My guest today is Anthony Bahr, the vice president of Strategex, a customer research firm. Customer research dives into your customers’ experiences and compiles your strengths and pain points into a presentable report. Our conversation focuses on two aspects of customer due diligence. We look at it from both the buyer’s and seller’s perspective. Strategex serves both parties in a sale to give an honest bigger picture of the company’s worth.

Anthony highlights the benefits of using Strategex to give both the seller and the prospective buyer peace of mind during the negotiation process. He walks through the process his company undergoes when doing customer due diligence and reflects on some of the recurring themes he is seeing in recent research.

You will learn about:

How customer due diligence is different from traditional market research.

How both sellers and buyers can benefit from hiring Strategex.

The key aspects customer due diligence shows the client.

Customer research can improve organic growth and control the message you want to convey to a potential buyer.

The triangular approach to making sense of the data collected.

How customer due diligence can direct a business decision.

The importance of having good fundamentals in your customer experience.

How customer due diligence can affect a customer contract negotiation.

How Strategex filters through all customer feedback.

The top 5 points highlighted in a Strategex report.

The common trends Anthony is seeing in recent research projects.

A recap of Anthony’s takeaways.

Why you need to take the emotion out of business deals.

Today’s guest provides lots of real-world experience regarding customer due diligence—and he should, as he works for a company that provides in-depth, unbiased reports on this very topic to clients before they buy (or sell) a business.

Let’s start with the big question…

What Is Customer Due Diligence?

Honestly, this is something I wish we had done before we sold our business. It’s not that we would have wanted to restructure all our contracts or even add a few new customers; rather, we would have been able to address any risks associated with the clients we had at the time and therefore address any possible concerns our buyer had, leading us to possibly better terms or price.

However, we did not, and this is why I started the show.

So what is customer due diligence? It’s something that comes up eventually, usually after an LOI or some other legitimate expression of interest, when a buyer inevitably contacts the clients he or she will be gaining once this deal closes. Essentially, customer due diligence is contacting your current customers and finding out how satisfied they are with your services and if they have any plans on increasing, decreasing or maintaining their present contract with your business.

Sounds simple, so why doesn’t every business do this anyway?

Most of us are afraid of the answer to these questions. The rest of us perhaps don’t want to put in the effort.  However, you don’t have to do it yourself! Companies like Anthony’s exist for that sole purpose—and, as he notes, it can be a lot easier for a third party to get honest answers from your customers than it can be for you, the owner they have worked with for 20 years.