01732 759725 40 INTERVIEW long lunches. We do do that, but that's less than half the deal. That is what we call the fun bit. The real work starts once you've agreed the terms of the deal and take that company through a whole process of due diligence, a whole process of legal document execution. The feedback we get from our clients once that’s over is that they completely underestimated the work required and the work that we do during that period to finish the deal, as opposed to just getting a nice number for them. TR: You're obviously well known in the telecoms and IT space. Is that still where you focus? AZ: It is. We do pick up other types of deals just through word of mouth and recommendation. But that's the sector we know. The reason that's important, other than our clients not having to educate us, is that we know what they do, we know their products and services, and we know the key metrics. TR: What recent transactions are you most proud of and why? AZ: The types of deals I get most satisfaction from personally are those involving hard-working owner-managers who have built their business from scratch, who have a plan, who know how they're going to move forwards. When you start a business, you've got nothing to lose. Once you've built a business, you've got everything to lose. It's the biggest part of your wealth and it’s all locked up. If you have a client with dreams and aspirations that you can help realise by selling their business, it’s amazingly satisfying. We generally stay in touch with clients and to hear what they're doing is probably the most satisfying part of the job, rather than just working on a superblockbuster deal. TR: Have the expectations of your clients changed much in the last 15 years. And if so, in what ways? AZ: No, it's a very, very personal thing. It's a privilege and a great responsibility to work on a life-changing process and transaction with one of our clients, and people react differently. It's generally stressful and emotional to one degree or another and during the heat of a deal you get to know people really well. At those times, I generally speak to my clients more than I do to my own family. TR: What are your priorities for 2024? AZ: We’re still investing in the company, investing in people, trying to get out to meet as many people as we can to grow our business. In terms of our hopes for 2024, clearly, we're expecting government change and the uncertainty that that brings. We'd love to see interest rates fall, because that is generally good for the economy and good for deals. Transaction activity has mainly been driven by private equity and the huge investment they’ve made in this sector. The number of buy and builders or acquirers that we're seeing is still at an all-time high and in order to maintain confidence, we need the private equity guys to make money. We're hoping that some of the big consolidators are going to either sell or flip onto new investors so that some of the PE institutions that have invested in the sector see a good return on their money. That itself will drive confidence. It will drive deals and it will drive value for everybody. www.knightcf.com We don't have the luxury of recurring revenue in our business and we weren't sure we would be able to sell it, so we were pretty flattered when we got the approach. We negotiated a deal the same way we do for our clients. That side of it was normal – although we did experience the emotions that our clients do, which clearly we hadn't done before. The interesting thing for me has been working in a larger organisation again, but at a high level; seeing the machinations has been good. The other interesting thing is that K3 was listed on the stock market and the stock market has not moved over the last couple of years, generally, not because of companies’ performance, but because of macro factors. That resulted in a private equity buyout of the entire business earlier this year. To live through that again, sitting in the seat of my clients, was quite interesting. From our perspective, they're great people. We're still doing what we love to do. We're still growing. So, it's been good. TR: It's interesting to see things from the other side of the fence. Are there any lessons you've learned from that experience? AZ: We tried to follow our own advice. We weren't as prepared as we tell our clients to be, but we came up to speed pretty fast. And that really is the key: to be prepared. Our business is simple, so it wasn't so hard. What people think we do and what we actually do are two different things and the perceptions our clients have of us at the beginning compared to what they have of us at the end is quite interesting. People think we go out, we create a lot of noise and competition for our clients, we get a great price, we negotiate a deal and then we go off and drink champagne and have ...continued See a video of the interview in full at www.technologyreseller.uk
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