Selling your business one day - great questions to ask today
As we wrap the first 6 months of the year, every business owner and CEO should be asking themselves strategic questions to evaluate where their company is on their value, or company worth, building journey. Once you have your financials closed for the month of June, meet with your leadership team and discuss these important questions:
- Is our revenue performance the first 6 months of this year flat, accelerating or decelerating versus the last 6 months of 2021?
- As we continue to come out of the COVID market impact, is our value proposition (the value we bring to our customers) and our unique selling proposition (how we are unique versus competition), still relevant or do we need to make any adjustments?
- In looking at the trailing 12 months of revenue and profit performance, (July 2021 thru June 2022), what does this month over month trend look like for us? Are we flat, accelerating in performance or decelerating?
- Are each of our products/services performing as we targeted/desired or are some performing well while others are not meeting our targets? Don’t just look at your consolidated revenues and margins, look at them by product/service types.
- In looking at revenue by our top customers (either specific customers or by customer segments), how are they performing the first 6 months of 2022 versus the last 6 months of 2021?
- When we look at our customers in tiers (i.e. customer #1-100, 101 – 250, 251 to 500, etc), which tiers are growing and which ones might be declining versus prior year(s)? For the balance of this year, should we place more emphasis on one of our tiers versus another?
- What is our employee attrition YTD versus 2021? What is it by department? What is it by employees who have only been with us 1 year or less and those with us more than 1 year?
Good leaders ask good questions of themselves and their teams. Asking strategic questions, and using data to answer them, can help you as a leader facilitate great dialog with your team. Use this time of year to engage your team in a strategic dialog as doing so could help you build new worth in your business.
