As a proactive business buyer, whether a one-time buyer or someone who acquires companies on an ongoing basis, you must define and pursue various creative means to locate unique companies that potentially offer you extraordinary acquisition potential, whether they’re “officially” for sale or not.

There is a proven adage in the sales profession that directly relates to business buyers pursuing quality companies to buy, “All the good salespeople are employed! The fact of the matter is, the best acquisition candidates are officially NOT for sale. It is not that they cannot be bought; it is just that the business owners have not made a conscious decision or reached a compelling level of justification to sell, nor have they applied any company resources to put their business on the market. Again, as in selling, sometimes all you have to do is ask!

Should I Look for a “Deal” or an “Opportunity”?

Most seasoned business buyers will tell you that they are not always looking for “a deal” in a business acquisition, but to purchase a company for reasonable purchase terms that offers a consistent, high return on investment, with little or no buyer competition (Notice that the term, “purchase terms” was used here, not “purchase price”.) To a professional business buyer, purchase price is important, but more often than not, the terms and conditions of a business purchase are most significant.

Astute business buyers focus on leveraging their investment dollars first and foremost, seeking to acquire controlling interest in a viable company for the least amount of their own money. Business purchase terms typically make or break the deal.

Understanding that the best acquisition opportunities are among companies not officially for sale, knowing that finding a business to buy that has solid return on investment potential and can potentially be bought with favorable purchase terms makes the most sense to a business buyer, it is now prudent to focus on developing a unique means to find like companies to buy.

“Product Conversions” = Great Acquisition Candidates

Business buyers should take a magnified look at how manufactured product improvements can and will equate to definition of extraordinary acquisition candidates. Products and services advance and improve as new technology is applied to them. Companies applying new technologies represent outstanding acquisition opportunities.

The focus here will be on the systematic definition of applications of new technologies for only manufactured products. However, understand that services, be they consumer or commercial oriented, are directly, positively, affected by advancement and improvement of manufactured products used in the service provided.

Manufactured products can be improved in two fundamental ways, with product content and/or with manufacturing processes. To clearly understand how this can lead to finding acquisition candidates, a business buyer needs to take a closer look at these product improvement fundamentals:

Fundamental Manufactured Product CONTENT Advancements:

Product Application Improvements:

Function, speed, durability, taste, smell, simplicity, strength, noise level

Product Sensual Improvements:

Finish, color, clarity, texture, seamlessness, design, packaging Product Ease of Use Improvements: Multi-uses, storage, temperature range, safety, ease of transportation

Companies that are on the cutting edge of converting their products with advances in product content and related design improvements, such as: metals to polymers, polymers to composites, and organics to synthetics represent outstanding acquisition candidates.

Fundamental Manufactured Product PROCESS Advancements:

Product manufacturing throughput improvements
Product manufacturing cost reductions
Product quality control improvements
Product assembly simplicity
Product packaging improvements and advantages
Product material waste reduction

Companies that apply the latest advancements in manufacturing processes, making new products that exemplify state-of-the-art “product conversions ”by adding product value for the same cost or significantly reducing manufacturing costs represent extraordinary acquisition candidates.

A business buyer should clearly understand the evolution and status of a product conversion in a macro market trend perspective and where or how a potential acquisition candidate obtained the technology before pursuing the company. If and how the company protects the technology is also paramount to their future growth potential and perceived enterprise value.

Additional Opportunities May Not Be Obvious, But They’re There!

Once a new product conversion is discovered or introduced to the targeted market there can be extraordinary, synergistic business opportunities for an existing business owner or potential business buyer if they immediately apply and protect these same product material or manufacturing process advancements to their existing or planned product offerings. This is especially true for products in different industries and in other geographic markets.

What you have just read is potentially a major “enlightenment” if you are a strategic business buyer. Looking at companies to purchase from a product conversion prospective can differentiate you or your firm from most other business buyers.

Being the “first” business buyer to see the potential of a product conversion at a specific acquisition candidate can potentially mean you are the ONLY pursuer of that company, effectively, uniquely, positioning you or your firm to acquire an outstanding company with excellent growth and ROI potential with little or no purchase competition.

Our innate drive to maintain our “comfort zone” directly affects how and what we purchase. Pain versus pleasure, similarity versus unfamiliarity and comfort versus stress; self inflected or not, are all feelings and emotions that affect most facets of our lives. How we deal with such emotion volatility directly affects our motivations to buy things that make us feel better.

Humans prefer pleasure, avoid pain, seek familiarity and would rather be comfortable than stressed out. Jack LaLane’s famous exercise philosophy of the 1960’s, “No Pain, No Gain” does not apply to most of us.

We all like things to be “just so”, always in line with our expectations. Anything that rattles our comfort zone generally leads to an action response, a reaction, immediate pursuit of problem resolution. Herein lies a fundamental basis for sales professionals to leverage our natural tendency to seek and purchase things that help us avoid pain.

Selling is truly a Painful Process

Most selling situations involve collaborative problem or pain definition between a salesperson and a buying prospect. The sales representative ultimately attempts to educate the potential buyer about how costly it is to them of NOT having his product or service to eliminate their pains.

Many times in a buy/ sell situation the buyer does not know what his pains are, just the symptoms of the pain. Typically he knows he wants to rid himself of the pain but needs more information from the sales person to determine what it will cost him to do that. Cost manifests itself in many forms, time commitment, effort to be made or monetary investment to solve the problem.

Get Answers to These 5 Key Pain Questions

A skilled sales person must systematically qualify, or better, DIS-qualify the buyer early in the discussion to find answers to five basic questions:

1) What are the prospect pains? (They may not know!)

2) Can I, my product or service effectively eliminate the pains defined?

3) Is the buyer truly motivated to eliminate his pains?

4) Does the buyer have the financial resources to proceed?

5) Who ultimately decides to apply the available financial resources to these pains?

It is most logical that a sales representative must secure answers to these five disqualification questions BEFORE they decide to present their pain solutions, products, information or services to the buying prospect.

This decision to delay presentation, to postpone the “sales pitch”, contingent on systematic disqualification of the prospect takes extraordinary discipline on the part of the sales representative. Most average sales people immediately jump into their presentation having no idea what really are the prospect’s pains, if he’s motivated to fix them, can afford the relief or whether he has the authority to make the purchase decision.

Prospect “Pains” are not Unique

With a “pain definition” perspective incorporated in your selling approach you will quickly realize that many of your sales prospects have similar pains. You can categorize these pains, define their most common causes and solutions, then prepare in advance of your sales calls written or visual selling tools specific to each common pain. Each selling tool would be used only for a specific pain.

It is also natural for your prospects to have appreciation for others who had similar problems as they have. Anything you can do to document how you as a sales representative addressed another person’s like pains with your products or services will go a long way to justify their pending purchase. Written case histories of successful application of your product or service with previous customers are excellent selling tools.

Not “Features and Benefits” – It’s about PAINS!

So many sales technique training programs emphasize product or service feature and benefit “selling”. As a potential buyer it is nice to know all this, but prospects want the sales person to first listen to and understand their problems; how long they’ve had them, what its cost them and what they’ve done already to try to fix them. A potential buyer needs to do this first before they can fully appreciate any form of potential pain relief. (Again, save your sales pitch and get answers to the five fundamental pain questions defined here.)

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, once said, “We will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure”. This is particularly true if we are fully involved in pain at the time. With this prospect pain definition selling approach increases in your sales results are certain, resulting in significant pain relief for both the buyer AND the seller.

The bigger tire firms restrict the dealers not only to a narrow profit margin but sell through countless distributive outlets, including their own stores. This further depresses both prices and profits. We, however, gave the independent tire dealer territorial exclusivity. We made sure the salesmen understood this.

But that still wasn't enough. The retail salesmen had been selling the well known tires so long, they had forgotten how to sell. Our client was an unknown name and the technical advantages of its tires were hard to teach to the salesmen.

We recognized that we had to conduct more than the usual product training and indoctrination program, and we had to do it fast. First, we wrote up some specific tire case studies that incorporated professional selling skills. Then, instead of having cumbersome meetings, we did the unusual. We rented a large van and outfitted it with video training equipment.

We drove from store to store in our van to do our motivational training. We found that the salesmen had been reluctant to commit their reputations to our product because they were weak on its technical advantages. We wanted them to have solid selling techniques backed up by sound product knowledge when they faced prospective customers. We wanted them to have the reeling of successful experience even if it was in a role-playing situation.

We spent more than an hour with each salesman going over the technical details, going over the sales cases we had written, and role-playing selling tires to each other and putting it all on videotape right in the van.

Then the salesman would review his performance and analyze it. After that, we erased the tape. We did that because we wanted the salesman to feel secure. Letting his boss see the tape would have only made the salesman anxious. And that is something you don't do to your best customer.

All this was long, hard work. We put thousands of miles on our van, traveling from one end of the country to the other. Why? Because those salesmen were our best customers. If we could motivate them, build their confidence in our tires sell them then they would sell the product. Essentially, this is what you do with your best customers. Removing the impediments to the sale is the first job of a company. And that first impediment is your salesman's reluctance to sell or his salesmanship deficiencies.

Further proof

Here's another recent experience of ours that points out the value in treating your salesmen in the same way as you would your best customers. Our client was a large distributor of steel, industrial hardware, electrical appliances, and plumbing supplies. Each salesman had a geographic territory and sold all lines. Our research showed that the salesmen were skimming only the surface of potential sales. Their sales line was too broad for any one salesman to be fully versed in all the products. So, instead of dividing the line by category and then having different salesmen call on each firm, we did the opposite. We divided the salesmen according to a specific kind of account steel mills, coal mines, contractors, and so on.

Soon we found we were getting deeper penetration in each of the lines because we were "market targeting." The more a salesman knows about a specific user/customer, the more he sells and the happier he is in his job. This approach enables salesmen to suggest new lines and pare the customer's inventory of lines he has less use for. Company profits and salesmen commissions increased markedly. Moreover, each customer felt that our salesmen were now experts in his industry. He was confident that our salesmen had the solutions, not just the catalogs.

What we did was to implement the attitude that our best customer is our own salesman. By targeting our sales strategy according to specific markets, and making each salesman an "expert" in his own area, we gave the salesman benefits and advantages just as we try to give to customers. Everybody comes out ahead.

Industry's best customer

There are many reasons why industry isn't terribly happy about salesmen. They cost money to maintain, they complain a lot, they sometimes inflate their expense accounts. But salesmen are the ones who move the products to the buyer, who make the sales that keep industry solvent. Yet, if industry wants high profits, then it must motivate its salesmen to an above-average degree.

One of the best ways of doing that is to treat the salesman the way he treats a customer. The salesman does not treat a customer as if he were an employee, and neither within reasonable limits should industry treat a salesman that way. He is the vital link between production and profit. If you do an excellent job of selling the salesman on your products and on ways to sell them better, he will almost inevitably do an excellent job of selling to customers. That's why I say that industry's best "customer" is the salesman, and he should be treated accordingly. Get him sold and you can sell the world.

Can you picture this body language? At a client meeting, Tom, the sales rep, is unconsciously clicking his pen. Sonia, his associate, is playing with her hair. Mark, the sale manager, is picking at his cuticles as he concentrates on what the client is saying.

We may not be aware of our mannerisms, but other people are. Distracting mannerisms can pull attention away from the speaker, and cause them to lose their train of thought. What's worse, we seldom realize our own mannerisms and the effect they have on others.

Here are 14 distracting behaviors. Are you guilty of any of them?

1. Scratching ourselves

2. Bite or licking our lips

3. Play with or stroking hair, mustache or beard

4. Picking teeth, fingernails or cuticles

5. Adjusting glasses, hair or clothing

6. Clicking pens

7. Bending paper clips or playing with rubber bands

8. Drum our fingers or tapping our feet

9. Whole body movements such as rocking, swaying or pacing

10. Jiggling pocket change

11. Clearing our throats

12. Frowning in concentration

13. Yawning with the mouth wide open

14. Twisting a ring, or removing and replacing it

These unconscious mannerisms send the message that we are tired, bored or distracted. We can catch ourselves and eliminate distracting habits so we look poised and professional. Ask a trusted friend to help you identify your tics and twitches.

You can undercut your words with your body language. If you tap your pen when you speak, the person listening to you will remember your pen. Sit still so you won't create distractions.

Whatever you do, from adjusting your eyeglasses to handing out a business card, avoid abrupt, jerky movements that make you look nervous or awkward. To exude self-confidence, keep all your movements controlled and purposeful.

The bigger tire firms restrict the dealers not only to a narrow profit margin but sell through countless distributive outlets, including their own stores. This further depresses both prices and profits. We, however, gave the independent tire dealer territorial exclusivity. We made sure the salesmen understood this.

But that still wasn't enough. The retail salesmen had been selling the well known tires so long, they had forgotten how to sell. Our client was an unknown name and the technical advantages of its tires were hard to teach to the salesmen.

We recognized that we had to conduct more than the usual product training and indoctrination program, and we had to do it fast. First, we wrote up some specific tire case studies that incorporated professional selling skills. Then, instead of having cumbersome meetings, we did the unusual. We rented a large van and outfitted it with video training equipment.

We drove from store to store in our van to do our motivational training. We found that the salesmen had been reluctant to commit their reputations to our product because they were weak on its technical advantages. We wanted them to have solid selling techniques backed up by sound product knowledge when they faced prospective customers. We wanted them to have the reeling of successful experience even if it was in a role-playing situation.

We spent more than an hour with each salesman going over the technical details, going over the sales cases we had written, and role-playing selling tires to each other and putting it all on videotape right in the van.

Then the salesman would review his performance and analyze it. After that, we erased the tape. We did that because we wanted the salesman to feel secure. Letting his boss see the tape would have only made the salesman anxious. And that is something you don't do to your best customer.

All this was long, hard work. We put thousands of miles on our van, traveling from one end of the country to the other. Why? Because those salesmen were our best customers. If we could motivate them, build their confidence in our tires sell them then they would sell the product. Essentially, this is what you do with your best customers. Removing the impediments to the sale is the first job of a company. And that first impediment is your salesman's reluctance to sell or his salesmanship deficiencies.

Further proof

Here's another recent experience of ours that points out the value in treating your salesmen in the same way as you would your best customers. Our client was a large distributor of steel, industrial hardware, electrical appliances, and plumbing supplies. Each salesman had a geographic territory and sold all lines. Our research showed that the salesmen were skimming only the surface of potential sales. Their sales line was too broad for any one salesman to be fully versed in all the products. So, instead of dividing the line by category and then having different salesmen call on each firm, we did the opposite. We divided the salesmen according to a specific kind of account steel mills, coal mines, contractors, and so on.

Soon we found we were getting deeper penetration in each of the lines because we were "market targeting." The more a salesman knows about a specific user/customer, the more he sells and the happier he is in his job. This approach enables salesmen to suggest new lines and pare the customer's inventory of lines he has less use for. Company profits and salesmen commissions increased markedly. Moreover, each customer felt that our salesmen were now experts in his industry. He was confident that our salesmen had the solutions, not just the catalogs.

What we did was to implement the attitude that our best customer is our own salesman. By targeting our sales strategy according to specific markets, and making each salesman an "expert" in his own area, we gave the salesman benefits and advantages just as we try to give to customers. Everybody comes out ahead.

Industry's best customer

There are many reasons why industry isn't terribly happy about salesmen. They cost money to maintain, they complain a lot, they sometimes inflate their expense accounts. But salesmen are the ones who move the products to the buyer, who make the sales that keep industry solvent. Yet, if industry wants high profits, then it must motivate its salesmen to an above-average degree.

One of the best ways of doing that is to treat the salesman the way he treats a customer. The salesman does not treat a customer as if he were an employee, and neither within reasonable limits should industry treat a salesman that way. He is the vital link between production and profit. If you do an excellent job of selling the salesman on your products and on ways to sell them better, he will almost inevitably do an excellent job of selling to customers. That's why I say that industry's best "customer" is the salesman, and he should be treated accordingly. Get him sold and you can sell the world.

Can you picture this body language? At a client meeting, Tom, the sales rep, is unconsciously clicking his pen. Sonia, his associate, is playing with her hair. Mark, the sale manager, is picking at his cuticles as he concentrates on what the client is saying.

We may not be aware of our mannerisms, but other people are. Distracting mannerisms can pull attention away from the speaker, and cause them to lose their train of thought. What's worse, we seldom realize our own mannerisms and the effect they have on others.

Here are 14 distracting behaviors. Are you guilty of any of them?

1. Scratching ourselves

2. Bite or licking our lips

3. Play with or stroking hair, mustache or beard

4. Picking teeth, fingernails or cuticles

5. Adjusting glasses, hair or clothing

6. Clicking pens

7. Bending paper clips or playing with rubber bands

8. Drum our fingers or tapping our feet

9. Whole body movements such as rocking, swaying or pacing

10. Jiggling pocket change

11. Clearing our throats

12. Frowning in concentration

13. Yawning with the mouth wide open

14. Twisting a ring, or removing and replacing it

These unconscious mannerisms send the message that we are tired, bored or distracted. We can catch ourselves and eliminate distracting habits so we look poised and professional. Ask a trusted friend to help you identify your tics and twitches.

You can undercut your words with your body language. If you tap your pen when you speak, the person listening to you will remember your pen. Sit still so you won't create distractions.

Whatever you do, from adjusting your eyeglasses to handing out a business card, avoid abrupt, jerky movements that make you look nervous or awkward. To exude self-confidence, keep all your movements controlled and purposeful.