WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

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Nick Donato: Folks, hello. Welcome to the show where we will be showing you how you can moneyball your private equity deal sourcing. Or, if I were to put that in a different way, what we want to show you is how you can really just work less hard for better deals by taking a data analytics approach to your pipeline. And we want to tackle this subject because we’re seeing a lot of private equity firms who are able to review more deals annually at the firm. But too few GPs are using data points hidden inside of their own pipeline, as well as metrics like the sell-side process index, which we’ll get into in a bit, to make all of that work easier. So it’s not just the deal flow quantity improving, but we want to show you how to also improve that deal flow quality without stressing yourself out. More on all of that in a bit.

First allow me to quickly introduce myself and breeze through some quick housekeeping. I’m Nick Donato. I’m an industry specialist here at Navatar, which is a cloud software provider for the private funds marketplace. I will be your moderator, and I’m going to do my best to keep things short. We’ll reserve some time at the end for your questions. To submit them, just use that “Go to Webinar” widget that should be on your screen there. And also, because this comes up a lot, yes, a recording of today’s broadcast will be made available to everyone. Just look for that in your inbox in the coming days.

And before I introduce you to our main presenter, allow me to give you the quick background on Navatar. We are considered the premier cloud software provider in the private equity and wider private capital market space. We have over 600 customers across 35 countries. Essentially, what we do is we offer you a platform that makes it easier to manage your investors, your deals, and your portfolio. So in the context of deal sourcing, the theme of today’s webinar, what we do is we offer you a way to boost deal flow and pinpoint which intermediaries are providing you the best deals. So that way you’re keeping your own firm visible to that seller, so that you’re always earning ? The most promising investment opportunities. In fact, if you go to NavatarGroup.com, you can see what some of those tools look like and hear from our clients. One of whom provided testimony that Navatar had led to a 400% increase in deals reviewed annually at his firm.

So that being said, I’m now excited to be introducing you to our main speaker, Nadim Malik. Nadim is considered a data guru in the industry and is the founder of Sutton Place Strategies, which is a data and analytics provider for deal makers. So, Nadim, can you give us more background on you and your firm?

Nadim Malik: Yes. Thank you, Nick, for having me. I’m really excited to be here. Just to build upon what you’ve said, we are indeed a data and technology company that focuses specifically on working with private equity firms, lenders, and M&A advisors and service providers, to optimize their business development and deal flow. We’ve been around since 2009, have worked with over 100 firms. And actually, before starting the company, I was a business development professional for a private equity firm for six years, but with a very data orientation, not the relationship person. My background before then is with Thomson Reuters to help them build some financial information products and databases. And, Nick, it was really the synthesis of those two experiences, financial data and information, and what was most critical for deal sourcing, that led to the genesis of Sutton Place Strategies in 2009, where we saw a real opportunity to apply data and analytics to deal sourcing to improve, given how critical it is then, and even more critical now. All we focus on, we’re very niche. We feel like we have our pulse on that marketing, deal sourcing, private equity. And I look forward to sharing some of the stats and takeaways that we’ve learned over the years on the panel.

Nick Donato: Thanks, Nadim. And so you and I were sharing a coffee together and we were talking about this presentation and how we wanted to frame it. And one of the interesting things that you had mentioned was just how much deal sourcing has evolved, really, maybe in the past five years or so. And you had this concept of a deal maker either being proactive or reactive. And I think, to set the stage here, if you could provide the audience some insight into that.

Nadim Malik: Yeah, Nick. I think to understand where we are today, it’s good to take a look at the evolution of private equity and where it started. So back when private equity was just starting out and gaining traction and picking up, the dynamic between investment bankers and private equity firms was such that private equity was a whole new asset class, and group of buyers, that they could bring to their sellers and targets then when it was time to sell a company. So just picture a widget manufacturer, medium to small-sized company, maybe there’s only five or 10 other strategic buyers that might be a good fit for it. All of a sudden, with private equity firms, there’s all these other potential investors and buyers. So, for good reason, investment bankers were very hungry and eager for their clients to spread the word and get as much penetration and reach out and identify to private equity firms.

And at that point, if you were a private equity firm, you could afford to be reactive when it came to your deal sourcing, since you were being sought after. Fast forward to today, and the pendulum has really shifted. The private equity market has grown so considerably. It now constitutes, between new platforms and add-ons, over 40% of all of M&A activity. And there were 1,500 private equity firms just last year alone, that did a deal in the US or Canada. So, for now, for a private equity firm, if they want to be in that deal flow and see the opportunities that are relevant for them, they are the ones that need to get proactive and chase the investment bank. So that pendulum has swung the other way, and you really have to be proactive today, from a deal sourcing perspective, if you’re a private equity firm.

Nick Donato: And I know that one thing, because that pendulum has shifted out of the buyer’s favor, you are offering them a tool to measure their performance and how much deal flow they’re seeing. So what I want to do now is bring up a chart. And then, Nadim, if you could walk our audience through the significance of this chart and how it relates to what you had just said.

Nadim Malik: Yes. Thanks for reminding me on that, Nick. Yeah, so I think this is a nice illustration of what I just described. This chart juxtaposes two things. That the yellow line is quarterly average deal flow that a private equity firm sees. And so it’s about 125 or so per quarter, or 130, it looks more like. So that means the typical private equity firm is seeing about 500 deals a year, roughly, give or take. And you can see that that line has been steadily increasing. Interestingly, it seems like it might have flattened out recently, but overall, the trend is clearly upward. The bars, the columns represent closed M&A and private equity activity in that same timeframe.

And, as you can tell, that has been flat, if not going down. So all this proactive nature and the importance and significance of yielding more and more deal flow, it’s being illustrated in this chart.Because you can see deal flows continue to go up and up and up, but it’s not like there’s more inventory out there. It’s not like there’s more deals getting done. And I think this can create a little bit of frustration, because a private equity firm may feel like, “Hey, our overall volume is going up and up and up, but why aren’t we getting deals done?” And that has a lot to do with the valuation challenge and where the market is today.

Nick Donato: And because this is happening and they are experiencing that frustration, is this what’s leading more private equity firms to hire dedicated business development professionals? You had mentioned that this was part of your own work history. What would you say to a business development professional, given the insights of this chart?

Nadim Malik: So how has private equity, Nick, addressed this need to be more proactive? I think the biggest thing we’ve seen over the years is the rise of the business development professional.

This is someone that spends a majority, if not all their time, sourcing deals. And yes, back when I was part of a business development team for a private equity firm 10 or so years ago, there were probably only 30 companies that had a dedicated BD person or team, and today it’s approaching half the market. So over 500 firms, according to our estimation, currently have a person or a team.

And the next wave is if you have one person, they’re starting to add more. And Nick, anecdotally, it makes a lot of sense. Traditionally, in a private equity firm, when the partners or deal professionals are also charged with sourcing deals, what inevitably happens is once they finally find that deal that’s gotten to a later stage under exclusivity, they go into the “deal bunker.” And they could stay there for six weeks, three months, maybe even longer. Their life is all about closing that deal, and for good reason. And then, maybe the deal closed, maybe it didn’t. They come up for air, and they look for that next deal.

And during that three-month period, or however long it was, they weren’t proactively reaching out. Forget proactively reaching out, they might’ve not even have the opportunity to respond to inbound deal flow in a good manner. So in that same scenario, having a dedicated BD person or team allows you to even out that ebb and flow, and they can respond to those type of inbound flow, form relationships with new intermediaries as they’re coming up, and not only plant seeds for today, but for many years around their deal flow and pipeline. So, anecdotally, intuitively, it makes sense. And it’s also starting to show up in the stats, in the market coverage.

So according to our most recent deal, a benchmark analysis that came out in September, if you look at our seven peer groups, and the peer groups are such as sector-focused, upper middle market, etcetera. While only half or less of our clients have a dedicated BD person or team, which is a reflection of today’s market, each best in class performer, in each of our seven peer groups, actually had a dedicated BD person or team. So it’s definitely translating into better coverage and better deal sourcing, if you have a business development professional.

Nick Donato: And just as an aside, how has that role evolved in terms of their position within the company culture? Have they been elevated in status?

Nadim Malik: They have, Nick, over the years. Initially… And it’s happened… I guess nothing happens overnight, it has taken 10 years or so or whatever. But I think it started out with some uncertainty. There were just a handful of firms where deal sourcing was just embedded in their culture, in their senior partners. Maybe they had a marketing background and they identified it. And other than those handful of firms, it was kind of marginalized. You didn’t want to get away from deal execution. That was where the real power of private equity lied, not in deal sourcing. But it’s changed a lot.

And I would say the biggest changes occurred to the point where a couple of years ago, a business development professional, I’m sure many people know, Ted Kramer of Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney actually got elevated to CEO of the firm, rising the ranks from a business development professional over 11 or 12 years. So, it’s definitely evolved in importance, in significance, and in the role that they can play within the firm.

Nick Donato: And I know that we’re going to get into this more heavily in just a bit, but I think one of the important points I’ve heard you make is that technology has underpinned a lot of the forces behind this evolution. Could you expound upon that?

Nadim Malik: Yeah, you know, Nick, we’re at a point in the world where technology… It’s rare that technology hasn’t impacted or changed or transformed, typically for the better, most industries. I would have to say private equity has been a little bit of a slow adopter here, but I will point out three technological trends that we’ve seen over the last decade.

And the first is the CRM, which you know well. Not too many firms today are keeping their pipeline in Excel or Access or using… Trying to put something together in that format and have migrated to a more sophisticated CRM platform, which is not only great… The metaphor I like to use is, a good CRM is like a good sixth man for a basketball team. It tells you where to go, it gives you reminders, it allows you to prioritize, it gives you great reporting and analytical ability for your LPs. So, that’s the first trend in terms of technology in business development.

The second trend I wanted to mention was online marketplaces. These are exchanges or marketplaces, firms like Axio and PE-Nexus, which can bring buyers and sellers together in an efficient manner, use technology, and that could be an efficient way to see different opportunities as well.

And then the third category of technology are firms such as Sutton Place Strategies, where we have built a purpose-built technology on top of some data, purely to help private equity firms improve their deal flow, which we think will improve their fund performance. And a mobile app and all sorts of algorithms that can help them optimize and improve their deal sourcing.

Nick Donato: Yeah. And this, I think, takes us to really what’s the larger point in all of this. You need to use this technology if you’re going to take a data and analytics approach. That no longer is the BD professional, despite their rise in stature, wholly a relationship driven profession. That you’ve got to have some numbers to back up your claims and your value-add. If you could talk about that.

Nadim Malik: Yeah. Technology is very closely related to data and analytics. And you know, Nick, anything mission critical to a company, to a project, any endeavor, anything mission critical to that endeavor is going to get measured. There’s going to be a lot of light shed on using data and analytics, and for good reason. And the metaphor I like to use is… Actually, before I go into that metaphor, where I was going with that point is, private equity deal sourcing has evolved in significance to the point where it is mission critical to the firm, and data and analytics is going to play a key part and a growing part.

And a good metaphor to use is baseball, like the moneyball concept in the title of our webinar. Today, think about the advantage one team has on another that is deploying cutting-edge data and statistics and analysis as part of their strategy versus the team that’s not. And it’s crazy to even think about that today, but it wasn’t even common until about 10 or 15 years ago. And the same is, I think, going to come true of deal sourcing, and it has come true. And it’s even going to get more and more sophisticated, in terms of using data and analytics to give yourself that edge against your competition.

Nick Donato: Well, thank you for setting the stage here, about the evolution of deal sourcing and what led to this concept of moneyball, as you just mentioned. Let’s get into the weeds, then. So, we are mentioning that you need to use data, you need to use analytics. How exactly is the time-strapped analyst going to use this data and these different metrics to make their work life easier?

Nadim Malik: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So what I wanted to do to illustrate that, Nick, is to walk through some metrics that we put together for our clients on an annual basis. We call it the “Deal Origination Benchmark Report.” The acronym is DOBR. Try to get it to roll off your tongue. So this is an opportunity once a year. This just came out in the September timeframe to all our clients that qualify to be included, that meet our data integrity threshold. And in the past year, this analysis, which I’m going to walk you through, consists of 129 different private equity firms that qualified. And so I just want to walk through a few of the ways that we can offer private equity firms a perspective on their deal sourcing and allow them to adjust their behavior accordingly.

So on this chart, if you look at the left side, there’s three categories. And I want to start by looking at the market coverage and deals by all intermediaries. Where it says client stats, that column, that’s just… Picture some client, his name, so you can see his different stats. And then we compare what their market coverage is. Let me just explain quickly what we mean by market coverage. That is the percentage of deals that a private equity firm saw, that met its criteria, size, sector, that were ultimately closed by a private equity firm and had a sell-side advisor involved. And if you shift over to the far right, I want to draw everyone’s attention to all sponsor stats, which includes all 129 of those firms. The median market coverage in private equity today is under 17%, in terms of the percentage of deals they saw, that in an ideal world they would have liked to have seen. If you look at the line below that, when the company was represented by a boutique advisor, that coverage drops to about 10%. So this is a common theme and takeaway in our messaging, and this panel as well, that there’s a lot of opportunity among those boutique advisors to capture share of mind. And it’s still pretty inefficient out there.

And then we have some additional line items. How well are you covering the most active intermediaries? How much have you improved in the last six months? How much have you improved in the last 12 months? And then moving on to the second bucket, and we’re going to go into a little bit more detail of this later on, but this perspective in terms of sell-side process allows our clients to see, how is their market coverage for different type of process types, of limited, moderate, or broad. And this is really interesting because it’s important for clients to know, especially with their most key relationships, yeah, when they run broad processes, it’s great that you’re on the list and you’re seeing them, but what about those instances when they run a little bit more narrow processes, where they’re not inviting so many people. Or what about the boutique advisors, in general, that maybe don’t run as many broad processes? What is my share of mind there, and should I make some adjustments?

And then finally, we have a category of macro metrics. I won’t go into each one, just a couple that resonate with clients. The number of deals seen, the deal flow, the third line item in that category. As you can see, a private equity firm on average the last time we ran this, is seeing about 448 deals per year. And we have certain clients, of course, that have 10-person BD teams and are seeing thousands of deals, and we have other clients that only need to see a little bit over 100 deals to meet their investment mandate. So it can be a pretty big range, but it’s always good to compare, especially against your peer group, how you compare in that area.

And then another one, above that, number of BD professionals. It’s very common for our clients to say, “Hey, how many do we have? How does that compare to the industry median?” and so on and so forth. So, Nick, these are some statistics that we track, this is only a small snapshot of what we provide.

We also break down market coverage by geography. Are there certain parts of the country where there’s deals getting done that you’re not being thought of, that are very relevant for you? Are there certain sectors within your focus that you have more presence in that you don’t? So these are the types of analytics that you can process, interpret, and make the necessary adjustments at more of a macro level, from time to time. And then, of course, the next step and the key is to then deploy the tactics and the raw data and the technology at your disposal to apply all of those to improve your sourcing overall.

Nick Donato: And Nadim, with respect to the market coverage, if I may, if I’m your average middle market private equity firm, what do I want that number to be? When am I starting to feel confident that I’m seeing enough of my target market for deal flow? Beause it surely wouldn’t be 100%, but how low would you… What’s the strike zone?

Nadim Malik: Nick, that is a really good question. And this might sound odd coming from a data geek such as me and such as SPS, but the reality is that sometimes you have to understand what’s behind the data, what’s behind the numbers. Sometimes people think data equals science equals complete perfection or accuracy or whatever. The reality is data, at best, is designed to tell you a message, a story that you can then act upon. So what is the perfect coverage? It really depends on the client. What is their focus? What is their sector? Maybe a 15% coverage meets their needs, if they only want to do a deal a year, or they only have a very broad mandate, opportunistic mandate. Maybe if they’re very sector-focused, it could be much higher than that. So, it really depends. And what we say is, it’s not the absolute coverage that is most critical, it’s that the trend over time should be continuing to go up. So, on a relative basis to yourself, you’re getting better and better, and continually improving.

Nick Donato: So just below that, we of course see the sell-side process index. I want to get more into that, because, really, let’s break it down. Let’s get into how to use some of this data. And if we could talk about the SPS index there. You’ve provided to me this concept of the missing middle. And which intermediaries, if you have limited hours in a day, you’re a time-strapped analyst or BD professional, which seller should I be focusing my time and attention on? And I know that you have some data to help people pinpoint who that should be.

Nadim Malik: Sure. Yes, I wanted to leave, Nick, like we discussed, four tangible tactics that people can use, if they’re not using already, immediately, to start improving their deal sourcing. So, the first of those is understand which intermediaries run more limited processes. And to help illustrate this point, Nick, if you don’t mind bringing up that intermediary lead table, just to show people a breakdown of the intermediary market, as a starting point. So, this is a perspective of the 750 plus intermediaries that did a deal, just in the last year alone, of at least $10 million or greater in enterprise value. And what we have discovered through the sell-side process index, which by the way is a algorithm that we created, that allows private equities firms to determine on a relative basis compared to their peers, what type of process an intermediary typically uses: Limited, moderate, or broad.

And what this sell-side process index reveal to us, which we launched about a year and a half ago, is that once you get past the well-established firms on the left of this chart, that are running more broad processes as expected, and the sell-side process confirmed that, the vast majority of the remaining firms are actually running more moderate or limited processes. And that makes them very, very challenging and very, very attractive to cover. Challenging, by virtue of the fact that they run limited processes, they’re not going to show it to a lot of buyers, and so how do you get in front of them. And attractive, because the biggest theme we hear today, and the biggest concern for private equity firms, is where we are in the cycle and where valuation is. And it seems to be at the high end of their historical range, and people have been saying that for a couple of years now.

So that really puts pressure on private equity firms, if that’s what they feel, to deploy capital in an efficient manner, that will meet the hurdle rates of their investors. And it’s not like a limited process will completely remove the valuation challenge that exists, but I tell you, most private equity firms will agree, it will certainly help, if you only have three or four other firms looking at a deal, in terms of competition. So takeaway number one, understand which firms run the most limited processes and treat them a little bit differently, because those are attractive opportunities.

Nick Donato: That’s right. And just bringing it to the second point too, it’s a timing issue. So reaching out to new deal sources in a timely manner.

Nadim Malik: It sounds really simple, Nick, but I can’t tell you how many firms aren’t really doing this in the proper systematic way. Let me just put some numbers behind it. In the last year alone, there were about 140 new sell-side intermediaries that sold a business for the first time in the US or Canada. Now, maybe in that same year, a similar number or less went out of business.

My point is there’s a lot of change and churn in that area, and new firms are coming up. And that’s 35 a quarter, if you break it down, that’s one every other business day. So it’s not like we’re talking about a huge volume of data or huge information, but you should have a process in place to identify those, reach out to them, add them to your contacts, form that relationship before everyone else does. You don’t wanna wait years, after they’ve already spoken to 50 or 100 different private equity firms or business development professionals, you wanna reach out to them quickly.

So it seems like a simple takeaway, but when you look at the numbers, it can really add up and create that opportunity, and constantly find new prospects and new deal flow. Many of these firms, of course, the challenge and the criticism of the newer firms, there’s no guarantee that they’ll do another deal. Right? They might be one and done. They might not… Or a deal in my market just because they did another one. And surely that’s true, but the flip side of that is many of these firms will do many more deals for your market. And there’s no way of telling which ones are which. So if it was thousands and thousands of companies that you had to mine, I could see the frustration. But given it’s a manageable number, if you’re systematic about it, it’s very important to reach out to these in a timely manner and have a system in place.

Nick Donato: Right. And speaking of new deal flow, this goes into our third best practice, is that for the deals that end up becoming broken, that you treat that as an additional data point. That that is something to utilize, because you should be regularly reaching out to these people, if you could elaborate on that.

Nadim Malik: Yeah. The third tactic I want to talk about, and I’m sure this is going to sound familiar to a lot of the people on the call today, the concept of the broken deal. And the story is, “You know, Nadim, we saw this deal three or four years ago and we weren’t the winning bidder, but we really really liked it. And we made a good impression and we hung around the hoop, and it didn’t end up closing and they came back to us and we got it done. It was one of the best deals we’ve ever done.” And I’ve heard that story many times. And then it also follows, and then I ask, “Well, do you have a way to systematically do that and follow up and try to recreate that?” and most firms don’t today. So the concept of reach… A private equity firm’s own pipeline is a treasure for potential deal opportunities.

And so what I really mean by that is, go through that pipeline, have a system in place… I mean, certainly with SPS, there’s a section in our portal where you can look at your pipeline and be alerted for new opportunities, for opportunities that you liked that didn’t end up trading, that met your criteria.

But you don’t need the SPS’ portal to do that. You can do your own research and digging and figure that out as well. And it’s really, really critical. And the reason that this is so attractive, Nick, three reasons. Number one, as a private equity firm, you’ve already done the work and the diligence, and you know that you like the company. Number two, you have probably met the management team, surely, and have a good impression there, too. And number three, you also know that price wasn’t the deciding factor to get this deal done. And those are three really compelling reasons to have a system in place, to mine your pipeline for broken deals.

Nick Donato: And then, Nadim, the fourth concept that you brought up, which I found really interesting, was just also having a data point of knowing the seller’s closing rate.

Nadim Malik: This is probably going to come as a surprise to a lot of people, but according to our work with our clients, only about 35% to 40% of deals that are seen by private equity firms, or more correctly that are actually logged, that make it to the log, end up trading, period, end up closing to anyone. So 60% to 65% of deals don’t actually get done at all. So it’s very important to know what the closing rate, what the quality of the deals, and the engagement of the seller is for different intermediaries. And that range is going to vary from firm to firm. The more established firms, their closing rate could be 70% or 80%. And for boutique brokers, they might try bringing three or four deals in a year to the market and none of them close, so it could be as low as 0%. So it’s very important to have this metric in place; know your relationships, your intermediaries, and the deals they’ve shown you. What are their closing rates? And compare within the bands.

Obviously you can’t compare a boutique firm to a Houlihan Lokey or a Harris Williams, that are going to have higher closing rates. But within each band of boutique, and mid-sized firms, and more established firms, what does the closing rate of the deals that they bring you, how does that compare to other firms in that band? And surely the ones with a higher rate, that’s going to tell you a little bit, something about the quality of the deals and the engagement of the sellers, that they typically have.

Nick Donato: Nice, Nadim. And I want to say to the audience, too, whenever the conversation is around data and analytics, these, at times, can be difficult to conceptualize or see clearly. So what I would like to do now is bring in our COO, Ketan Khandkar, who is going to help us, give some light, give a visual on some of the points that Nadim and I are making. So, Ketan, I’m going to pass this over to you. And if you could ground some of the points that we’re making, that’d be great.

[DEMO]

Nick Donato: Turning this to audience questions then, one is, how you are defining the quality of the deal?

Ketan Khandkar: That’s a good question. I think at the macro level, you do want to define the quality based on how far the deal went through your processes. And each of you probably have your own steps and milestones that you track. So a deal that got rejected in step one is obviously a bad quality deal versus a deal that went, let’s say, reached step four out of a six-step process that you have. So you do want to measure it based on how far it’s been done, and then based on each step, you can also assign weightages, to then come up with a quality rating.

Nick Donato: And, Nadim, this is one I’m going to throw in your direction. You had mentioned in the beginning of our show that the rise of the business development professional, someone is curious to hear your thoughts on where you think that profession is going in the time ahead.

Nadim Malik: Yeah. I think that’s a really good question. Nick, so I remember, as I mentioned earlier, when the announcement went out, or I found out that Ted Kramer had been promoted to the CEO of the company at a private equity firm, at Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney. And as a BD professional, as someone that’s worked with many, I’ve had a lot of friends in the industry, have seen it grow, have seen some of the challenges, and it felt like it was a really, really big win for the team and for everyone. And I do think it just makes a lot of sense. For someone with the soft skills, with the knowledge, both on the deal side, with the deal sourcing, which is becoming so critical for LP messaging. That that person, provided that the firm’s culture is right, and obviously it’s not going to be a fit everywhere, but I don’t think that’s going to be the last time we’re going to hear that.

So where do I think the evolution… I think it’s only going to become more important. I think the next wave is, if you have one person, you’re going to need additional people. And I do think… I’m not going to name any names now, but you can certainly, if you know the industry, and you know the business development professionals and firms, you can certainly pinpoint people like, “Oh man, that… He or she would make a perfect CEO of that firm.” So, I think 10 years from now, there’s going to be more examples of Ted within the industry.

Nick Donato: I’d like to get in at least one more question, and this is open to either of you. Someone is asking about the concept of ranking your intermediary relationships, how exactly that scoring works.

Nadim Malik: So, for us… Nick, I’ll address it first. There’s two components, from our perspective, and what we hear from our clients and how we treat this matter with our clients. The first is as quantitative as you can get. Are they showing deals? How many deals are they showing in your target criteria, a year? What is their closing rate? And anything else. How far are they going down the pipeline? So on and so forth.

And the ranking of the intermediaries, as much as you can get quantitatively. That’s one element. But I think there’s a second element. There’s the qualitative element, and that is you can’t really put it in numbers. The rapport, it exists. Of the rapport that you have with the intermediary, and the level of trust that you have, the years of the experience that you have. Maybe they don’t show you a lot of deals because they know exactly what you want to see, and they’re not going to waste your time with stuff. So it’s both a quantitative, with the right mix of metrics, given your strategy, and then there’s a qualitative element that’s subjective to each firm.

Nick Donato: Ketan, did you want to add to that it all?

Ketan Khandkar: No, I would concur with that. And that’s something that we also see our clients utilizing. I think from our vantage point, it’s all based on the data that they are tracking within Navatar, and how to utilize that to give similar analysis, both in terms of number of deals, but also in terms of quality of deals.

Nick Donato: Well, thanks to both of you. And that just about wraps it up for us. If we weren’t able to get your question, you can see the contact details for both myself and Nadim. Either of us would be happy to respond to your inquiries. Also, if you liked today’s webinar, I encourage you to check out NavatarGroup.com. We have a number of webinars that are focused on deal sourcing best practices, so give those a look. Enjoy the rest of your day.