300 - The Devil Is In The Details!

0:00The devil is in the details. That's a saying that you hear every once in a while. And I want to give you an example of that with a member of the VIP Mastermind who will remain unnamed, but both he and I thought that this was an important lesson that you could learn from. So I wanted to pass it on, and he wanted to pass it on. So I put together a course, the Acquisition Advantage Boot Camp. I do group coaching, and I do the VIP Mastermind. And the reason for that is that it's important to know the steps and how to do them and what to do. I think that I'm pretty clear on that. But really what I think isn't as important as is the message that I've delivered received correctly from the person I'm sending it to.

0:48Now, with respect to fees, I say that what you want to get is discounted enrolled fees with a small premium for completed transactions. If you're talking to lawyers, you can use the word success and failure. If you're talking to accounting firms, you don't want to use those firms because you'll run into problems with them saying, well, we have to be objective so we can't work on a contingent basis, et cetera, et cetera. But I get an email from him that says, with respect to a law firm, that he's got 100 % discount in rolled fees and a 10 % premium on fees that are completed. Okay, that's good.

1:33There's one word in there that I should have asked more about, and that is the discounted and rolled fees. When he said 100 % discount, that would mean that there are no roll fees, right? 100 % discount, there's nothing to roll. You just, if you have a non-completed transaction, that bill is taken and thrown away. But I missed that, or at least I wasn't clear on pointing that out. We did have several discussions where he said, well, you know, one of the things that upset me was that they asked for a retainer, and they also asked that I pay them for work outside the acquisition process. And I told him that was totally normal to pay them outside the acquisition process for work, like in corporation or something like that, that they did.

2:31However, just say no on the retainer of$10 ,000, that you don't pay that. And if they're worried about that, they really don't see the scope of what we're doing here. So he said, okay. So we talked a couple more times. And I said to him, the important thing is 100 % discount on noncompleted transactions and the 10 % premium on successful transactions. So I don't read emails from people who are not in the VIP Mastermind, but I do for those that are in the VIP Mastermind. So I get the engagement letter. But I had said to him, if you're comfortable with this firm and your board's comfortable with this firm, the best way in terms of getting rid of that retainer is if you're okay with the other firms, 100 % discount unfailed and 110%, Tell them that you are okay with the rest of the terms except for the retainer, and if they can remove the retainer of$10 ,000, then this business is yours.

3:36And so he did that.

3:42He got back an engagement letter. He sent that to me, and I read it. And what it said was nothing about 100 % discount, unfortunately, and that the successful transactions would be billed at 110. And if there was an unsuccessful or noncompleted transaction, those fees would be moved and paid also at 110 % premium. So one of the things that I say to people is that it's really helpful to get a math example of a successful fee, unsuccessful fee, if you're talking to accountants, completed or non-completed transactions. If we had that, we would have seen, no, no, no, no, you don't just charge 110%, and in fact there's non-completed, and there's no discount at all.

4:39So we would have been clear on that. So a couple lessons in this. One, the devil is in the details. Be sure that when you're communicating, and this goes to me, that you do the message sent, confirm it's received, and confirm it's understood. And I missed the boat on the word rolled in there and was focused more on the 100 % discount. Why? Doesn't matter really, but that was on me. On him, it is better to understand what exactly, when you said 100 % discount, what was being 100 % discount, because in reality nothing was, and to remember to ask for a math example. So again, know what to do, know how to do it.

5:29The beauty and experience of the board as well as my experience will help eliminate a lot of these problems. Still, you will make mistakes. You will fail your way to success. None of these are fatal in terms of their outcome. Again, this is an agreement which is non-exclusive. so he doesn't have to use this agreement if he doesn't want to use this agreement. I would not encourage you to sign an exclusive agreement with somebody who you don't even know and haven't worked with. So I hope that's helpful. If you are wondering what scripts to use, there's a free course I put together with templates.

6:12Just go over to brucewhipple.com and sign up for the free course as well. The boot camp, you'll see that over on brucewhipple.com. If you want to go directly to those templates, just brucewhipple.com forward slash free course. But remember, use your board. The devil is in the details. Use math examples, particularly with the professionals. And I learned an important lesson as well. We may think that we have communicated effectively, but confirm. I sent the message. Was it understood by the other person? and confirm that. And that will save a lot of problems in the future. We may think we've said something clearly, but did we really say it and was it understood is super important.