Proven Expertise

Why will you have a better client experience with CapitalValue Advisors?

Experience: The principals of CVA have been involved with hundreds of engagements in their collective experience as buyers, sellers, operators and advisors. Of more importance, CVA’s Managing Directors have direct, hands-on business operations experience, allowing them to understand how to best position your company in the market.
Process Driven: CVA’s process for harvesting value for its clients has been proven – from identifying the unique value drivers for your business to locating just the right strategic buyer.
Selectivity: CVA takes on a limited number of engagements each year so that we can provide the best possible representation to our clients.
Confidentiality: You will never find your company “listed” like real estate, for the world to see on the Internet, in a blast e-mail, or otherwise. We hand-pick and call only the buyers you approve, ensuring the utmost precision and confidentiality.

Learn more about our solutions:

Sell-Side: Harvesting Value for Your Company

The Decision to Sell. You have spent years building your company, and selling your business is typically an emotionally-charged, once-in-a-lifetime event. Having competent advice and representation from the time you decide to sell your business until the transaction closes will help you make good choices and increase your chances of a successful and rewarding transition. At CVA, we believe the sale of your business is just one part of a much larger and more complex set of processes that we can help steer you and your company through. Our goal is for you to have a successful transition – one in which you not only receive financial proceeds sufficient to fund your future needs, but also one that protects your legacy with your employees, customers and community.

Understanding You and Your Business

Our approach to representation starts with listening. We start with your needs – both financial and non-financial. We then seek to understand your business – what makes it unique and valuable. We begin our evaluation of your business with our unique OwnerAnalytics™, a set of tools we have developed to:

Identify, understand and quantify your needs
Determine the market value of your business
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your business that drive differences in value.

With OwnerAnalytics™, together we can clarify and quantify your needs and how the sale of your business might or might not fulfill those needs.

Addressing Challenges

If a sale is not likely to meet your financial objectives, we will work with you to identify the specific ways to increase value in your business to meet your needs. Our goal is to close a successful transaction for you, and utilizing our proprietary ValueDrivers™ tool, we can help you identify the weaknesses in your current business and develop a plan to increase the value of your business over time by addressing those challenges. By addressing these weaknesses in a systematic fashion over time, the value of your business will increase. Only once the value of your business has the potential to meet your financial needs will we advise you to look for buyers.

Finding Buyers

We use our exclusive MarketProfiler™ process to determine the ideal type of buyer for your business. Using our proprietary databases and performing fundamental industry research, we will identify a pool of potential bidders. However, finding buyers is generally not the most challenging part of the sale process. Identifying the right buyer requires:

Careful planning
Direct solicitation – no mass e-mails, internet postings or blast-faxes
Screening of potential buyers

CVA’s MarketProfiler™ analyzes the eco-system of your industry to determine which strategic and financial buyers would be the best buyer. This process allows us to target specific strategic buyers and avoid wasting your time with buyers that would not otherwise be a good fit.

Closing the Deal

Once we have completed the MarketProfiler™, we then position your business in the manner most likely to generate a solid transaction with a qualified, appropriate buyer. Our process includes preparing the traditional “book” used to describe your business to potential buyers, but also utilizes the results of our MarketProfiler™ to target and solicit bids from the most qualified buyers.

We understand your company is one of your greatest assets. We also understand that a first impression leaves a lasting impression. We focus on providing a well-considered positioning document that accurately yet positively reflects your business. CapitalValue Advisors understands how buyers view business opportunities and business risks.

We also help you prepare your due diligence materials – many buyers of mid-market businesses are typically disappointed in the amount and quality of due diligence materials available, and as a result, their due diligence takes longer and deals are less likely to close. Having done due diligence on dozens of transactions, we can help you prepare these materials in a clear, concise and compelling way that buyers will appreciate and acknowledge with higher valuations.

Once we have identified one or more suitable buyers, we will coordinate the due diligence to be completed on your business, and will help you negotiate the transaction along with your outside accounting, tax and legal advisors. It is at this phase of the transaction that deals typically close successfully or fall apart – because of our experience closing transactions, we can help you creatively address roadblocks or issues that might arise, expediting the closing process.

Buy-Side: Creating Value Through Acquisitions

Buying a business can be a very difficult and daunting task, often wasting valuable time and resources only to wind up with no prospects and no deals. Without proper planning, this process becomes even more inefficient. We facilitate the process and make it more efficient and cost effective by first identifying your objectives. Next we create a list of targets using our proprietary MarketProfiler™ and carefully review this list with you. Finally, we act as the intermediary in the market, shielding you from unnecessary attention and saving time for you.

Once we’ve found a suitable target and they’ve expressed interest in selling, we help you negotiate (and structure) the deal, prepare your letter of intent, manage the due diligence process, help you with financing options, address any critical issues prior to closing, and close the transaction. In short, we can help you stay focused on your core business while helping you execute your acquisition strategy.