CEOs look at the range of responsibilities involved in business exit planning and get overwhelmed. I think it’s a key underlying factor in why over 95% of all business owners do not plan how they’ll get out. To achieve both business and personal goals in your exit planning, here are a few core strategies to keep your sanity and keep all the pieces together:
Document Your Exit Plan
To include the growth strategies that will maximize valuation on your timeline. Get the plan out of your head. This will make it tangible and real for everyone. It takes the decisions to be made out of the realm of emotions and dreams and makes the concrete actionable tasks.
Protect And Maintain The Value Of The Business
That you can monetize at exit. Minimize the risk that any growth strategy you invoke will negatively impact the growth curve you are forecasting for the buyers.
Train and Delegate
Move key employees into positions of operational responsibility and reward them for results. When you both train and delegate, you add immediate value to the employees directly, motivate them to stay and demonstrate to buyers that the value is in the business, not in you, the exiting CEO.
Evaluate All Your Primary Exit Options
(financial or strategic sale, employee or management buyout, transferring ownership within the family) Thoroughly, not just to fulfill your dreams but also to ensure the ongoing success of the business and job security of your employees from the growth trajectory you’ve put in place. Opportunities and options abound in exit planning. Do your research before you settle on the option that fits you best.
Activate Your Team
Seek out and build a powerful team of experts, multi-disciplinary advisors to help you achieve your goals. Whether your business value is under $5M or over $50M, you’ll face the same issues along the way. Start with an exit strategist who can look at the whole business, not just the exit transaction right through to implementing your next steps, your reinvention after a successful exit. Your exit strategist should be a masterful quarterback and facilitator for your team of experts, allowing you to focus on building value in the business to maximize your options.
Kerri Salls
Exit Strategist
P.S. If you have any questions relating to exiting planning, please email me. I’d be happy to assist in whatever way I can.
