One of the most difficult decisions facing a company seeking to commercialise their intellectual property, technology or product through a third party is what price to ask for. Pitch the price too high and there is a risk the potential buyer will be driven away. On the other hand pitching the price too low may secure the deal but at the expense of not optimising the commercial value to the seller/licensor.

The optimum deal value issue arises not only in dealing with third parties but also in obtaining the buy-in from the company’s Board and investors.

To address these issues, companies can use benchmarks, that is, third party deal values that can be used for comparison to the proposed deal. There are many databases that provide information about median and average deal values at various stages of product development but none of them tailor the information to ensure the third party deals provide a true comparable with the proposed deal. Nor do they match the benchmark to the in-house financial model.

Medius offers both hands on consultancy as well as a training course that will provide you with the benchmarking information and techniques relevant to your deal.

This includes:

• What to look for in comparable deals
• Where to find the relevant information
• Choosing the appropriate third party comparable deals
• Analysis and interpretation of the information both financially and commercially
• Internal financial modelling and development of the in-house proposal
• Selecting the opening negotiation position and tactics