Using Interns

May 18, 2019

by a searcher from University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School in Eugene, OR, USA

Has anyone had success using remote interns? Also, has anyone had the interns call the target companies to identify if the owner is willing to sell and gather info?

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Reply by a searcher
from The University of Texas at Austin in Fort Worth, TX, USA

Same, we had great success with remote interns that were undergrad students. You need to balance what activities they can reasonably accomplish with the risk to you if they fail, while still giving them some activities that are interesting and where they can learn and grow. Based on that, we had them focus at the top of the funnel. As Matt said, putting them on the phone with targets might be a bit too risky, depending on how qualified your leads are when you get them on the phone (we did cold emails, but never cold calls, so calling was further down the funnel).

We used interns primarily for new niche/industry research, building lists of leads in those niches, and finally doing first-pass CIM reviews from brokers. It's a little ethically grey (as it's probably intended for educational use), but students typically have access to research tools through their school that you'd have to pay a lot to access: things like IBIS reports, analyst reports, etc., so that could be very helpful as well.

Reply by a searcher
from University of Akron in Raleigh, NC, USA

I would imagine that with regular communication and a very clear weekly target/metric for compiling targets/research remote interns could work. Ideally, I hope to have a hybrid approach where some days we can work face to face and others they can work from home to drive more focus. However, I would be very hesitant to trust an intern to make phone calls to prospective companies. The initial conversation with any prospect is critical and you never know what questions they'll ask or where the conversation may go. Probably not a situation you'd want to put an intern in.

Perhaps there is a scenario where maybe a more seasoned intern could reach out solely for the purpose of letting the seller know someone at the firm would like to discuss their business and their openness to selling it and that they're calling to set up a call to discuss further. But even then, they may get probed with questions and if unable to answer will potentially frustrate the seller.

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