The seller told me things the CIM never would.

Not because I asked better questions than other buyers.

Because I showed up differently than every other buyer he had ever met.

In private equity, the first thing you learn is that information is not in documents. It is in conversations.

The CIM is what the seller wants you to see. The conversation is what they actually need you to know.

Most buyers walk into seller meetings with a list. Revenue. EBITDA. Customer concentration. They work through it like a checklist. They sound like auditors doing an inspection.

The seller sits there and starts building walls.

Here is what I do instead. I ask one question before anything else. I ask how they got started.

That is it. That is the whole move.

They talk for twenty minutes. They tell me about the first employee they hired, the year the business almost didn't make it, the customer who became a friend. And somewhere in that story, they tell me exactly what they need from this deal. Not financially. Personally.

When you know what they actually need, everything else is just math.

The seller note structure itself. The earnout terms. The timeline for transition. You are not negotiating anymore. You are solving a problem that has kept them up at night for years.

That conversation is worth more than any due diligence checklist.

Comment STORY below and I will send you the exact first call framework I use to unlock seller financing before the numbers are ever discussed.

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