Doing so can help you see how to build the value of your business prior to exiting
One of the steps we take early on in engaging with new clients is sharing with them samples of CIMs (Confidential Information Memorandum). This very simply step a year or more before trying to sell your company can help trigger fantastic ideas for generating greater value, or company worth, with your business.
A CIM is the document that will ultimately be developed that will articulate for potential acquirer’s what your business is all about and why it’s an exciting investment opportunity for them. We refer to the CIM as your silent salesperson as a potential acquirer will receive the CIM (after signing a confidentiality agreement) and they will go through it in detail to determine what interest they will have in acquiring your company and what valuation they may place on it. Certainly, your broker or banker who is representing you in the process will be talking with potential suitors and adding valuable color to the CIM, but the document itself has a very important job to do in exciting an acquirer.
Well in advance of having the CIM written about your company, review a few solid examples. Doing so will help you in thinking of ways that you’ll want to present your business one day. The types of data and information you will want to effectively portray in your CIM that will tell your compelling company story. In my years as an operating CEO, we periodically reviewed CIMs of businesses and invariably doing so gave us great ideas for how we should mold our own business so that it would shine one day when we developed our CIM.
Contact us and we can share great examples of CIMs (company names redacted) that have helped prior sellers get the euphoric exit outcomes they desired. Don’t reinvent the wheel in selling your business one day, learn from others that know how best to prepare you and your company for your euphoric exit event.