Reflections

Excite Your Future Acquirer With An Articulated Growth Plan

A common myth among private business owners is if they show their future potential acquirer a solid history of profitable growth, this alone will drive up the exit valuation of their company. Although solid historical financial performance is the ante into the game of a successful exit, it must be supported with an equally exciting future outlook of ongoing, even accelerating growth under the ownership of the potential acquirer.

When you sell your business one day, it’s your job to excite the potential acquirer(s). It’s a mistake just to present your company to them and hope they find something to be excited about. You will have to build the messaging and the supporting case that articulates why your business is still a strong horse to ride for the future. To do this, you will want to be able to articulate very clearly what growth paths your company has remaining. You’ll want to be able to answer questions like:

• Do we have future growth opportunity within our current served market or have we penetrated this market historically to a meaningful level and growth must come by expanding the market we play in?
• What growth opportunity do we have remaining with our existing customers – have we done the best job of messaging our customers with all that we can do for them or do we provide more products or services than our existing customers are aware of?
• Could we generate new growth by introducing a new product or service and leverage existing customer relationships?
• If we feel we have maximized the penetration of our existing customers, have we identified new customers we could approach – and can we do this with our existing product or service portfolio or would we need to modify our offering?
• Do we have an effectively managed sales opportunity pipeline that continues to expand and shows additional growth ideas your company could yet pursue going in to the future?

Business owners are often surprised to hear that the majority of those selling their business aren’t happy with the outcome. Although there are many reasons behind this, we can share from our experience that a leading reason is the business is presented to potential acquirers with a solid history, but lacking clarity related to where the business still has exciting growth runway ahead of it. Position your company as both yesterday and tomorrow’s news and this will enable the potential for a euphoric exit outcome.

Knowing the difference can build your company worth

A business owner said to me he was proud of overhearing a recent conversation between one of his account reps and a customer. He said he could tell that the account rep was managing the call well and that it sounded like the customer was satisfied with the outcome. I asked if he knew why the customer was calling and he said because they were asking about the status of their order. My question was, do you think the customer wanted to make that call in the first place?

The world is rapidly moving from a “fail & fix” mentality to one of “predict & prevent”. Think about this as it relates to your company interaction with your customers and ask yourself these questions:

• What are the main reasons customers call us? Determine which of these are reactive and an opportunity for a customer experience enhancement.
• What services could we provide that would show our customers that our support is proactive in nature versus purely reactive? Can we help our customers avoid headaches or firefighting?

In prior blogs, we reviewed the importance of being sticky with customers because the stickier you are generally the higher the worth of your company in the eyes of an acquirer. Talk with your team about the customer experience you’re providing to identify enhancements that will increase your customer stickiness and increase the worth of your business.

Key questions to ask yourself today

Most of us admire what Steve Jobs built at Apple. Although it’s well known that employees found it challenging to work for him, what they didn’t find challenging was embracing his beliefs. His articulation and daily living of his beliefs is given much of the credit for Apple success. He knew that culture would be critical to future Apple success and knew that as the owner/CEO, his beliefs would set the tone for that culture.

He had 7 overarching beliefs and was able to attract and retain top talent because employees wanted to be part of something special. Beliefs such as, we will make products that change the world and design products that are simple versus complex (remember we used to read user manuals on new electronic products until Apple changed the game). Beliefs like these are what Apple employees rallied around and continue doing so to this day.

Unfortunately, what we often see in working with private businesses is they have stated beliefs/values but what they don’t do is live them every day. They live them when it’s convenient, not when it’s hard. Here are questions to discuss with your leadership team:

• Have we articulated what our beliefs are?
• Do we effectively communicate our beliefs to our employees?
• When we hire new employees, do we effectively orient them to our beliefs?
• Do we identify and praise when we see the beliefs exemplified? Do we react appropriately to modify behavior when we don’t see our beliefs exemplified?
• When we do employee performance reviews, do we discuss their performance in support of our company beliefs?
• Do we align any of our metrics with our beliefs? .ie.: we believe in making quality products or we want to provide an excellent customer experience – but do you truly have visible, effective metrics that convey to your team that you take the belief seriously?

If you want to ensure driving long term company results, think like Steve Jobs did. Think about what culture you want and how your personal beliefs will drive the behavior that underpin your culture. A company worth creating formula is Beliefs drive Behaviors and Behaviors drive Results. Revisit your company belief system and start driving new company worth today.

Remote working policies can impact both

Many businesses are now making decisions related to their employees and remote working policies. These decisions being made will have short and long term implications for your company culture and this could then impact the future worth of your business in the eyes of your potential acquirer.

COVID forced many business owners to make quick decisions about which employees could work remotely. Now the reverse is occurring in terms of which employees to bring back in to working from your office. Here are questions to ask yourself to ensure you protect your company culture:

• Am I clear on what the productivity has been for my employees that have been working remotely versus when they worked from the office? Can I see this productivity in specific metrics for my business?
• Has my team collaborated and worked well as a single team despite some employees working remotely?
• Am I able to build and protect the company culture I desire despite having employees working remotely?
• Do I have newer employees that aren’t yet acclimated to our company culture and working remotely might impede this?
• Am I seeing any signs of remote workers not supporting my desired company culture?
• When restaurants, coffee shops and health clubs are fully open, will this be a potential distraction for my remote workers in a normal work day?

There is no single right answer for which companies should support remote workers and which ones should not. Each owner must assess their own culture and their own productivity measures. As you do this, think about this from your perspective but as well how a future acquirer might view your remote working policies.

A recommendation at this point is to not yet commit to a long term fixed remote working policy.  Let your remote working employees know that this remains a fluid situation and the decision you are making today will be re-evaluated in 3 or 6 months. This will give you more time to understand how markets and communities opening back up will or won’t impact the productivity of your remote workers. Avoid committing to a long-term policy when you don’t have all the needed information yet for making such a decision.

The expression in the Mergers & Acquisition arena is that oftentimes the acquirer invests in the jockey more than the horse. Your employee base is the jockey so be careful making long term decisions related to remote working that could impact your company culture and ultimately your future company overall worth in the eyes of an acquirer. Taking this measured approach could protect and build both.

Ensure you are leveraging the power of having the right pipeline

When the day comes that you might look to sell your business to a third party, a key question on the potential acquirer’s mind will be what growth opportunities does your business have looking ahead to the future? Certainly, they will look to be impressed by your historical performance but what will excite them is your forward-looking growth opportunities.

This week, LLR Partners (LLR Partners - Leading Private Equity Firm) released their report on the power of a sales pipeline for driving revenue and profitability and these of course underpin your overall company valuation. At Yosemite Associates, we couldn’t agree more with LLR Partners on this point as we regularly see acquirers spend a significant amount of time during due diligence doing a deep dive on the go forward growth opportunities of the business they are considering opening their check book for.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does my business do a good job of tracking our sales opportunities both with existing customers as well as new ones?
• As part of this opportunity tracking, do we know key things like what our Win/Loss rate is and given this metric, how many opportunities does my team have to be actively managing at any given time to support the revenues we desire?

You can attract a potential acquirer to consider buying your business based on your solid historical results. But to excite them to place a premium valuation on your business, this will mean showing them the sales opportunity pipeline you still have available for driving further profitable growth. Start today ensuring you have the right sales opportunity pipeline tool under management with your team and use this as a powerful step in driving up the future valuation of your business.

But you do need to make it very special in key areas – know what they are

Some private business owners are surprised to hear that they don’t need to build the perfect business in order to one day sell to an acquirer and receive a premium payout. It seems counter intuitive to say this but here is the reason. The acquirer wants to know there is runway left with your business to take it somewhere even greater under their ownership. If they believe you’ve maximized it and they don’t have the ability to take it further, then why would they pay a premium for it?

But what you will need to do is build the right parts of your business to attract, excite and command a premium value. The key is determining which parts of your business are most critical for one day commanding a premium exit payout. This is not something you want to guess at. This is a question that can be answered years prior to trying to exit. Questions like:

• Will an acquirer value my capabilities or my customers or both?
• Will an acquirer expect that I’m serving specific types of markets or customers?
• What levels of financial performance at a minimum will an acquirer expect from me?
• What type of sales opportunity pipeline will an acquirer expect to see?
• Will an acquirer need all my employees or just some?
• Will an acquirer want my facility/s?
• Will an acquirer expect that I have specific intellectual property?

This list could continue but the point is, don’t guess. You can get guidance to these questions years prior to exiting and doing so will enable you to know which specific areas of your business you will need to build to strong levels and which parts of your business less so. Look to build a business that will excite a future acquirer (even multiple ones) and know what it will take to do so, don’t guess. Call us (949.874.0787) and we can get you started on the steps to take to greatly enable your journey to a future high company valuation and euphoric exit event.

The right questions can lead to building new company value

Ask yourself - is our company Value Proposition and Unique Selling Proposition still relevant?

Let’s start with definitions –

Value Proposition – this is the value that your customer derives from working with your business. This identifies the value your product or service provides to them.

Unique Selling Proposition – this is how you deliver your Value Proposition in a way that differentiates you from the competitive alternatives.

This question of the month is always relevant but certainly now based on where we are with COVID-19 impacting on our markets. It’s also very relevant because new technologies are evolving and could be changing what your customers expect and desire from you.

In thinking about this question, talk with your team about how your customer’s needs and expectations and even behaviors might be changing these days. And are they changing in a way that is either risk or opportunity as it relates to your Value Proposition and/or Unique Selling Proposition? If your customer (even your customer’s customer) has changing needs and desires, you need to ensure that your messaging to them is remaining relevant and effective versus your competition.

Add this Bank Your Moment-Question of the Month to your next sit-down meeting with key members of your team. You’ll find yourself having a dialog that could identify steps to take to protect and build the value, or worth, of your business.

Don’t make the mistake so many company owners have

Survey after survey of private business owners confirms a common theme. That is the majority of them are not happy with the outcome from the sale of their business. How is this possible when many of these companies were well run? The answer is that just because your company is performing well today for you, that does not directly translate to successfully being able to withstand the due diligence a future acquirer will put your company through.

Here are just a few examples of problems that arise during due diligence of even well performing companies:

• When the acquirer conducts a Quality of Earnings assessment during due diligence, they uncover issues that the seller wasn’t aware of
• The financial statements are not formatted to what an industry acquirer would expect to see. Example: how you calculate gross profit is different than the norm for your industry
• The forward-looking growth projections are not effectively backed up by a solid and proven sales pipeline. The acquirer therefore has concerns about growth prospects of the business going forward under their ownership
• Key employees receive above market compensation, benefits and perks that the acquirer won’t want to continue supporting going forward.

This list could continue on but you get the idea. The solution is conducting a Due Diligence Readiness Assessment at least 1 to 2 years PRIOR to beginning your exit process. This readiness assessment will most likely uncover gaps that could be time consuming to address and/or you’ll want to correct the gap(s) and will need to show sufficient historical performance before the acquirer will believe the issue has been addressed.

We work with clients leveraging our Due Diligence Readiness Assessment tool, contact us today to learn more about how it can help you on your journey to a future euphoric exit.

A Great Metric Could Mean A High Company Valuation

As a company owner or CEO, ask yourself this question – if today you announced to your customers that your business is closing its doors and no longer available to accept new orders, how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years would it take them to find a replacement for what they have been purchasing from you?

Your Shut the Door metric is low if the answer to this question is minutes, hours, days or weeks. Your metric will increase if your answer is months or even years. And generally, the higher your Shut the Door metric, the greater your company value in the eyes of a potential acquirer. This is because acquiring your business would come with a strong predictability of future revenues, and acquirers place great value on this as they determine what to pay to acquire your company.

Give us a call and we can help you get this critical metric in place for your company and we can also help you with ideas for how you can increase this metric for your business.

Will your team excite your future company acquirer?

The title of this post is a well-known expression within the acquisition community. And we’re in a period where this expression is especially true and needs to be on your radar screen as a private business owner and CEO.

To achieve your future, euphoric exit event, you’ll need to present a business to an acquirer that excites them. Having interest in your business is one thing. But to get an acquirer to pay you a premium value for your business, you’ll need to ensure that your business is ready with the right business model (the horse) AND with the right team (the jockey) as well. Acquirers buy company’s looking for capabilities and the talent behind it. Especially today, when access to talent is such a challenge for so many employers. Acquirers will be drawn to your business due to its capabilities but will fall in love with it if your team is one they can build upon.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your team and its readiness to excite a future acquirer:

• My team can operate my company successfully even if I’m not available to them for a few weeks or even months?
• My team has key managers with strong backgrounds and job experience to perform their roles effectively?
• My team is passionate about delivering a great customer experience and outcome for those that purchase our products and services?
• My team has the right people, especially in key leadership positions, that can help this company scale to the next level of profitable growth?
• I'd be proud to present my team to an acquirer?

These questions could go on but are just a few to get your wheels turning. If you answered no to any of them, now is the time to step back and think about what’s needed to address the gaps. Use time as your friend in terms of building a solid team that will excite your future acquirer.  You might be focused each day on the horse but make sure you are building the jockey as well.

Key hiring decisions can directly impact your company valuation

During a recent conversation with a company owner, he expressed that he was looking for a Vice President of Business Development. He said he felt the position was needed because his company revenue was of concern in recent years and he felt he needed a new direction. He asked if I thought making such an investment could make sense based on my experience.

I asked how much the investment in this position would be and the answer was approximately $175K annually, including benefits. I then asked if he felt this position investment would deliver a return of at least $1,400,000 in company value in the next 2 or 3 years, which is the time frame he’s hoping to sell his business. The answer was, I’m not sure and haven’t thought about it in that regard.

I explained the reason behind my question. His current company valuation was approximately 8x his trailing 12 months EBITDA. And this investment of $175K compensation would reduce his EBITDA by this amount annually. And if he were selling today, this $175K x 8 would equal the $1,400,000 of reduced payout he might receive from the acquirer.

Now if the individual filling this position could join his team and generate business development opportunities that the company could start benefiting from in its revenues and build greater than this $1,400,000 in company value, then of course it’s a great position to invest in.

The outcome of our discussion is the owner is now rethinking how this investment bridges to his exit plans. So, when thinking about investing in key management positions, give thought to how it bridges to your exit plans and not just what it means for you in the short term. Giving consideration as to how the new hire will impact your exit valuation in the eyes of your future acquirer could be a key factor in how happy you are with the outcome.

Even minor adjustments can create new value

As company owners/CEO’s and key executives, we should always remember that the value, or net worth, of our business is ultimately a culmination of the decisions our team makes. Each day, each week, our teams are making both tactical and strategic decisions. As you add up all these decisions, the outcome is seen in our company performance and organization culture.

As you think about your organization structure, think in terms of how it enables effective and efficient decision making. Too often we think about our organization structure in terms of functional departments or number of direct reports a manager should have. Although these are important factors, what is often not factored in is how the structure is enabling, or disabling, effective and efficient decision making.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about decision making and your company organization structure:

• What are the primary types of decisions our team is making on a daily/weekly basis and is our structure an enabler?
• What decisions are our customers needing us to make daily/weekly and is our structure enabling efficiency and effectiveness in their eyes?
• What decisions is my team making daily/weekly related to the operational aspects of my business and is our structure an enabler?

We know that very often the best performing teams create the greatest company worth. The performance and results aren’t just a result of the talent and experience on your team, but are also enabled by organization structure and effective and efficient decision making. Think about your company organization structure and ask yourself where key decisions are being made regularly and could even minor adjustments to your structure improve your decision making and create new company worth.

Get the right plan in place to build your company value

Join the elite group of company owners that achieve their exit dream by having an effective plan to help get there. Let the Ownership Exit Triangle be your first important step on your path to a future euphoric exit event. Use time as a friend and here is the article link to start your journey. (Download Whitepaper)

Doing so can help you protect and build company value

“People only see what they are prepared to see.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with this quote that remains relevant to this day. It’s relevant as it relates to emerging technologies that are slowly or quickly going to change your industry.

Our job as owners and CEO’s is to ensure we take steps to protect and build the net worth of our business. Doing this in today’s environment is as challenging as ever because of the onslaught of emerging and evolving technologies that are changing how we operate and what our customers desire. We must ensure that we are monitoring these technologies and that we are willing to change our paradigms if necessary. Think about businesses like Borders, Toys R Us, Marriott, Yellow Cab and many others that have been disrupted by changing technologies. These companies had plenty of smart people, subject matter experts in their industries and access to talent and to money and yet each of them saw their value negatively impacted by competitors that took advantage of new technologies and changing customers behaviors. Their paradigms were wrong and held them back from seeing what was happening in their industry. Ask yourself, is it possible that my paradigms are going to hold me and my business back from seeing what’s happening with emerging technologies and the impact they are having on our customers? If your answer is even slightly yes, then it’s time to rethink your paradigms.

If you believe the paradigms embraced by you and your team are possibly getting stale and could be soon outdated, ask yourself these questions:

• Is our dialog with our customers and vendors fresh or has it become stale? Are we asking our customers and suppliers new questions to get their perspective on what technologies they see coming at our industry?
• Where are our customers and suppliers investing in new technologies that we should be aware of?
• Are we participating in new industry events and connecting with new industry information sources or are we only connected with older ones that may be getting stale and less cutting edge?
• Are we meeting with new people or are we just staying within our same network and not hearing or learning anything new?
• Have we refreshed our advisors to get new insights?

The list could keep going here but you get the gist. Make sure your personal and professional paradigms aren’t going to put your business valuation at risk. Be willing to challenge and change your paradigms if need be. The world, and specifically technologies, are evolving rapidly and you want your paradigms to add value, not detract from the net worth of your business.

The difference in valuation can be significant at time of exit

In our work, we regularly come across small to mid-sized companies that are ideal for supporting the life style of the owner, but not ideal for attracting interest from a third party acquirer.

The difference can be found by asking yourself questions like these:

• How reliant is the ongoing growth and success of my business on me personally?
  • If the answer is a lot, you might have a life style business
• Do I withdraw through payroll or distributions the majority of the money my company makes or do I continue to invest in my business and leave sufficient levels of working capital in the company to enable it to grow?
  • If the answer is yes, you might have a life style business
• Does my company have good financial controls and sound planning disciplines in place that help us as we scale up the business?
  • If the answer is no, you might have a life style business
• Am I building a company that can continue to scale up even in the hands of a new owner?
  • If the answer is no, you might have a life style business

A life style business can be wonderful in helping a private owner live the life they want. No one is going to begrudge that. But, if the desire is one day to attract a third party to come in and pay a premium price to take your business over, then you can’t present them a life style business. Reason is they will have to invest to move it beyond being a life style company and associated with this comes risk and acquirers don’t like risk.

Talk with your advisors, give us a call (949.874.0787) if you’re wondering if you might have a life style company and whether it could impede you from achieving a sale one day to a third party. Use time as a friend to evolve your business to one that will attract the interest of multiple acquirers and get yourself on the path to a euphoric future exit event.

The right coffee chat can put your company on the right track

A comment we often hear from sellers of companies is they wish they could turn back time and if they could, they would have done things differently in terms of preparing their business for a successful exit. This is most often because when the acquirer came in, the seller heard them asking for things that the seller was not prepared to impress them with. This can and should be avoided to help you reach your euphoric exit outcome.

In my prior life as a CEO of manufacturing and service businesses, I developed a process I refer to as “Coffee Chats”. A coffee chat is simply identifying the right target for a potential future acquirer, developing effective messaging to contact them and conducting an information gathering conversation with them that enables you to learn what the top value drivers are for a company like yours in their eyes. Having a few coffee chats with a cross section of future potential acquirers will give you an enormous amount of helpful information that you can use in building your business.

Coffee chats can help you learn what an acquirer will focus on when they place a valuation on your business. Every industry is different in terms of what the top value drivers are in the eyes of an acquirer. Is it specific to your financial results, is it your customer access and mix, is it your sales pipeline of future growth opportunities, is it your intellectual property and stickiness with your customers or is it your team? Or are there other things they will want to see in order to be willing to place an attractive valuation on your business. Acquirers in every industry have the top 5 value drivers they look for when considering an acquisition and those for your business shouldn’t be a mystery.

Don’t be one of those sellers that one day has regrets and is less than euphoric with the valuation you receive from an acquirer. Start at least 2 years prior to considering an exit by setting up some coffee chats. They could ultimately be the best cups of coffee you’ll ever have and will guide you on your way to a future euphoric exit. Contact us today if you want to know how to conduct coffee chats for your company.

This triangle is an important step in your company value creation

In working with business owners, we commonly find they have a future hope and desire to one day sell their company for a premium, but today are lacking the bridge or game plan as to what specific steps they need to take in order to get there. At Yosemite Associates, we have a multi-step campaign to guide them on this journey and one of the early discussion points is their “ownership decision triangle”.

How Much. When. Investment Appetite.

These are the 3 points of your personal triangle on your journey to a future, euphoric exit outcome

How Much – a mistake often made is not having a target in mind in terms of how much money you want to derive one day from selling your company. Knowing this will better enable you to determine how audacious your strategy needs to be to get you there as you think about where you are today and how large a gap you have for where you want to be. Knowing this will also help you determine your second point of the triangle, the When.

When – once you have an idea of how much you want to receive one day for your business, an equally important question is “when” you’d like to experience the exit. This goes hand in hand with how much because if the amount you want to get is large and is significantly more than your business is worth today, the time frame for exiting will have to reflect how long it might take to achieve your target valuation range.

Investment Appetite – you may very well answer the first two points of the ownership triangle but this third one is equally critical. What’s your appetite for investing money, personal time and personal energy in to your ongoing journey. Having a high valuation in mind that you want to achieve one day and having a desired time frame must also align with your personal appetite for what will be needed. If your ultimate target exit valuation is large and will require you to continue investing much of your time and energy and even meaningful investment dollars, do you have the appetite for this?

If a future euphoric exit event is on your mind, give detailed thought to your ownership decision triangle. Doing so will facilitate very healthy thinking and dialog for yourself and perhaps your partners, spouse and/or key employees. If you want help thinking through your ownership decision triangle, contact us today and we can offer helpful, actionable insights on your journey to building your company future valuation.

Less than crisp messaging can hurt your company valuation

COVID, or Corona-geddon as we refer to it, is causing many private company owners to rethink how long they want to hold on to their business. Prior to COVID, many of these owners would have said they don’t see selling for many years. But as we continue to navigate this pandemic, it’s definitely making more owners consider whether they have the energy and passion to keep going.

For those wondering if they should sell, there are many factors to take into consideration. Among the most important is messaging. Messaging related to why you are selling.

You would be amazed the number of times the owner of a private business is not crisp in explaining this and it raises red flags for the potential acquirer. Red flags to an acquirer mean risk and when acquirers smell risk in a possible acquisition, they either back away or they lower the offer valuation to reflect the risk they might be taking on.

Your reason for selling must be crisp and make sense to them to avoid making the potential acquirer wonder what is truly going on inside your company that now is the time you want to exit. Are you selling because you know you’ve reached a performance peak or because meaningful investments are needed or your organization will soon have changes happening related to your key talent, etc, etc. Your reason for wanting to exit must make it clear it’s not about the future potential for the business but about something specific in your life, such as it’s time to enjoy your family more. The potential acquirer will want to clearly understand and believe your reason for wanting to sell and that it has nothing to do with the continued opportunities for the business. They need to have confidence that your company has a bright future and they also need to feel confident that your company can continue on successfully without your involvement.

There is much to consider when you begin wondering if it’s time to sell your business. Start by asking yourself the reason why. Talk with your trusted advisors or even call us for a phone chat to get you on the right foot in this regard. Starting off on the right foot with a possible sale by getting your messaging crisp and effective will help to better position you for a potential euphoric exit event.

New questions can lead to building new company value

If you told your customers you were closing your doors, no longer accepting business, how long would it take them to replace your product or service?

Earlier in my career at Black & Decker, we regularly had dialog around this question and it was referred to as our “close the door” metric. If we told our customers we were immediately out of business, how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years would they feel the pain of our disappearance?

The longer the customer would feel the angst of you closing your doors, the “stickier” you are with them. Sticky means how attached, glued, are they to your product or service. If your product or service is so unique (the product or service itself and/or how you produce or deliver it), your customer appreciates it and respects it so much that they would find it difficult, if not impossible to replace you. When you are sticky with your customers you have higher company value, or worth, because you have the much greater likelihood of predictable future revenues.

Sit with the key leaders of your team and ask this question for January and see what interesting, quality dialog it facilitates. You could very well find it generates ideas for how you can strengthen your stickiness with your existing and new customers.

Doing So Can Build and Protect Company Value

We often find that business owners and CEO’s aren’t leveraging their customer, financial and operational data their company’s possess and it’s holding back their ability to build new company value, or worth as we refer to it. This is a perfect time of year to invest time thinking about what data you and your team are reviewing to help you with new strategic insights about your business and to think about how you are looking at the data.

First ask yourself, what strategic questions you have about your business and have you looked to see if you already have, or could get, from your company data the information needed to answer them? Questions like:

• What is my customer tiering and which tier of customer is growing, flat or declining?
• What percentage of my customers buy 2 or more products or services from my company?
• Is there a geographic or demographic element to my business that has changed over time?
• Are we measuring Customer Experience effectively (ie: on time performance to their requirements, credits/returns, customer attrition, response time to queries, etc, etc)?
• Are we measuring our efficiency and productivity in how we enter orders, process invoices, process and schedule orders for fulfillment, make/deliver our products and services – are we doing these more efficiently year over year?

Next question to ask yourself is “how” is my team looking at the data and has this become stale? Ask these additional questions:

• When we review our performance data (financial or non-financial metrics), do we look at our performance in relation to updated targets/goals and prior period results so we compare to something?
• Are we looking at a long enough period to see trends in our performance? Are we looking at 12 month, 24 or even 36 month trends in performance of key metrics or are we looking at more narrow time frames which may not be facilitating insightful dialog?
• Are we graphing performance of key metrics, which will more effectively help us visually see and discuss performance trends, or are we looking at one dimensional spreadsheets and could be missing strategic insights that could jump out from graphical representations?

Our goal as executives is to build long term worth in our business. Rethink whether you are asking the right strategic questions about your business. Rethink the data you are capturing and leveraging within your business. Rethink how your team is viewing and discussing the data. All of these will add up to new insights that could help you avoid dangerous comfort zones and help build incremental company worth.