How to Host a Business Lunch Like a Boss

Administrator January 13, 2016August 19, 2016 General

How to Host a Business Lunch Like a Boss

By Peter Nguyen, Axial | November 19, 2015

Part of every deal professional’s job is networking. But what do you do if you’re new-ish to the gig and tasked with hosting a business lunch or dinner with a group of clients or partners? Don’t worry — even if your normal fare is burger and beers at the pub, I’ll show you exactly how to orchestrate a seamless affair and set the stage for a productive business relationship down the road.

It’s all about the halo effect. People are attracted to people who are confident and self-assured. Your guests’ perception of you as a host will in turn impact their impression of you as a person, in addition to that of your firm and colleagues.

I’ll break up the do’s and don’ts before the reservation, during the meal, and post dining.

Before the Reservation

Do find out if anyone in the party has any dietary restrictions. If someone’s a vegan, you don’t need to go to a vegan restaurant; just make sure there are options for them available. People with stricter dietary restrictions understand the difficulty that comes with dining out. If they don’t, it’s about time they learn the world doesn’t revolve around their dietary restrictions (unless of course they’re the person you’re trying to woo… then by all means, go to a vegan restaurant and eat that silken tofu with a grin on your face).

Do your research if you plan on ordering wine. Take a look at the wine menu beforehand so you’re not looking at a 60+ page list at The Lambs Club and talking with a sommelier for 20 minutes about the vintage of a specific Sauvignon Blanc. If the idea of initiating a conversation about wine in front of business contacts terrifies you, try calling in beforehand and ask what they recommend would go best with their main dishes.

Do take it upon yourself to orchestrate introductions. Shake hands with everyone and introduce individuals who haven’t met yet. Bonus points if you can bring up shared interests or business contacts to spur conversation.

During the Meal

LET’S BREAK THIS UP INTO THREE PARTS — THE BITE, THE BOOZE, AND THE BABBLE.

The Bite

Do close your menu when you’re ready to order. Make an effort to go first, even if it requires being assertive. As the host, you set the tone of the meal. If you order a drink, an appetizer, and an entree, for example, that gives everyone else at the table implicit permission to do the same.

Don’t order messy dishes. While I love lobster-in-shell as much as the next guy, save it for dinner with your mom or ex-girlfriend. Don’t order anything that requires you to shift your attention from your guests to your plate, and beware of potential food-related mishaps. It’s not a pretty look when a bolognese is flying off the end of your pasta and onto your client’s $1000 suit.

Don’t order unfamiliar foods. Save your personal exploration of sea urchin innards for a later date. This mitigates any unforeseen gastrointestinal problems or unattractive muscle spasms in your face.

DON’T UNDERORDER. FORGOING AN ENTREE WILL MAKE OTHERS AT THE TABLE THINK THEY NEED TO TIGHTEN THEIR BELTS TOO, NOT TO MENTION REFLECT POORLY ON THEIR PERCEPTION OF YOUR GENEROSITY AND ECONOMIC SOLVENCY.

The Booze

Do your research if wine is going to be a component of the meal. Otherwise tell everyone explicitly to feel free to order whatever they’d like off the drinks menu. If one of your guest’s shows an inclination or particular interest in the wine list, by all means defer to their expertise.

Do request to see the somm if you’re feeling over your head. If you don’t want them to suggest the ‘98 Chateau Lafite, point to the price of a bottle on the list in your price range and ask them to suggest a similar bottle. A good sommelier will understand what you’re getting at.

Do familiarize yourself with how wines are presented at the table. If you order the wine, you will be the designated taster. The server will bring out the bottle and confirm with you it’s what you requested. The server will then pour a small amount of wine in your glass. Lift the glass by the stem, give it a swirl, nose it, and take a sip. If you dig it, a simple “this is fine” will suffice.

If the wine is tainted or corked, hand it to the waiter or the sommelier for their opinion and order a different wine. I follow this guideline when it comes to sending back wines: If I request a bottle and I don’t like it, I suck it up. If a somm specifically recommends a bottle and I don’t like it, I send it back.

If further on in the night, you’ve found you’ve had enough to drink and the waiter moves towards refilling your glass, momentarily hold a few fingers over the top of the wine glass.

Don’t over-order on alcohol. Non-alcoholic beverages are also perfectly acceptable, especially if you have a tendency to overshare.

THE BABBLE

Do guide the conversation and make everyone feel comfortable. There’s enough we share in the human experience that we can avoid stepping on landmines for 90 minutes. Religion, sex, and politics are always good topics to steer clear of.

Do put the electronics away, and if you must take a call, step away. It may seem like a suitable solution, but leaving your phone face-down on the table isn’t good practice either.

Do listen to everyone at the table. If you don’t have the social graces to hold a conversation, pause before answering. It makes people think you’re being more thoughtful in your response and speaking with more intent… and subconsciously cues them to talk more.

Post-Eats

Do pay the bill. Obviously. Request the check discreetly when dinner is winding down. Bonus points if you can discretely slip the server your card before the end of the meal to take care of everything.

Do make a mental note of the table. Did everyone seem to enjoy their drinks and food? Is this a place you would take them again, or take future clients and partners? How was the service?

Congratulations — you’ll now be able to give Emily Post and Martha Stewart a run for their money.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NAME: Peter Nguyen
Peter is the marketing operation & strategy manager at Axial. Prior to Axial, he was an email marketing specialist at Gilt Groupe on their lifestyle vertical promoting restaurants, spas, fitness, and entertainment. He earned a B.S. in Science from Oregon State University.

For further information, contact us

Megabite Restaurant Brokers, LLC
Phone: (817) 467-2161
www.megabite-rb.com

Search our buyers at SEARCH OUR BUYERS, email or call us to discuss your opportunity. It may fit an active buyer’s search criteria.

Solidify These 5 Business Fundamentals Before You Grow

Administrator January 6, 2016August 19, 2016 Preparing your Restaurant for Sale

Solidify These 5 Business Fundamentals Before You Grow

By Shindy Chen | October 29, 2015

Every company’s primary purpose is sustained growth. This may involve seeking outside investment, raising capital, or joining and/or acquiring a like-minded company with a similar product, service, or market.

But putting the cart before the horse can do more harm than good to the business and most importantly, its customers. Before getting bigger, it’s essential to ensure the following key fundamentals are in place.

People

Anyone will tell you that having the “right people” is essential to growing a company, but what does this mean, exactly? Managers who were trained to carry out responsibilities based on existing arrangements, methods, and concepts may not be ready to adapt to new models, workflows, employees, or even leadership. “Understand that some managers cannot handle growth-oriented initiatives—make sure they’re in line with the goals being sought,” according to company growth strategist Marc de Swaan Arons in Forbes Magazine.

Targeted growth training prior to expansion may be necessary to ensure managers can continue to guide and empower others. Companies can start by tapping their HR teams to develop any additional outreach or training programs required, and to ensure leaders are informed and delivering consistent messages.

Culture

With each major addition in the workforce, a company’s intrinsic culture is at risk of dilution. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like living beings, company cultures are always evolving, and any change in regards to size or process will make an impact. To help the company evolve successfully, gather high level company officials to review mission statements, workflows, key tenets of the business, and achievements. Re-stating the core principals that have gotten you this far will help you continue to uphold them as the company moves forward.

Technology

What technology tools are employees using to communicate with each other and perform their day-to-day work? Can these tools support high demand, more complex processes or a larger organization?

Just because existing tools perform basic functions doesn’t mean that they’ll be the best tools going forward. Oftentimes, company employees and leaders will already have solid ideas about what potential tools, methods, and software might be better suited to get things done. Heed their suggestions. Before integrating or adopting to new technology, be sure to test it among small groups and roll it out in small batches.

Transparency

Employees and customers at every level share a certain level of anxiety when they learn that a company is expanding, merging with another, or being acquired. Don’t blindside employees — be sure to deliver timely internal messages regarding fundraising or a merger or acquisition.

For customers, it’s essential to detail the benefits of upcoming developments and , and whether anything, especially their experience, will change on their end.

Structure

Are the company’s departments set up for expansion? According to a McKinsey and Company report, “Well-defined organizational structures establish the roles and norms that enable large companies to get things done. Therefore, when growth plans call for doing things that are entirely new — say, expanding into new geographies or adding products — it’s well worth the leadership’s time to examine existing organizational structures to see if they’re flexible enough to support the new initiatives.”

A traditional retailer may choose to operate a new subset of outlet stores with management at arm’s length for maximize efficiency and autonomy. A product company that has typically used an executive panel to approve new products may find this model unscalable with an influx of new products and innovation. Thus it’s necessary to evaluate what processes can feasibly carry the business forward.

Company leaders are responsible for performing not only a thorough SWOT analysis but also evaluating the above qualitative components before getting bigger — or risk internal disorganization and pushback. Each company is different and has its unique growth drivers, but these solid principles will help address the basics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NAME: Shindy Chen

Shindy Chen is the founder of Scribe, a content consultancy. She curates, writes, and edits for clients in the finance and tech industries. She also contributes to The Huffington Post and is author of The Credit Cleanup Book (Praeger). She was previously a Vice President in consumer lending at Wachovia Bank, and worked in financial broadcast media at CNBC and Bloomberg TV.

For further information, contact us

Megabite Restaurant Brokers, LLC
Phone: (817) 467-2161
www.megabite-rb.com

Search our buyers at SEARCH OUR BUYERS, email or call us to discuss your opportunity. It may fit an active buyer’s search criteria.

How to Implement Digital Marketing Strategies That Work

Administrator December 31, 2015September 22, 2016 General

How to Implement Digital Marketing Strategies That Work

By Karen Sibayan | November 10, 2015

Digital marketing is an increasingly important tool in cultivating business relationships. Capital providers and investment banks today are using different digital tools to manage both existing and prospective contacts.

At Axial Concord 2015, panelists discussed the advantages and challenges of using digital media as a way to stay in front of their constituents, make new connections, and increase deal flow.

They provided a few techniques on how to use digital media efficiently and avoid the pitfalls of blasting out irrelevant messages to one’s audience.

A Tailored Approach

Competition for attention in today’s atmosphere is increasingly fierce. This is particularly true for “private equity sponsors, who may have a tough time differentiating themselves,” says Eric Mattson, principal at Excellere, a lower middle market private equity fund. “We all have capital and it’s all the same color, so it’s important to be able to communicate other points of distinction.”

One way to be a more effective digital marketer is to target messages to a specific audience. Valerio Forte, head of business development at global private equity investment firm H.I.G. Capital, says that they are devising ways to reach out to smaller firms. “We understand there’s a certain number of companies who may not travel as much to conferences,” he says. “We are trying to tailor an outreach to these smaller organizations so they are aware of what H.I.G. is doing and where we can work together.”

Don’t Be Passive

Being proactive is necessary to avoid roadblocks in a company’s digital efforts, including becoming irrelevant to a firm’s constituencies. Being thoughtful about outreach — rather than blasting random messages to an entire subscriber base — helps to keep audiences engaged.

“We put a lot of thought into what we communicate to each particular audience,” says Mattson. “For example, if we’re sending a message about our interest in investing in clinician services, we target M&A advisors in the healthcare space. If we just blasted everyone in our database, the non-healthcare advisors may not pay attention to our next message, which could be non-healthcare related. We certainly don’t want our messages being ignored.”

Using undifferentiated techniques is much less likely to get the point across to the desired targets. “A passive banner ad that appears on a website is not likely to drive the right type of deal flow — it might even be more of a distraction,” says Joe Burkhart, a managing director at debt fund Saratoga Investment Corp., which targets deal sizes that are between $5 million and $25 million. “What you want is to focus on the relationships that actually matter instead of relying on the likelihood of a referral from a banner ad. The sales and marketing approach should be very targeted.”

Content Marketing

Generic digital messages are not the answer. Neither is relying on outside sources for material as effective in developing relationships for one’s business. “I think content marketing can be a very powerful tool to establish brand and expertise,” Burkhart says. “If I write an article like the one I did recently on Axial Forum, about the technology and software I use every day — that content is hopefully helping others and our brand is recognized and associated with that assistance.”

Most people don’t generate their own social media content, says Burkhart. Being one of the few to do so “helps in building a personal brand.” Achieving recognition on a company level requires additional time and resources. “Companies have to commit to producing their own content on a recurring basis, or else it’s a waste because the consumers of media demand consistency.”

Identifying your audience is a good first step. If you have multiple audiences, decide whether you want to create separate channels for each one or focus on one primary group.

“Our digital strategy leverages our industry thesis approach,” says Mattson. “So the most important thing that we do is to provide drilled-down information about who we are as quickly and clearly as we can, especially in an environment where attention spans are short.”

Next, establish your target channels — you might focus on creating a blog, sending out a monthly newsletter, or building out your firm’s presence on LinkedIn.

Finally, establish a regular cadence for posting new content. If possible, task someone on your team with managing the content marketing function. Even if everyone in the company contributes, having one person responsible for execution will add a layer of accountability that will lead to better results.

Audiences today are inundated with information from a range of sources. “I receive more than 20 eblast messages a day — mostly in the form of newsletters — from competitors, capital and other services providers, and intermediaries. Unless they instantly catch my attention with a relevant topic, they go unread,” Mattson says. “That is a cautionary, but real-world cue for companies to be thoughtful about their digital strategy.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NAME: Karen Sibayan

Karen Sibayan is a New York City-based journalist and communication specialist. Karen writes on a variety of finance subjects including M&A, private equity, leveraged finance, and other forms of company financing. Her twitter handle is @trackingfinance.

Five mistakes that could make it impossible for you to sell your business

Administrator December 24, 2015December 31, 2015 Preparing your Restaurant for Sale

Five mistakes that could make it impossible for you to sell your business

BY: JACOLINE LOEWEN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Growing a business into a going concern can take years. Yet the strategies, relationships and the legal contracts that were critical to developing the business can turn into skeletons in the closet when it comes time to sell.The gap in differing views between buyers and sellers is interesting. Yes, there is the sale price and value an owner thinks the company is worth, and there is the final sale price. There are also features that sellers think are a priority during the sale process, but buyers don’t. Sellers think their product or services are the highlight of the business overview, for example, yet it is the legal areas that are often the first area to be explored by the buyer’s team at the start of the due diligence process.Each company is a unique situation. However, owners can gain a general understanding of the critical legal issues that will, at the least, lower the selling price or, worst of all, cripple and end the sale of a business:

1. Fuzzy ownership of intellectual properties can be a sinkhole. IP legal contracts apply to the work created by internal employees, but don’t forget to include the external and independent consultants’ work. Jim Balsillie spoke recently at the Empire Club in Toronto with Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, two Globe and Mail journalists who wrote about the fall of BlackBerry (formally RIM) in Losing the Signal. Balsillie’s big takeaway is that the failure to secure intellectual property will be the critical downfall to a Canadian company’s value, and he shared how much it hurt Blackberry behind the scenes as well as publicly.

2. A lack of shareholder agreements with minority owners that permit majority shareholders to force a sale will be an issue. Often, the minority shareholders could prevent a sale and this will take up time and resources to resolve.

3. Share issuance to outsiders – such as former employees and advisers who are no longer on the scene and difficult to contact – will make the buyer concerned that they will not be able to buy the whole company. For startup technology firms in particular, it pays to have contracts to advisers and early employees done by lawyers who know the issues that can occur years into the future. Employees can be forced to sell shares upon leaving the company.

4. Former employees bearing a grudge may see the sale as the time to make their case public. Also, with online forums that encourage people to “Rate my Employer” former employees can make all sorts of claims. One company that placed advertising globally had just one bad comment on an online rating forum, questioning if the business was running a scam. This went unaddressed but was picked up during a simple Google search, raising just enough of a red flag and the buyer walked.

5. Real estate assets being mixed in with the holding company. When it comes time to sell the business, perhaps the real estate is not to be part of the sale. Instead, a common strategy is to keep ownership of the real estate. Sometimes the new owner might even lease the real estate, but a lack of separation of the real estate from the holding company will make this difficult to do.

Facing up to these five legal challenges will keep the buyer happy and interested in closing the deal. The seller will be confident that the ownership is clearly defined and the control of the company can be handed over to the buyers properly. Early identification of these issues will mitigate their impact and give the opportunity to improve the sale process. Long standing exit preparation such as these five legal points will make the owner look professional and the sale price not so high after all.

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