Читать книгу The Private Equity Toolkit - Tamara Sakovska - Страница 45

Your next objective is to inform your existing network about what types of deals you are looking for and to stay top of mind with the people who might help you source opportunistic transactions.

Your fund has a whole ecosystem of advisers, such as bankers, consultants, industry experts or company executives. Not all of them are always helpful, however. Start by assessing your fund's existing network. Who are the top 10% of intermediaries close to your organization who consistently add value, either by introducing relevant transactions, providing differentiated insights, or keeping you up-to-date with industry developments? You might know the answer off the top of your head. Alternatively, your fund might operate a formal tracking system that allows you to evaluate the strengths and contributions of major service providers on a firmwide basis.

If this is not the case and you are interested in compiling a list of the most effective advisers, you can easily do it yourself by reviewing your pipeline in the last 24–36 months to see who made a material contribution to deal sourcing, industry analysis and transaction execution. Whatever method you choose, the final list should contain a manageable number of parties.

The next logical step is to reach out to all advisers on your list and schedule an update call or a meeting with them in the next few weeks. You can talk them through your current investment focus, provide examples of deals that might interest you and remind them of your fund's credentials in the industry sector that you are pursuing.

I typically follow-up with an email too, the point of which is not so much to thank them for their time (I do that too, in case you're wondering), but to provide them with three or four bullet points of information about the deals my team is targeting in the medium term. Effectively, this is an opportunity to broadcast the well-thought-out message you crafted in a previous step to a motivated audience. This summary can also double up as a useful reference for your contacts later, either to remind them what was discussed or even to forward it around to their colleagues and industry contacts. This approach will require an upfront investment of your own time, so it makes sense to contain it to a finite number of parties. I have found that this effort really helps to activate your firm's most valuable connections, leverage others to advocate for your mandate and create a virtuous cycle of new deal ideas, all of which are likely to have far more relevance than a random inbound transaction landing on your desk.