Ohio Business Coach Ralph Berge
Helping Businesses in Cleveland, Akron and Canton
The time has come to sell your business. Are you ready? Is this your idea or is it dictated by the market? If you are concerned about these questions, talk to a business coach about family business succession planning and begin working on these five things now:
1. Understand seller financing pros & cons and how to structure
2. Value stream map processes and materials
3. Clean facility
4. Improve appearance on the internet
5. Solidify workforce
Family business succession planning is an often overlooked, but extremely important part of any businesses’ plan. This step of your business plan outlines your exit strategy. It may seem strange to develop an “up-front” strategy to leave your business, but potential investors want to know your long-term plans. Here are first five things you must know:
1. Understand different types of buyers
2. Understand how to calculate Seller’s Discretionary Earnings
3. Understand different ways to value a business
4. Understand that different buyers pay different prices
5. Understand deal structure – asset vs. stock
This article is the first in a series that we will be discussing 50 Things owners must consider to develop a business/ exit planning process.
Get out of the office and start engaging with your customers. Make this part of your sales planning process. The best way to leverage your sales process is to have your customer and strategic alliances sell for you. Talk to them and find out how they are doing. They will soon start referring your business to others – which is by far the best way to leverage your “sales” time in any business.
Get more training for yourself and your sales team. Honestly assess your sales and marketing abilities, and if you need help – go get it. You will be benefiting the most by increased sales. It is not easy to get additional education and training if you are in the office doing books or answering phones. Use an Ohio business coach to help you hone your skills to enhance your own business. Call Ralph Berge, a Cleveland business coach.
Once you know how you spend your time, start finding ways to systemize your most routine tasks and delegate them to wage earners. I tell clients to examine the entire process.
Start from the bottom up, and make sure you have a system in place before you place an untrained person in a position. Use team building learning to strengthen team members so that when the task is delegated they can do it. Action coaching provides the best results to team building learning, which leads to successful delegating.
Keep a track of how you spend your time in your business for a week or two. Do a personal time study and you’ll have a better handle on how you can adjust your tasks and activities in more profitable ways. For most business owners, very little time goes into actually getting sales, and most of it is spent on delivering the product or service, administrative or managerial tasks.
Remember the 80/20 rule: 80% of all results come from 20% of effort. And if 80% of your efforts are administrative, you can see where your sales results are at. Look at your sales planning process, if one exists. If you don’t have a sales planning process invest some time to build one. This means training your team to sell and providing sales tools to make them successful. Talk to me about your sales planning process, I’m an Akron business coach who can make a difference. I can help with the time study, too.
Think of goals for you and your business…having a tough time? Here’s a great personal and business goal: define your value in your business in relation to the time you put in. Twenty-five dollars, $50, $300 an hour? How much do you charge for your time in your business? What should you charge? These questions will help you better understand the types of tasks you should be doing to leverage your own time and value in your company.
Once you know your value, you will know how you can outsource or delegate certain tasks. As a Cleveland business coach, I can tell you that leveraging your business beings with knowing your true value.
Leverage means doing more with less. Understanding this concept means learning how to build an efficient business model that relies on others to do the work.
Ohio business coach, Ralph Berge tells his clients that in order to move your company forward, it is critical that you start delegating routine tasks to wage earners so you can start focusing on the top-line activities that will drive revenues and add to the overall growth of your company.
If you delegate without proper planning or a system, the entire process becomes self-defeating. Delegation turns into abdication.
So where and how do you begin this process? Business owners need to focus on team building learning that strengthens the entire team to understand and implement the owner’s action plan. When they get it they can do it…when they can do, the owner has time to focus “on” other important business building aspects of the business.
Successful business owners share many admirable qualities. They are smart, hard-working, and focused. Despite the hard work factor, Dun & Bradstreet reports that only nine percent of small businesses, with fewer than twenty employees, survive for ten years.
Running a small business takes an inordinate amount of time and energy, which often leaves owners too distracted to focus on other areas of their lives, which causes many family business problems. When a business is a key component of family wealth, however, it is critical to incorporate family business planning to secure its long-term stability. After all, for most business owners, the business represents their single most valuable asset. Taking steps to safeguard a business can help ensure its long-term survival and success and protect an asset that often represents a life’s work.
Invest your time in building your business by talking with Ralph Berge, Cleveland business coach about family business planning.
Begin with the end in mind…in other words; plan a graceful (and profitable) exit from the start. Family business succession planning is an often overlooked, but extremely important part of any businesses’ plan. This step of your business plan outlines your exit strategy. It may seem strange to develop an “up-front” strategy to leave your business, but potential investors want to know your long-term plans. Your exit plans need to be clear in not just in your own mind, but in a written document because they will dictate how you operate the company. For example, if you plan to get listed on the stock exchange, you’ll want to follow certain accounting regulations from day one. If you plan to pass the business to your children, you’ll need to start training them at a certain point.
Here’s a look at some of the available strategies for entrepreneurs and businesses for sale in Ohio:
Potential Exit Strategies for your business plan:
Merge: Sometimes, two businesses can create more value as one company. If you believe such an opportunity exists for your firm, then a merger may be your ticket to exit. If you’re looking to leave entirely, then the merger would likely call for the head of the other involved company to stay on. If you don’t want to relinquish all involvement, consider staying on in an advisory role.
Be acquired: Other companies might want to acquire your business and keep its value for themselves. Make sure the offered sale price meshes with your business valuation. You may even seek to cultivate potential acquirers by courting companies you think would benefit from such a deal. If you choose your acquirer wisely, the value of your business can far exceed what you might otherwise earn in a sale.
Sell: Selling outright can also allow for an easy exit. If you wish, you can take the money from the sale and sever yourself from the company. You may also negotiate for equity in the buying company, allowing you to earn dividends afterwards — it clearly is in your interest to ensure your firm is a good fit for the buyer and therefore more likely to prosper.
Talk to Ohio Business Coach, Ralph Berge about planning to exit your business
