Entrepreneurial alertness of the external buyer and mentoring: role of upstream support
When the buyer takes over the management of the company, he may have to build a buyer strategy by identifying new opportunities. During this phase, he can benefit from support in the form of mentoring. However, this identification process has been little studied by the literature in this context. The challenge is to better understand the determinants and consequences of identifying opportunities when the buyer is at the head of his business, accompanied by a mentor. In this article, we focus on one determinant: entrepreneurial alertness, defined as an ability to identify opportunities. We also analyse the consequences of this identification process on financial performance. The aim is to better understand to what extent the time of support influences the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness, identification of opportunities and financial performance, in the context of business takeover. For this, a quantitative study was conducted among 150 buyers accompanied by a mentor. The results show that relationship between entrepreneurial alertness, opportunities identification and financial performance is stronger when mentoring starts before the takeover.