'Treating people well has a big payoff,' says Robert Sher, mergers and acquisitions specialist and author of the new book The Feel of the Deal.
Businesses are bought and sold every day. Mergers and acquisitions have a developed a reputation for being brutal, callous and indifferent about the people involved. Are they really that fast and furious? Is it really a vicious world?
Robert Sher, author of The Feel of the Deal, knows different. In fact, he'll tell you that the acquisitions he's gone through have been long, deeply involved and extremely personal events -- daunting emotional and intellectual journeys -- that left him a changed person forever.
Robert Sher, an M & A specialist with years of CEO experience, captures the real story and reveals what really goes through the mind of a CEO in a true life story about what happened as he worked to acquire another company.
The story is about romancing the seller and then buying the business. Sher finds out that buying a business requires all of the skills that running a business as a CEO requires. That includes negotiating, thinking about how to best work with other people, crunching numbers, identifying the real motives of others, evaluating ROI of various investments and working to keep people up to speed on all sides. Here is a captivating story that recounts the candid details of what CEO Robert Sher actually did, what happened and what ultimately flowed from it.
Sher has a thoughtful, self-revealing and totally engaging personal style that makes the action genuine. His skills as an educator also shine and he makes complex ideas simple and actionable. He is incredibly disarming and truthful about what drives him crazy about M & A:
Unrealistic Expectations. Too many buyers and sellers don't understand what a business is worth or how the process works. They waste a lot of time and energy for everyone.
Bad Behavior. Buying and selling businesses is emotional. With emotion, bad behavior often appears. Dealing with this is difficult, draining, and can really hurt the chances of both parties achieving their objectives.
Confusing Guesswork with Facts. Buying and selling a business is a process of discovery of hundreds or thousands of facts and issues. As the onion is unpeeled, people tend to jump to conclusions and fixate on bogus positions or perceptions. That can lead to bad decisions and destructive negotiations.
Faulty Communications. With so much being learned on both sides, using the right communication vehicles in the right way at the right time is crucial. Conversation is very critical which means heavy use of in-person meetings and the phone. Deals don't get done on e-mail alone!"
The Feel of the Deal is filled with key strategic business advice that is important and useful to both buyers and sellers of businesses - including those who are even contemplating the possibility of a possible acquisition that is years away.
Available in bookstores nationwide and online.
About the Author
Robert Sher is the principal of CEO to CEO and collaborates with and guides business leaders as they navigate critical passages. He periodically writes CEO case study columns which have been published in several business journals including the East Bay Business Times and the San Jose Business Journal. He presently serves as a Director for the Alliance of Chief Executives. He was CEO/President and a founder of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 through 2006, a leading decorative poster publishing firm that has grown significantly, including four acquisitions since 1999.
Mr. Sher is an M&A specialist for the wall decor industry. He writes a regular column for Décor magazine, and is a founder and Chairman of the Art Copyright Coalition, a worldwide organization fighting to stop copyright infringement of visual artists. Between 1995 and 2000, he was a Lecturer under contract with St. Mary's College teaching Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management to hundreds of graduate students in the MBA and Executive MBA programs.
Mr. Sher received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business, May 1986 and an MBA, October 1988 from St. Mary's College, Moraga, California. He is a recipient of the Jack Saloma Award.
He lives with his wife and two children in Dublin, California.
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