Kevin Griffin, Executive Director, Corporate Development at JLL (NYSE: JLL) This episode is sponsored by the M&A Science Academy, DealRoom, and FirmRoom. To join our growing online community of M&A practitioners, visit https://www.mascience.com/academy. Don’t forget to use code “podcast” at checkout. Ready to take your M&A to the next level with software made to manage each stage of the deal process? See how DealRoom can facilitate your next deal at https://www.dealroom.net . FirmRoom provides 80% cost savings over VDRs that bill by page and delivers a far better user experience to boot. Sign up in under 2 minutes by going to https://www.firmroom.com  EPISODE TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 04:15 Focusing on smaller deals 06:48 Sourcing deals 08:10 Pros and cons of a competitive auction process 15:47 Cons of doing a proprietary deal 18:35 Benefits of doing a proprietary deal 22:15 Relationship problems 23:24 Proprietary deals vs auctions 25:32 Educating founders on the deal process 26:13 Working with lawyers 27:40 Biggest challenge when educating founders 29:42 Valuation 31:09 Negotiation 34:49 Earnouts 41:45 Making earnouts successful 43:19 Retention with smaller companies 44:17 Best Practices to retain people 46:08 Craziest thing in M&A