Drive your business valuation with effective exit planning
As many businesses start a new financial year in January, now is a good time of year to be thinking about your strategic direction. We’ve all heard the expression, “hope is not a plan” and this is important for all business owners to have in mind as we get ready to start a new year.
Our discussion with business owners is this – you as an owner have a vision or desire for what you want your business to achieve for you one day both professionally and personally. And then your business is operating at a certain level today. Therefore, what is the gap between where your business is today and where you want it to be at a future time? If there is a gap, having “hope” alone won’t help you fill the gap(s). But a strategic plan will.
We then find business owners that will agree that hope is not a plan, but they lack the certainty on how to go about developing a plan for their business. Our job is to take this certainty away. To get you started, here are a few questions to discuss with your team to help you better prepare for 2022:
- What is our financial and non-financial company data telling us about our general performance? When we look at our performance data for 2018, 2019, 2020 and now 2021 Year to Date, what are our performance trends telling us about where we are strong and where we need some improvements?
- How are each of our products or services performing for us? Are we seeing the desired level of growth in each or only in some? If some are performing well, what steps can we take to ensure this continues and if there are some underperforming, what steps can we take to improve them?
- How has COVID impacted our organization culture? Is our culture helping us make progress as a business or do we have organization issues holding back our performance?
- Do we see any changes occurring in our industry or business related to how customers are making purchase decisions? Are there any new technologies that could impact our business in a positive or negative way?
We work with business owners on a 4 Part Campaign for developing a powerful strategic plan that provides them the bridge they desire to one day be euphoric with the sale of their business. Part 1 of our campaign begins with “Where is our company today” and includes many questions, a few examples listed above. Start today preparing for 2022 and use the questions above to begin having productive new strategic dialog with your team. Use time as a friend in building the worth of your company and ensure you’re ready to maximize the year ahead strategically for your company.
