M&A Services
Closing acquisition deals teaches you that one of the biggest hurdles new business owners face is getting a complete management team in place. While the seller undoubtedly had a great CEO and one or more quality executives at his side, the new owner likely walked in on his first day with the keys to the office, wondering how he accomplished all this without having a C-Suite filled with high-quality leaders.
C-Suite Exchange
The C-Suite Exchange is a multi-disciplinary network of the most talented professionals who have ever participated in the incubation, acceleration, maturity, and exits of lower middle market companies as they grow into new levels of complexity and profitability.
Local Chapters
The Exchange is designed first and foremost to provide local chapter support, with a chapter CCEO (Chief C-Suite Exchange Officer) and a group of 12-15 local, active members who function to assist each other in supporting new business owners. Meetings are held weekly and in person, if possible, to share essential updates on each other's deal flow, always respecting NDAs and client confidentiality, market activity, best practices, and opportunities for professional growth.
International Network
But local professionals can always benefit and use information from the greater network around the country and worldwide as well. The CSE provides access to every professional in the network with profiled information that matches them to a search for the unique skills they possess. Any member may refer another member to a client to help them solve a unique problem the client may be facing in the early ownership of a new business. The International Network will convene for a week-long conference once each year in a location established by the board during the preceding year. Regional Networks will meet once per quarter for a one to three-day event.
Many times the biggest challenge in getting a deal done is finding the right match, to begin with. While some buyers and many sellers go in knowing they are positioned to make a deal, the problem is often finding the right target or prospect to initiate the discussion, at a meaningful level, from the beginning. Buyers may look at dozens of possible sellers, and sellers may have their company marketed for months before anyone takes a serious look at the deal they desire.
The Challenge
Current State of Affairs
The existing solutions of large brokerage platforms, independent listings, and common word-of-mouth communication often fall short of ensuring the connection with a viable deal partner to get a company sold or make an acquisition. Regardless of all the resources people use today, a gap remains between the opportunity to close a deal efficiently and the barren space between real prospects.
Landmark's Approach
They say buying a company isn't as easy as buying stocks. But there is no reason that finding a company should not be that easy. Landmark's solution is to bring buyers and sellers much closer together by creating a matching system that ensures confidentiality to both parties, discloses only as much information as you're open to sharing but leaves the opportunity open for initiating a direct conversation between buyers and sellers much more quickly and with the ability to get to the heart of what will or won't make a deal work. This does not necessarily eliminate the middleman, but it reduces the need to use him unless and until you have a deal that makes sense for you.
How it Works
Both Buyers and Sellers create profiles with the intent of matching with a company that is the right fit for them. When certain indicators suggest to either side they should pursue the other party with more energy, they can reach out to the other side without disclosing any confidential information, including your own name if you choose to conceal it. The parties have the right to ask Landmark to serve as an intermediary on the deal or do it independently. Landmark is a 100% co-broker and remains an independent agent unless one side requests otherwise and the other party consents. Once a Buyer is prepared to deliver an LOI, identities are fully shared, if they haven't been already, and a due diligence process is agreed upon to determine if the parties want to go through with a deal.
Informed Decisions
If there is just enough information for each party to make an informed decision about taking the next step, it's a win for both sides. Think about it; this is what happens with stock trading every day. But the same has never been true of business acquisitions.
Next Steps
Please take advantage of the opportunity to get in front of dozens, if not hundreds, of qualified candidates for your deal without making endless calls, relying on a broker, or waiting until the right match finally finds you. The right prospect is already out there today.
Intermediary Link
Today, plenty of Internet resources are available for brokers, advisors, and investment bankers. Unfortunately, at this point, none of them are committed to creating or making one-one opportunities available between representatives of a buyer and a seller on specific deals and the opportunities that surround them. Instead of matching the intermediaries who work directly together, other sites typically connect multiple searchers to one deal. Intermediary Link (IL) is designed to create the matches between dealmakers themselves who make the deals happen.
Dealmaker Match
Through our affiliation with Landmark Advisors, we intend to facilitate meaningful high-level conversations that enable advisors on both sides to come together and determine if they're a good fit to pursue more detailed discussions and work together to find and close deals.
Join the Community
If you're ready to join the community of dealmakers who work directly with buyers and sellers from the inception of a deal to its natural end, go to our membership profile page, and sign up to find the best matches for you to work with now!
CFO Services
For businesses with difficult issues, we offer outsourced and interim CFO services. Typically, they are small or mid-size firms, sometimes with outside investors, intellectual property, additional equity needs, the potential for a sale or exit, and other complexities that necessitate the services of an experienced CFO.
Being a chief financial officer requires a thorough understanding of accounting and finance. It entails comprehending the inner workings of a firm and its industry to assist that company in becoming prosperous and competitive.
Building financial models, evaluating and generating financial accounts, and reconciling income and expenses are among the everyday responsibilities of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO). A CFO may spend a great deal of time in meetings in a managerial role where they may have numerous departments reporting to them, such as accounting, HR, and operations. The CFO responsibilities of each company differ by industry and job, with some external consultants working as CFOs. These are typically referred to as "Fractional CFOs."
CFO Activities and Responsibilities
Let's say you have a CFO Advisory Agreement that calls for him to work for you for 20 hours per month or roughly 5 hours per week. You can always use his services a little more for additional fees, but this is at the going rate, and you want to be sure to use time wisely and make the most of it. Clearly, you want to optimize the time he spends on the job with you. Thus, while a CFO may get involved in the basics of Accounts Receivable, Payables, and Reconciliations, these activities should be limited to review of other's work for accuracy, and the CFOs activities should be geared toward working hand and glove with the CEO, as an idea generator, risk manager and as a closer when the need arises for financing, investment, acquisitions or divestitures.
You should plan a weekly recap and task-setting meeting as a high priority for you and your firm. Ideally, this would be one-one or with a small group in the management team. THE CFO should be prepared to be part of monthly management team meetings and quarterly board meetings as well. The CFO should continuously make recommendations to the CEO first on finance, acquisitions, etc., but also on issues of board governance, board selection, hiring key players, the process of termination of employees when this is necessary, accounting, contact management systems, and other systemic IT issues.
Finally, the CFO will oversee, but not actively perform or even manage from day to day, the accounting department of the company to ensure financial reporting is accurate and tracking the goals of the company. This is a major task and becomes really critical as a year-to-year assignment. THE CFOs role in the accounting function is to first make sure the company has the right staffing for the department, both in terms of headcount and the individuals involved, then to make the reporting that is generated fully meet the needs of management. The CFO will then organize these reports, convert them into meaningful presentation materials for the CEO and other management, and circulate and discuss them.
Part of the Management Team
These presentation materials, or management reports, include budgeting, forecasting, cash flow analysis, sales tracking, and whatever else is needed. For third parties, such as banks and investors, the CFO will also generate financial statements of the company, including a balance sheet, P&L, and changes in financial position from year to year.
Change Agent and Expert
It is very common that a CFO is hired when the work described above hasn't been well organized before. In that situation, a very major function of what the CFO does will be to "get under the hood" and begin making the repairs necessary to have the company operate as a well-oiled financial machine, just as it probably already operates as a well-oiled sales machine. In the end, you want a CFO who comes aboard and, within a year or two, helps you to substantially increase the enterprise value.
Full-Time Option
If you are fortunate enough to bring in a CFO as a full-time hire for your company, she will be tasked to handle all of the responsibilities described above but, frankly, will have enough time to do them. Fractional CFO work is a great interim solution. In the beginning, it will be amazing to see how much can be accomplished with that little time you have her aboard.
In Summary
But it is also likely that a time will come before a year is out that you will see that value as something you may want to bring in-house. Be patient with this process. Take it year by year rather than jumping ahead of yourself. Let the current changes begin to have an impact before accelerating them. The time will come to make those decisions. Wherever you're coming into this process, you've clearly begun to see the incredible value that can be contributed by having a CFO on staff. For many companies, it is one of, if not the best, steps the company ever takes.