GRAPH Papers® Commercial Diligence Best Practices

Home   |   GRAPH Papers®   |   Topics

Customer Research

Authors
Topic: Customer Research
Search
057

Taking Price Seriously in Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) Mandates

By Jeff Merkle

Using pricing as a lever is massively powerful, yet pricing is an often overlooked and underappreciated part of diligence. Several years back, one of the large corporate finance consultancies did some modeling using income statements from the top 1000 firms – they found that a 1% increase in average price with an “inelastic” customer base (i.e., no resulting change in demand) resulted in a…
055

De-risking and Leveraging Brand Equity Ownership in Commercial Due Diligence

By Jeff Merkle

In Commercial Due Diligence, it’s often the assumption that customer relationships are an “asset” of the business, but that’s not always the case. The reality is that for many businesses, the quality and stability of customer relationships are owned by account representatives (and possibly only a few reps) – who walk out the door with those assets every night, and who (for the right…
003

Leading the Witness

By James Tetherton

Today’s note is a simple – but important – reminder. It’s the old-fashioned echo-chamber: driven by the desire to prove a thesis, over-eager diligence professionals draw confirmatory conclusions by leading the witness.

Search