We don't just get multiple offers, we get
THE MAXIMUM PRICE
"No matter what it takes Michael gets it done!"
-- Spencer Brown
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"You were right on target....all the way through the process!"
-- J.W.
About The Merger Expert & its Founder
Welcome to THE MERGER EXPERT!
Hello, I am Michael Crawford, the founder of The Merger Expert. Thank you for your interest in learning more about our company and myself. Since 1983, I have been actively involved and successfully completing merger & acquisition (M&A) transactions of closely-held businesses. The Merger Expert is exclusively a full-time M&A firm, not a consulting firm doing M&A on the side.
I do one thing and only one thing; successfully sell businesses 24x7. And that alone makes me different that 99% of my competitors.
If you landed here you probably have a few questions. You are thinking, “How do I separate the good guys from the bad ones”.
Don’t be confused by my “competitors” who say they do merger and acquisitions. Just ask them two questions. #1. Do they do management consulting? If they do, go somewhere else in a hurry, they really are not a full-time merger & acquisition firm, they are a consulting company in disguise. #2. Ask them if they do “buy-side” transactions. If they do, they are dedicated to transactions, not to getting you the highest price possible.
Beware of anyone who states “they have buyers”, in fact run! This is an over-used bait and switch tactic in our industry. If they did “have buyers”, you would have already have been acquired and they would have collected their fee from the buyer. Come on, if I had buyers, they would pay the lowest possible price, have one-to-one negotiations with you, and not want to bid against the real buyers willing to overpay you for your years of sweat you put into your business.
What makes me an expert? I have been doing this since 1983. For the first 12 years of my professional career, I was employed by large corporations to perform business analysis, valuations, and strategic analysis of potential companies to be acquired. It should be obvious; I was well-paid to beat down prices for the companies we looked at acquiring. Through education, I knew how to beat down the price. What I really learned, through experience, was the process of getting the price lower yet.
I witnessed first hand how larger companies wear down sellers, and the ill-preparedness of the sellers and their representatives. I knew from our side of the transaction;
- why we wanted to do the deal,
- what would break the deal (besides price),
- what questions to ask (and in what order), and
- what information was mandatory (full due diligence).
By the end of my tenure working directly for acquiring companies, I had made a handful of CEO’s very wealthy as their stock prices rose.
From that hands-on experience, I can tell you sellers were ignorant enough about the process to allow one-on-one negotiations, and/or they were so grossly under-represented, in more cases than I could count. I just had to quit my cushy corporate job and go out there and do something to help them.
Did you know that 90% of businesses for sale do not sell? Why would you even consider selling your business yourself? Selling your business is complicated, time consuming, and labor intensive, and usually represents your largest personal asset. You are going up against professionals who really don’t have your best interests in mind. Since I was one of them I know. Why not put my experience to work on your side!
With THE MERGER EXPERT your m&a team specializes in selling privately-owned businesses with revenues of $2-20 million and have only your best interests in mind.
Our clients are business owners like you where he or she wants a skilled professional team to handle the marketing, screening of multiple buyers, and the intricacies of the transaction itself. This allows you to concentrate on the ongoing operations of your business, preventing it from suffering during the sales process, which ultimately lowers price. We work closely and confidentially with our clients to provide a premium exit value and retirement strategy.
My background and experience is quite unique in the industry. With ten years accounting behind me, beginning in 1983, while employed by buyers, I concentrated on, and was highly successful at, driving down prices paid to sellers.
If you don’t have a selling system of your own when you are face-to-face with a buyer,
you will unknowingly default to his system. -David Sandler
In late 1994, I founded The Merger Expert with the purpose of representing sellers, and utilizing my years of experience and knowledge. I began by designing above industry norm marketing documents, and implemented a very repeatable structured process that has resulted in multi-buyer bidding wars and achieved higher than industry average selling prices. Additionally, we arm sellers with a stronger cohesive working team including, but not limited to, M&A professionals, technical writers, CPA’s, attorneys, and wealth management professionals.
That is why, on deals greater than $5 million, there is a $1 million dollar difference between the last 2 offers!
Your success and ours, in part, is because we know what is coming next, and we share this with our clients so they are fully prepared. After all, I once was doing my counterparts job and you might as well take advantage of it.
My father gave me a bit of advice when I started representing sellers only. He said “If you can’t walk into an office and really put your feet in their shoes, and fully understand what they want, then get out of the business because you are really serving yourself and not your clients.”
Today, with a team of experts by his side, THE MERGER EXPERT focuses solely on getting THE MAXIMUM PRICE for the clients.
Whether you are a sole proprietor or have multiple shareholders with one or more retiring, we invite you to learn more about the selling process, and how to obtain the highest possible price. Even if you do not use our services, I feel you should be making an informed decision about what is usually your largest asset, your company. Give me a call at (503) 746-6736 to schedule a one-time free no obligation (no sales) consultation to learn how you can achieve more.
Over 25 years of Relentless Focused Action Resulting in
“Achieving THE MAXIMUM PRICE for Sellers”