Chief Commercial Officer
Great Rock Capital
Jim Clifton’s success in winning and closing deals in the asset-based lending space is built on a strong foundation of industry knowledge as well as an unceasing focus on quality over quantity.
Jim Clifton’s approach to dealmaking is built on quality over quantity. Although some salespeople pride themselves on having an overflowing deal pipeline, Clifton believes that it’s better to have a book made up of high-quality deals that fit a company’s philosophy.
“I never prided myself on being the person who had the most deals on a pipeline report,” Clifton says. “As long as you stay consistent, disciplined and focused on the right relationships and the right deals that those relationships show you, you should have success.”
Maximizing Value
Finding the “right deals” isn’t always about waiting for opportunities that fit a narrow set of criteria, according to Clifton, who looks at every deal from the perspective of how he can provide the most value to a client.
For example, while at Great Rock Capital, Clifton got a call from a private equity firm he had worked with during his time in a previous role with PNC Business Credit. The sponsor was looking for a $5 million capex line for a portfolio company. Normally, due to the deal’s small size and structure, Clifton would have rejected it immediately, but after learning about the company and its current deal with its bank, Clifton saw an opportunity, ultimately offering and closing a $28 million credit facility by providing more liquidity on the borrower’s equipment and real estate to layer on top of the capex line.
“I love finding situations where we can add the most value with our products and really help a company accomplish the business objectives they are seeking to achieve with our financing,” Clifton says.
Clifton doesn’t just maximize value; he also maximizes his time by building strong relationships and efficiently finding solutions. “I view time as the most valuable and finite resource we have,” Clifton says. “I don’t golf, and I don’t enjoy long dinners. I thrive on impactful interactions (ideally one-on-one) where I can figure out how we can be successful together.”
Learning The Field
Clifton has deep roots in the asset-based lending business that have helped him hone his approach to dealmaking. He got his start out of college in GE’s financial management program and then transitioned over to GE’s corporate audit staff, spending three years there before becoming a field exam manager, a role that would really set him on his ABL journey.
“That role was really about rolling up your sleeves and understanding the nitty-gritty details of due diligence on the front end,” Clifton says. “That, to me, made a really strong foundation for understanding the credit side of ABL.”
But Clifton knew his future was in business development, so he went back to school to earn his MBA from the University of Chicago while continuing to work on the field exam side before landing a role in originations with GE Capital Corporate Finance in 2011. Clifton describes his first few years in business development as “challenging,” given the increased regulatory scrutiny GE came under in the wake of the Great Recession.
“It was more about regulatory and compliance than it was about growth at that point,” Clifton says. “It was interesting to try to source deals in that type of environment.”
Clifton would eventually leave GE in 2013 to spend two years as the director of originations at NXT Capital before returning to ABL in 2016 when he was hired as a senior vice president of business development at PNC Business Credit.
Rock Solid
Then, in 2018, Clifton joined Great Rock Capital. Clifton says he wanted to join the company because it would bring him back to a non-regulated environment, allowing him to be more creative in his dealmaking. Originally tasked with covering the company’s ninestate Midwest footprint, Clifton spent the next few years helping to build Great Rock’s portfolio, closing its first ever $50 million transaction in 2019 and then navigating a brand-new dealmaking environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s where we really started to take off in terms of growing the portfolio, partnering more with banks on situations where they needed our help or had deals that they just couldn’t pursue and they referred us in on,” Cliton says, noting that private equity firms have become more active partners as well, particularly as the company has shifted to lower spreads. “We’ve started to do bigger, better, healthier deals.”
After four years managing originations in the Midwest, Clifton earned a promotion to chief commercial officer in 2022 with a mandate to “copy and paste” what had been successful for him to the rest of the team. In addition to preaching the value of quality over quantity and maximizing value, Clifton has also developed Great Rock’s “strike zone” for deals, utilizing a 12-category evaluation system that includes factors such as profitability and quality of ownership. The results so far have been strong, with Clifton reporting that Great Rock set company records for originations in 2022 and is on pace to do so again in 2023.
