Value Drivers

Have you ever wondered why one business has buyers lining up to pay top dollar while another sits on the market for months or years? What do buyers look for in a prospective business acquisition? The characteristics buyers seek are called Value Drivers, and they must exist before the sale process even begins. Value Drivers are characteristics of a business that either reduce the risk associated with owning the business or enhance the prospect that the business will grow significantly in the future. It is your job as the owner to create value within your business prior to a sale.

Using Short-Term Key-Employee Incentives To Increase Sale Price

One of a business owner’s greatest challenges is to attract, motivate, and keep key employees. As owners approach the end of the marathon of exiting their businesses, often tired and distracted by everything they’ve done, they begin to assume that it is no longer worthwhile to keep and motivate key employees. However, keeping key employees is not only worthwhile but also necessary if the business is to be sold at the highest possible price.

Understanding Business Value

A successful Exit Plan results in the business owner exiting their business with the financial resources to meet their future needs. In Step Two of The BEI Seven Step Exit Planning Process™, Exit Planners work with business owners to quantify the value of their assets as well as the financial needs of the business owner following the sale of their business.

Transferring Your Company to Key Employees

An owner wishing to sell business to management – and specifically to key employees – faces two unpleasant facts: Their employees have insufficient funds (most likely) and they cannot borrow enough, at least not enough to cash out the owner.

Top 10 Deal Pitfalls

This white paper describes 10 deal pitfalls (in no particular order) that each have the capability to derail a deal, some more effectively than others. All of these pitfalls are fairly common, although some owners are prone to fall into more pits than others.

Successful Transfer of the Family Business

What could be easier than transferring your family business to its natural successor: your heirs apparent, your offspring? If some of your first guesses were peace in the Middle East, increasing honesty in politics, or convincing a teenager that he or she might be wrong about something, you have probably witnessed your share of family-business transfer disasters.

Setting Goals

All business owners will exit their businesses, either by choice or as circumstances dictate (e.g., death, incapacity). Ideally, owners want to exit on their terms: leaving their businesses in the hands of successors they choose, on a date they pick, and for the money they need and want.

Leaving Your Business is Inevitable

Owners begin thinking about the Exit Planning Process when two streams of thought begin to converge. The first stream is a feeling that they want to do something besides go to work every day: either they would like to be someplace else—doing something else—or they simply no longer get the same kick out of doing what they are doing.

Exit Paths for Business Owners

When business owners start to think about exiting their companies, the number of possible Exit Paths can seem limitless. In reality, there are only eight.

Employee Incentive Planning

As business owners plan to exit their businesses, they must confront the challenge of incentivizing employees—specifically, management—to stay with the company after they have left. Having a strong, established, and committed management team to take the reins once an owner has exited is becoming more of a prerequisite than a luxury when selling or transferring the business to a third party.

Changing Your Role in Business to Help it Grow

If business owners want to grow their businesses, it’s practically a given that they must change their roles within the business at some point. Peter Drucker, who is widely considered to be the founder of modern management and wrote nearly 40 books on the topic during his lifetime, believed as such when he wrote, “As a new venture develops and grows, the roles and relationships of the original entrepreneurs inevitably change.”

Business Continuity Planning

Successful owners are usually optimistic people, somewhat averse to dwelling on the more unpleasant aspects of business. Contemplating one’s demise certainly qualifies as an unpleasant aspect. Consequently, advisors tend to use a lot of softer phrasings when they talk about business continuity.

Growing Your Business Through Acquisition

This white paper is dedicated to the owner eventually seeking to exit his or her business in style. Acquiring other businesses is a tool that business owners use when growing their own businesses. The operative word is growing, since the purpose of growing your business through acquisition is to increase the value of your existing business.

White Papers