Preparing Your Business for Sale

Why Fire Trucks Always Back In: Being Ready is Really Important

Have you ever noticed that fire trucks always back into the fire station? Why don’t they just pull into their parking spot snout-forward like the rest of us?  Backing in at the end of a shift saves them time when they have to get to a fire. They back in to be ready; whether the call comes in 5 minutes or 5 days, they are prepared to pull out as quickly as possible. Like the firemen, you, as a business owner, need to be ready when you get the call from someone who wants to buy your business. And these … Read more

Avoid the Superstar Sales Rep Trap (and Build the Value of Your Business)

For your business to be valuable – and sellable one day – you need some way to generate sales after you’re gone.  Many business owners hire a superstar salesperson to replace themselves as a rainmaker but that’s a trap. By replacing yourself with a single salesperson, you’re simply trading a dependency on you for dependence on a sales rep, and your business will be no more sellable as a result. When we analyzed the users of The Sellability Score, a self-assessment test business owners use to understand how to drive up the value of their company, we found that businesses … Read more

Deciding When to Start Preparing a Business for Sale

Have you ever wondered when is the right time to start preparing your business for sale?  We recommend you start early if your goal is to maximize the value and sellability of your business. Here’s a tool we’ve put together to help you decide:

How to Make Your Business Less Dependent on You

Whether you’re planning to sell your company sometime soon or sometime in the future; now is the time to ensure that your business isn’t all about you. From the latest Sellability Score* research involving 2300 companies from around the globe, here are two key factors that are linked to the probability of getting an offer for your business when it’s time to sell. #1: You’re almost twice as likely to get an offer if your business can survive the “hit-by-a-bus” test. If you were out of action for three months and unable to work, would your business keep running smoothly? … Read more

Choose a Good Accountant by Ron Edmonds in February Landscape Management

The February 2013 issue of Landscape Management is out.  It contains an article by Ron Edmonds of The Principium Group entitled “Choose a Good Accountant” which explores considerations when selecting an outside accountant and thoughts on when its time to add an in-house one.  Here’s a link to the article and the magazine.