Vet & Value Companies
Welcome to week 3 of Tupelo’s 8-week blog and video series on AI for Business Brokering! The third step of business brokering, is vetting and valuing companies.
AI for Business Brokering: Week 3 - Vet & Value Companies
Most business owners don’t really know what their business is worth—and not every business is sellable. Owners need to grasp their company’s value early and fast. Setting the right expectations—whether it’s about the sale price or the time it’ll take to find a buyer—is crucial. This is where technology can step into help. It equips advisors with the tools to quickly gauge a business’s value and determine if it fits the firm’s criteria, cutting down on guesswork and saving time.
Goal: Showcase outreach tools that business brokers and M&A advisors can use to analyze prospective sellers
Nine tools that you can use to vet or value prospective companies:
Research
Advisors can use the following AI-powered tools to gather industry insights and quickly research prospects and their companies before reaching out. This ensures they are well-informed, making their interactions more effective and targeted.
1. Professional Market Analysis
Professional Market Analysis, powered by ChatGPT, generates market research reports in seconds. Users simply specify their research topic, define the target market, list desired data points, and set the timeframe for the data. The AI handles the rest, delivering comprehensive insights quickly and efficiently.
Pricing:
$20 per month
Key features:
- Highly knowledgeable and quick research team
- Highlights key industry-specific areas, providing insights on where to ask prospects questions, demonstrating industry expertise
Considerations:
- Generated data should be fact-checked
- May produce generic results
2. Aomni
Aomni leverages AI to search for relevant data and generate valuable insights on your prospects. With Aomni, business teams gain the crucial information they need to close deals faster, ensuring they are always prepared and informed.
Pricing:
$10 + per month
Key features:
- Scrapes the web to find data
- Delivers valuable insights on prospects prior to you speaking with them
Considerations:
- The prospect and/or their company needs to be active digitally to find information
3. Crystal Knows
Crystal Knows is an AI-powered tool that scrapes the internet to identify the natural personality of any prospect. The AI aims to understand how they behave, communicate, and make decisions, helping you know your prospect before speaking with them.
Pricing:
$0 - $49 per month
Key features:
- Efficiently scrapes the internet to determine the prospect’s persona
Considerations:
- The prospect needs to be active digitally to find information
- How a person writes may not necessarily reflect how they speak
4. Otter.ai
Otter.ai automatically records your meetings and creates notes and summaries with action items. Otter.ai allows you to solely focus on your customer.
Pricing:
$0 - $8.23 per month
Key features:
- Automatically records your meetings
- AI-powered note-taking
- AI-generated summaries with action items
Considerations:
- The AI can miss pieces of the conversation
- Some interviewees do you want to be recorded
- AI systems can have inherent biases, which might affect how notes are interpreted and summarized
5. Fathom
Fathom records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes your meetings so you can focus on the conversation.
Pricing:
$0 - $15 per month
Key features:
- Automatically records your meetings
- AI-powered note-taking
- AI-generated summaries with action items
Considerations:
- The AI can miss pieces of the conversation
- Some interviewees do you want to be recorded
- AI systems can have inherent biases, which might affect how notes are interpreted and summarized
Valuation
Valuing a business is a crucial part of the brokering process. Brokers often begin with an opinion of value, typically using the market approach when first engaging a potential seller. AI-powered tools streamline this process by enabling brokers to quickly generate accurate, market-based valuations. This efficiency allows brokers to focus on broader engagement topics and move more swiftly to listing agreements, ultimately speeding up the entire transaction process.
6. Company Valuation
Company Valuation generates valuations with traditional finance methods. Simply input details about the company you wish to value, ie. industry, location, size, key metrics like adjusted EBITDA (SDE), revenue, EBITDA, etc. and the AI will take a first pass.
Pricing:
$20 per month per user
Key features:
- Quickly understand valuation rages for specific industries
- Identify value drivers
Considerations:
- Some industries the AI does not perform well on
- The output is not a holistic valuation
- The AI is limited really to the market approach
7. Perplexity
Perplexity.ai is a web-based AI platform designed to answer questions and provide information by using natural language processing. It is similar to AI-driven search engines and conversational agents, aiming to give users quick and accurate responses to their queries.
Pricing:
Free +
Key features:
- AI search engine
- Includes references and sources for transparency
Considerations:
- Writing style is not as eloquent as other language models
- Training set is not 100% accurate as the majority of its respones are generated from internet searches
AI Bots
The speed at which you respond can be the difference between winning or losing a deal. It's surprising how many overlook the importance of being available when a potential client reaches out. AI chatbots can change the game by moving prospects seamlessly from inquiry to the next step, improving the customer experience. Being responsive is a strategic advantage.
8. Botsonic
Botsonic is an AI-powered chatbot designed to integrate directly into your website, learning from your data to handle customer inquiries automatically. It enhances customer engagement, support, and sales by responding to questions based on the information you provide.
Pricing:
$16 - $40.83 per month
Key features:
- AI chatbot that lives on your site, trained with your specific data
- Responds to customer queries using the information you supply
Considerations:
- Oversight of bot responses is retroactive
- Limited control over the AI's interactions with customers
9. Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a platform that enables businesses to create AI-powered chatbots that can be integrated into websites, social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, and other digital channels. These chatbots are designed to automate customer interactions by responding to inquiries, providing support, and enhancing sales and engagement based on the data and rules set by the business.
Pricing:
$19.99 per month
Key features:
- AI chatbot that lives on your website and social media platforms, trained with your specific data
- Responds to customer queries using the information you supply
Considerations:
- Oversight of bot responses is retroactive
- Limited control over the AI's interactions with customers