Many of the brightest visionaries and business owners I know have gotten to where they are on pure grit, intuition, and hard work. However, the time comes when they are ready to reach even higher heights, and leveraging data into information can supercharge the journey. 

Shifting from collecting under explored data to arming you and your business with this predictive information empowers you to tweak your business operations in real-time rather than waiting for next month to see your financial results or worse yet never doing this analysis in the first place.

For the first time in months, you open up your desk and pull out your notebook with your priorities listed. Amidst a list with some items crossed off as done and others awaiting your time and effort, one stares you right in the face: “succession plan”.

Every time you consult your list you see that one and then pick something else to work on. Planning your exit is something that just never seems to reach the top of your priority list. It’s never the right time to deal with this one, so you’ve ignored it.

Excessive owner dependence plagues many companies and buyers are on the lookout for it. If you’re looking to sell and retire, and you’re still sitting at the intersection of everything, you’ll likely be unable to fool savvy buyers.

While resolving your owner dependence issue can be a challenging problem to solve, it may be the largest key to unlocking meaningful value in the sale of your business.

“The kids will take it over and they’ll deal with it.” After all, who would turn down the opportunity of a lifetime, to step into the enterprise that provided the charmed life you and your children have enjoyed? Why would they choose any other path, right?

While the answers to these questions may seem self-evident to you, your assumptions are worth exploring.

When to sell is an age old question. In most cases, we can only answer this question years later with the benefit of hindsight. Trying to figure out the exact right moment to sell your company is an exercise in futility. That said, let’s discuss what we can and cannot say about market timing with the goal of landing at some practical, actionable advice.

Given that you as the seller plan to no longer own the business, you would probably like to leave as little money behind as possible. In a typical transaction it is not uncommon to see 10% or more of the purchase price held back in escrow or contingent payments for a year or even longer. This is an uncomfortable situation, especially when selling your business to a deep pocketed financial investor with access to the best legal counsel.

On the other hand, if a seller offers a R&W policy as part of the package to a buyer the premium needs to be paid, but the escrow goes away. This makes for a much cleaner transaction.

Do you continue to feel aligned in your mission? Or has life intervened and little-by-little (or all at once), as it inevitably does, have you become increasingly aware that your shared vision diverged somewhere along the way?

This common occurrence, which can be painfully obvious to observers, often goes unaddressed for months or even years amongst business partners. While ignorance may seem like bliss, it can often do real damage to your bottom line, limiting your exit options, one avoided conversation at a time.

There are other options. Let’s discuss some healthier ways to handle such a situation.

Net Working Capital (“NWC”) is the metaphorical grease that keeps the machinery of your enterprise churning out sales and profits. Yet it is often misunderstood and/or underestimated, especially in growing businesses.

People often joke about how “you have to spend money to make money”. This phrase is often used in the context of capital investments in land, property, plant, and equipment necessary to bring a project from concept to reality. While it’s true that every business requires capital expenditures, the attention afforded to big ticket items like machinery and equipment can result in losing sight of NWC which is necessary to assure the machinery can be run.

For the past year or more, you’ve realized that your organization has no effective expense control. You simply cannot approve every expenditure anymore without suffocating your business. On the other hand without written policies it seems that every month you get hit with an unexpected spending surprise. There must be a happy medium, right?

When it comes to the sale of your business, the most prized assets are the ones that have the highest potential to generate recurring future cash flow for the new owners. So the key to a successful business sale is not historical or present cash flow, but transferable future cash flow.