Exit Planning Questions
What Questions Can You Expect an Advisor to Ask About Your Plans for Exiting?
The 10 Questions Every Exit Planning Professional Should be Asking
The best way to get something done is to begin. Like purchasing life insurance or a burial plot, taking steps toward making a plan to leave your company is something that most business owners want to put off. Even though it’s an inevitability, actually taking the first step is difficult. In your mind you know that you need to do it but it’s an emotional decision that in your heart you simply don’t want to make.
You WILL exit your business. How you do it is up to you. If you want to do it on your own terms, in your own time and in complete control then you should start the planning process three to ten years out.
Once you decide to take that first step, you will want to meet with an exit planning professional to get started. It might be your CPA, Attorney, Financial Planner or Business Coach, but someone will need to lead your team because it will take all of them to come up with a Comprehensive Exit Plan. Just make sure that the professional you choose to lead that team understands, supports and defends your objectives.
The Questions:
Before you meet with your Advisor, you might want to go over these exit planning questions and formulate answers that you feel comfortable sharing. An advisor focused on your goals will inevitably ask some form of each and every one of them.
If you also Take our Free Assessment, you will be able to provide your advisor with a summary report that will give you both a realistic and concrete place to start with the planning process.
1. How do you see your involvement in your business changing or evolving in the future?
2. What’s your next great adventure after you leave your business?
3. What obstacles are you seeing that could derail your business or personal goals in the coming years?
4. What role does your business need to play in helping you achieve financial freedom?
5. What is your plan for your ownership interest? (Do you plan to pass ownership along, or arrange for a sale some day?)
6. What method or methods have you used to assess the value of your business, and how confident are you in that process?
7. Given your (buyer or successor) plans, have you thought about who the best leader for your business might be?
8. What will happen with your customers, vendors, employees, and competitors if something happens to you?
9. What planning suggestions have other business advisors given you to prepare for the future ownership of your business?
10. What do you see as your greatest challenge when you think about planning for the future?Download PDF Question Sheet
The ExitMap® Assessment for Business Owners
The First Step to Understanding the Complexities of Preparing a Company for Transition
The ExitMap® Assessment questionnaire consists of 22 questions and produces a high quality 12-page summary report which will be emailed to you. The report ranks the overall preparedness of a company for transition and provides a breakdown of the four major categories of readiness; Finance, Planning, Profit/Revenue and Operations. If you are a business owner just starting to think about exit planning or if you just want to know where you and your company stand, this is your first step.
