a teaser out there. Right, a short advertise- ment. It doesn't say who or where you are. Just tells a little bit about the sector that you serve and the size of the company. When people respond to an ad like that everyone requests an NDA. It's what happens after the NDA that puts a lot of people in danger. And that is this: When you get the NDA back most brokers, in fact, everyone that I've ever seen, supplies something called an "offering memorandum" or a "confidential information memorandum" a "CIM" how most people call it. Doesn't matter. But how most of the industry works is your full on information, who you are, where you are, Everything about your business is fully disclosed in this document. Here's the problem I have with that: Who signed the NDA? Who is it? Who are you dealing with? Are they professionally qualified? Are they financially qualified? Is it even a real person? Does the broker even know this before they've provided all of your information? Well, that's how most of the industry works. Here's how we at Accelerated do it. So when WE get an NDA, the first question we ask is: Is this a real person? The address that they use, can I connect this person to this address? What is this address? Nobody today, and I mean nobody, is invisible on Google. That's the world we live in. So in almost every instance, we can find out if it's a fake address; if it's a real person; if it's a fake person. Funny story: recently someone filled out an NDA, clearly a fake name and they used a Starbucks as an address and my staff wrote back and said, hey, you know you're not getting any information from us. But, oh, by the way, enjoy your coffee. So we go through a vetting process before a vetting process. If we're sending a confidential information package to someone, we know for sure that we're dealing with a real person. Normally, we know what their professional background is. We know where they live. We know that it's a real person. All right? So let's talk a little bit about the actual information package. How do we do this and without disclosing who our client is. Here, I have a few samples here. We talk about a New England CNC aerospace component manufacturer. Notice we don't say -- it's in New England. There's thousands of them in New England. Saying a New England CNC aerospace component manufacturer doesn't tell a potential buyer anything. Right? We haven't put you in danger in any way. So as you thumb through this package, and this is like 35 pages long, these are designed to answer almost every intelligent question that a good potential buyer is going to have. But what it does not do is disclose who or where you are. If after reading this someone has continued interest, what happens next? So the next thing before we move on to the next stage they're told: Great! Listen. Now you have to provide us with evidence that you have the financial ability to close a transaction. If they don't and/or they refuse to provide that information, they never get to know who or where you are. Okay. It is -- It is very typical that we vet 200, 250, 275 potential buyers to whittle it down to about a half a dozen that ever know who our client is. And again, that's by design. Now, let's talk about what happens if someone does provide evidence of very strong financial ability. Does that mean they're qualified to buy or run your manufacturing business? Yeah not necessarily. So one of the things we also delve into is their professional background. So there are some manufacturing companies, some of our clients, who the manufacturing process is very simple. Right? So you could have someone out of corporate America looking to acquire their way into entrepreneurship who might be able to run a manufacturing company. Certainly not all of them. Well, for example, the CNC aerospace component manufacturer, they work at incredibly high tolerances. Not everybody could run this. You'd need to have some sort of understanding of what you're doing. People with a certain amount of financial capability will argue that they don't need to have experience. Most of my clients would beg to differ. Also for most of our clients what's really important to them is knowing that the business is going to go on, to go on after they're gone, that there's going to be future opportunity for their staff. They get scared when someone's coming in with no experience. So we are totally about matching the right buyer with the right seller. So in conclusion, there's one thing that I would suggest that any potential client do before hiring a business broker and that is reach out to that business broker as a potential buyer. You're going to find out a few things here. First and foremost, you'll learn very quickly what their security procedures are and how good they protect their client's information. They're going to treat you the same way. So that's an important piece of information for you. The other thing I'd offer for consideration is if you're posing as a buyer, right, you're going to likely get an offering memorandum that they have prepared for one of their clients. So you're going to see the quality of their work. You're going to see it from the other end through the eyes of a buyer. That would also be important. So, hey, we do these videos often. Right? So if there's a subject that you'd like to learn about, drop us a line, leave a comment and sign up, subscribe to our video channel. We look forward to hearing from you.