How to Gain your Business’ Maximum Value Upon Exit
How to Gain your Business’ Maximum Value Upon Exit
During my business dealings, I meet many older company owners who are essentially “trapped” in their businesses. They are in their 60s and 70s and don’t always want to be working but because of a lack of early preparation and succession planning expertise, they find that they can’t sell or leave their businesses.
Why do business owners get trapped in their businesses?
- Very often they didn’t address their exit strategy early enough
- They fail to address known deficiencies in the business
- Their existing management team isn’t strong enough
- They run their businesses on legacy IT systems that cannot streamline processes for agile business performance
- Their products or services are not strong enough or keeping pace with the sector
- Their sales and marketing strategy is weak and not attracting enough new business
Fundamentally, most of the above reasons and many others come down to a lack of adequate planning, ideally 3-5 years before you want to exit or sell your business. With advance preparation, you can position your business to have a greater worth on sale or prepare your own management team to buy the business.
Tips to Help with Good Succession Planning
- Start early enough to effectively cascade knowledge and experience down generationally
- Encourage a culture of mentoring – certain skills are best developed “on the job”. Consider a shadowing approach and make it every person’s responsibility to mentor the next generation of high value skills with clear career paths, even for apprentices
- Encourage innovative thinking – encourage each person to think for themselves and take responsibility to drive the strategy of the business
- Explore opportunities that might be outside the family business – harnessing the best skills to drive the business is key in keeping your products and services relevant to customers
- Cultivate the next generation of leaders – invest in their learning, development and leadership and empower them to flex their management skills
With the right expertise and preparation, you can vastly increase the value of your business and exit your business painlessly when the time is right for you. Avoid the trap!
Author: Philip Waxman is an experienced corporate finance and strategic consultant. As a Chartered Accountant, he has been instrumental in supporting growth plans, raising finance and investment and undertaking M&A assignments for a number of growing businesses including a Pilkington Plc subsidiary and a Private Equity backed technology business.
Talk to Philip today to kick start your business growth plans – 0330 223 5030 or email on [email protected]