Today’s newsletter is written by our own Michael J. McGovern.

"Seller psychology is everything... Billion dollar deals [on Wall Street] are 90% math... and only 10% around psychology... But $1-5 million deals are 90% psychology." -Carl Allen, Dealmaker Wealth Society & Business Acquisition Summit Keynote Speaker

I love that quote from Carl because whether you're trying to close a client, sell a product, or acquire a small(ish) business from an owner...

The person on the other side of the table is always making more of an emotional decision than a logical one. So, if you don't understand their psychology at a deep level, you're flying blind.

So, where do you start?

Today, I want to share with you one of the most powerful exercises I use in my own marketing — and I believe it can be a game-changer for you, too:

In the art & science of direct-response marketing, we have a tool called a Client Avatar (sometimes called a buyer persona or customer profile).

On the surface, it sounds simple enough — you build a profile of your ideal customer… but what I'm talking is something that goes far beyond basic demographics like "Male, 45, household income $150K."

Something like that is a start… but it's not going to help you close a deal or write a piece of sales copy that makes someone stop scrolling and reach for their wallet or book a call.

I'm talking about:

THAT is the level of insight that separates average marketers and dealmakers from the ones who seem to close everything they touch.

Now, if you’re thinking: "Michael, I'm not a marketer or expert copywriter; I'm trying to buy businesses. So, why do I need a client avatar?"

Here's my answer: Because you need it for both sides of your business.

Side 1: Understanding the Seller

When you're approaching a business owner about acquiring their company, you're navigating a deeply personal, deeply emotional decision for that owner.

This business is their baby, identity, legacy, and retirement plan. If you show up focused purely on EBITDA multiples and deal structure, you're missing 90% of what actually matters to them.

What are their deepest fears about selling?

If you can understand those fears, you can address them directly — in your outreach letters, in your conversations, and in how you structure the deal itself.

Side 2: Understanding the Customers You'll Inherit (or Attract)

Once you acquire a business, you become responsible for its marketing, its messaging, and its customer relationships.

The fastest path to growing that business — and increasing its value for a future exit — is to understand the end customer at a level your competitors simply don't. The client avatar gives you that edge.

Most people stop at the surface when trying to understand their audience. They'll identify age, income, job title, and maybe a few pain points, but the real gold is buried much deeper.

If I create a client avatar — whether for a marketing campaign or to prepare for an acquisition conversation — I want to work through layers that most people never think to explore.

Let me give some examples of some of the most important ones:

Every prospect has a surface-level complaint and a deeper, underlying problem.

The surface complaint is what they'll tell you in a meeting, but the core problem is what they think about when they can't sleep.

For a business owner you're trying to buy from, the surface complaint might be "I'm tired and ready to retire."

But the core problem? It might be: "I've spent 30 years building this and I'm terrified it will all disappear the moment I hand over the keys."

Those are two very different things, and they require two very different approaches.

Fear is one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior.

In the client avatar process, we identify the top 5 fears my prospect is carrying around, and we don't just name them — we write out how each fear manifests in their daily life, their relationships, and their decision-making.

When you understand someone's fears at this level, you can do something remarkable: you can preemptively address those fears before they ever become objections.

In a sales conversation, this is enormously powerful, and in a deal negotiation, it's almost unfair.

Here's one that almost nobody thinks about: what has your prospect already tried that didn't work?

If you're selling a marketing service, your ideal client has probably already tried hiring a cheap freelancer, running their own Facebook ads, or buying some half-assed online course…

If they’ve been burned, they might be cynical now, and if your messaging doesn't acknowledge that history, you could end up sounding exactly like the last person who let them down.

If you're approaching a business owner about selling, maybe they've already talked to a broker who overpromised, or maybe a private equity group came sniffing around and made them feel like a commodity…

Understanding what they've already been through gives you the ability to position yourself as something fundamentally different.

On the flip side of fear, there’s the "Dream Transformation," or the ideal outcome my prospect is hoping for, described in vivid, emotionally specific detail.

This is the "magic genie" question: if they could wave a wand and have their problem perfectly solved, what would their life look like? Not in vague terms like "I'd be happy." In specific, sensory terms. What would their morning routine look like? What would their spouse say to them? How would their colleagues treat them differently?

When you can articulate someone's dream transformation better than they can articulate it themselves, you've earned a level of trust that money can't buy.

Next, the advanced psychological profiling exercises I use are not for the faint of heart. They're creative writing exercises that force you to step inside your prospect's skin in ways that feel almost uncomfortably intimate.

Imagine:

These exercises sound intense because they are, but the insights you surface through this kind of deep, immersive work are the ones few others will ever ask.

They're the insights that turn a decent marketing campaign into one that converts at 2–3x the industry average, or the ones that help you walk into a seller meeting and have the owner say, "You actually get it."

When approaching marketing, sales, deals, and relationships in business the numbers and strategy definitely matter…

But the person sitting across from you is not a spreadsheet; they're a human being with fears, dreams, failures, and hopes.

The better you understand all of that, the more deals you'll close, the more clients you'll win, and the more value you'll create in every business you touch.

I've put together a FREE comprehensive Client Avatar Development Worksheet that walks you through this entire process step by step — from basic demographics all the way through the advanced psychological profiling exercises.

If you'd like a copy so that you can start filling it out yourself, just fill out your email on the next page HERE now.

Note: When you get the complimentary worksheet above, you’ll also find information about how I can help research & create this document FOR YOU.

Talk again soon,

Michael McGovern

Thanks for reading Acquiring & Exiting - brought to you by the same team behind the Business Acquisition Virtual Summit: