| Seminar of the Week Mergers & Acquisitions Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Downtown LA What are your various liquidity options? How do you identify and approach strategic and financial buyers? This session will provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about the “path to liquidity”. The course will discuss what makes a successful acquisition candidate and what a business can do to maximize value before the sale process and how the M&A process works and how to maximize value during the sale process. Learn how the sale process works. Learn when it is appropriate to pursue a liquidity event. Instructor: Susan Block, Block, Bowman, & Associates, LLC Ms. Susan Block has over 15 years experience as an investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions - previously in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Montgomery Securities and as a Vice President at Mercantile Capital Corporation. While a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Montgomery Securities, Ms. Block worked on merger assignments across all industries and was responsible for the sale of Safeway's Liquor Barn operations by Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts. As a principal of Block, Bowman & Associates, LLC, Ms. Block works primarily with software, high tech and healthcare firms. Cost: $75.00 Upcoming Seminars www.LartaUniversity.org How to Write a Winning SBIR Proposal Tuesday, June 8, 2004 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Downtown LA Winning federal money begins with a winning SBIR proposal. Get access to the millions of dollars that are set aside by the United States Government and private organizations to fund technology research and development activity. Sessions will touch on several general areas, including; the search process to find SBIR/STTR grants appropriate for your technology, general information about the culture and requirements of each agency offering these types of grants, and the business structures/collaborations/research plans found in winning proposals. Instructor: Vivian Lauderdale, Managing Director, SciBiz Services Ms. Vivian Lauderdale is Managing Director of
SciBiz Services, which provides training, consulting, business plan strategies and technical writing
assistance to small businesses in the technology and biomedical sectors to obtain government funding
for their innovative, high risk projects. SciBiz Services has been in business for three years and
specializes in assisting with SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business
Technology Transfer) government funding. Ms. Lauderdale, the primary instructor for the LARTA
course, has an MS from George Washington University Medical School, an Executive MBA from UCLA,
specializing in entrepreneurial biotechnology projects and is also certified in Regulatory Affairs
for biomedical assessment of FDA requirements. She is an active member of the American Medical
Writers Association, American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Regulatory Affairs Professional
Society and Forum of Women Entrepreneurs. She has a strong ‘hands on’ scientific research, product
development, and business start-up background. Thus, she brings years of experience to her proposal
/ business plan strategies. She regularly meets with NIH, NSF, DOD and Homeland Security agencies to
discuss the latest government requirements for increasing small business funding probabilities. In
the case of biomedical businesses, she incorporates her knowledge of medical regulatory affairs into
each biomedical business plan, which is a necessary part of ‘risk assessment’ for grant/funding
strategy. How Do You Turn Your Prospect Into A Buying Customer? Successful Selling Skills and Tactics Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Downtown LA This 3-hour boot camp helps participants learn how to use a defined sales process to sell successfully. In an interactive setting, you will create specific and customized scripts (or prompters) to assist in your selling process. We will focus on how to turn the prospect who is “not looking” into a buying customer. We will discuss how to uncover your buyer’s needs and how to qualify your buyer by using a defined sales process. In addition, we will touch on getting past the “gate keepers” and how to control sales costs (by using marketing collateral, demos, proposals, etc. as a way to stall the decision). By creating a repeatable sales process, you will be able to build a sales team who will follow a defined series of steps and sell your product successfully. Once the sales process is in place, you will be able to manage with accurate forecasts month after month. Instructor: Andrea B. Edwards, CustomerCentric Systems, LLC Ms. Edwards is a licensed, certified bi-lingual
affiliate of CustomerCentric Systems, LLC. Ms. Edwards has been a sales professional for 27 years;
for the last 6 years she has owned her own firm, emphasizing sales process training, sales skills
coaching and management consulting. Her background is in the extremely competitive high tech market,
characterized by products and services that are hard to describe, intangible, have long sales
cycles, often sold to committees, perceived as expensive and viewed as difficult to sell. A graduate
of Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, she sits on numerous advisory boards, and regularly
attends/participates in trade organizations on sales, intercultural business environments and women
in business. Cost:
$75.00 For additional questions please contact: Rachel Santuci (213) 765-4828 |
