Good customer due diligence firms for small deals?

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July 27, 2021

by a searcher in Denver, CO, USA

Hey all -

Wondering if anyone has had good experience with outsourcing customer calls in DD for SMB deals. In past lives I've used some larger firms but don't want to pay $50K for this exercise. In most cases I'd do the calls but this situation likely calls for a third party relative to some of the cover it provides.

Cheers!

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commentor profile
Reply by an intermediary
from Arizona State University in Long Beach, CA, USA
I have had prior transactions where we got the Buyer and Seller to agree on a process that they'd handle themselves. In one case, the Seller made "goodwill calls" to a random list of customers chosen by the buyer, with the buyer listening in on the call to see if there were any red flags. In another situation, the Seller emailed out a customer service survey that was pre-approved by the Buyer and both parties had full transparency with all the results. Of course, none of these methods are 100% foolproof, but provided adequate assurance to the Buyer and/or investors to move forward in a cost-effective manner. The Seller was comfortable with the fact that confidentiality was still being maintained.
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Reply by a searcher
from Northwestern University in Hamburg, Germany
Are there student run consultancies in the U.S.? Undergrad as well as MBA?
In Germany the better business schools usually have these and they should be evry good for making structured due diligence calls and also producing the slide deck if you give them enough guidance and structure

They can always cover these calls as "research projects"...
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