The deal management process is described as a workflow and behaves like a list of obligations with owners. A live process owes materials to the market, an approach to every buyer, an answer to every question, a diligence response the seller can deliver, and a close that does not slip. Software makes all five visible and discharges none. This page sets out the five and who should own each.
Materials, owned by whoever can chase the client
The teaser, the CIM and the model, gated by information the client produces while running a business. On this site's arithmetic the CIM alone is 121.2 hours and $11,514. The owner needs to be senior enough to ask the client for things repeatedly without it becoming awkward.
The list and the outreach, owned per tier
Thirty to three hundred names, tiered, with a named person responsible for reaching each tier. A list assembled during outreach has holes, and holes are discovered when a client asks why an obvious acquirer was never approached, which is a conversation nobody wants.
Questions back, owned by somebody with answers
Every question from the market needs an owner and a deadline. This is where processes stall invisibly: nothing goes wrong, things simply take a week longer because the person who could answer was never asked, and a week of drift costs tension that does not come back.
Diligence and close, owned across both sides
One named owner per category on each side, or every unanswered item becomes somebody's second priority. On the worked example, chasing 68.4 open requests over six weeks is 164.16 hours, and the close then depends on somebody owning the transition services the seller agreed to keep running.
Questions people ask about deal management process
What is the deal management process?
Five obligations a live process owes: materials, the list and outreach, questions back, diligence, and the close.
Does software run it?
No. It makes the five visible and chaseable. A named owner per obligation is what actually discharges them.
Where do processes stall?
On questions back, invisibly. Nothing goes wrong; things take a week longer because nobody asked the person who could answer.