You Need to Be Deliberate When Selling Your Business
Most of you have sold a home at one time. You remember the chaos – repairing the broken stuff, updating the kitchen or master bathroom and maybe a new coat of paint. If you think that was a challenge, the preparation needed to sell your business is ten times more complicated. A business has so many more moving parts than selling a home. Unfortunately, most of you getting ready to sell your business do not have the internal skills or outside guidance to help you through this process.
That’s why I am here to help you.
B2B CFO® has moved into a leadership position as the largest source of mid-market business transition experts in the nation. We have published a book on the steps to exiting your business (let me know if you would like a copy of the book). We know what we are doing.
There are two questions you need to answer when getting ready to sell.
What needs to be done?
Who is going to manage the process? The first question will depend on where you are in relation to that best place for maximum sales price. We have very complete checklists to test things like:
Your financial statement metrics compared to industry averages.
All the important financial trends – sales growth, gross profit growth, profit growth.
Your policies and procedures library.
Your loan documents – we need to verify that you are in compliance with the loan covenants.
Employment contracts, signed non-disclosure agreements
Your IT system. Are you using Quickbooks or Peachtree or an ERP system.
Who is going to manage this process? You may say you, the business owner will do it. Or your controller. Or your VP of Operations. All of these answers would be the wrong ones. This graph explains why.
If you assign management of this process to someone that does not have the proper skills and experience, you will fail. If you assign a team member to this, he or she will take their eye off the ball of their current duties and you will fail.
The red line on the graph is assigning a current team member to be your success manager. You will not get maximum value for your company. The blue line is where you are today and where you want to be when you sell your company.
As of April 2016 my partners and I have completed 1,621 business transitions with more than $61 billion in sales volume (Morningstar May 19, 2016). We know how to get your company ready for sale.
If you are three to five years out from selling your company, it is time to begin the transition. Please call me.
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