Your ExitMap Blog
Exit Planning Articles Focused on your Exit Options
Exit: Exit Options
Should you be targeting a specific segment of the buyer market? How can that be accomplished? What technical issues will you face with taxation, negotiation and contract structure? The specific and unique challenges of Family, Employee and Third-Party sales.
Should you be targeting a specific segment of the buyer market? How can that be accomplished? What technical issues will you face with taxation, negotiation and contract structure? The specific and unique challenges of Family, Employee and Third-Party sales.
Most Recent Your ExitMap Blog Articles
Subordinated Debt in an Exit Plan Subordinated debt can be a key consideration in any sale transaction. Whether you are contemplating a sale to a third party or an internal transfer to employees, the topic of taking second place to a lender will likely come up. If an outside buyer is financing the purchase, seller notes can be considered as part of a down payment, but any bank will require it to hold second priority to their loan. If the Small Business Administration is involved, they will usually demand that the seller assume some of the risk with a secondary loan. In an internal sale, that will be a requirement. Risk vs. Reward As ... Read more Life After Exit -- Time is of the Essence From time to time, we share real stories about life after exit from owners who have sold their businesses. Some are great and some… not so much. The have agreed to share their experiences to help other owners prepare for both the process of transferring their companies and what comes after. The Business BVA Scientific, a distributor of laboratory supplies and equipment, started in Bob and Nancy Davison’s bedroom with the garage serving as the “warehouse.” Both had a background in laboratory supply sales, and they focused on building deeper customer relationships than the multi-billion dollar vendors who dominate the industry. That approach helped the ... Read more Exit Planning - Maintaining Control For many owners, their biggest concern in an exit plan is maintaining control. Whether they seek to sell to employees, family or a third-party, there is a fear that, once started, the process will have its own rules and momentum. My colleague John Warrillow, author of Built to Sell and The Automatic Customer, has written an excellent white paper on the types of people who own businesses. John previously owned a data-driven marketing company, and always backs up his opinions with solid research. I’ll leave the indicators of the entrepreneurial types to John, since it is his material. His conclusion, however, is that 2% of owners are Mountain Climbers. ... Read more Choosing Your Timeframe to Exit “My timeframe? Talk to me in about five years.” When business owners are asked about exit planning, that answer is almost ubiquitous. In fact, a much-quoted 2008 survey of owners by Price Waterhouse Coopers (now PwC – not clear why Mr. Waterhouse warranted lower case) found that 85% of private business owners said they expected to sell in five years. Clearly, that didn’t happen, since it would have required some 1,500 businesses to be sold daily during that period. (The brokerage industry claims about 9,000 sales a year.) In fact, when the survey results were broken down, they discovered that 85% of 60 year old owners ... Read more Internal Transfers: Legacy vs. Lucre Lifestyle vs. Legacy Why would I refer to the results of an internal transfer as “lifestyle vs. lucre?” Lucre is a pejorative term. While it is technically just a synonym for money, most dictionaries draw the parallel to its use in “filthy lucre;” money that is ill-gotten or otherwise dishonorably obtained. I was honored to present at the Exit Planning Summit this past weekend. One of the things I discussed was the need to help business owners determine whether their personal vision for their company’s future was based on lifestyle or legacy. That’s how I normally term it, and there is no negative connotation attached to either ... Read more After the Exit; "Nothing Will Change" “Nothing will change.” It is almost de rigueur for an acquirer to include that in his or her opening comments to the incumbent staff of a just-purchased business. Sometimes it is the seller’s attempt at making folks feel better. “Don’t worry. They promised me that nothing will change.” In the moment, it seems like a calming thing to say, a confidence builder for the employees who have just been informed that they have a new boss. In the long run, it can cause more problems than it solves. Everything Changes In any company, change is ongoing. Employees are asked to learn additional skills. Systems are upgraded. Procedures ... Read more Exiting a Family Business: Three Questions Transitioning a Family Business has special issues. This interview was reprinted last week in the newsletter of Steven Bankler, CPA. We asked San Antonio business consultant John F. Dini, one of the nation’s leading experts on business ownership and exit planning, for his advice on handing down the family business. As the author of Hunting in a Farmer’s World, Beating the Boomer Bust and 11 Things You Absolutely Need to Know About Selling Your Business, Dini literally “wrote the book” on succession planning. He recommends that Baby Boomers and other business owners with an eye on retirement carefully consider the following questions. What will your role in the company ... Read more Exiting a "Time and Place" Business “The purpose of middlemen in the marketplace is to provide time and place utility.” I remember the light bulb going on in Economics 101 when my professor said that. Suddenly, I understood the concept of added value. Someone had to get the product to the customer. “After all,” the professor continued, “The footwear manufacturer in Massachusetts can’t sell a pair of shoes directly to someone in California. They can’t manufacture and handle thousands of customers. It would be a nightmare, and completely unprofitable.” The fact that Massachusetts was still known for shoe manufacturing gives you some idea of how long ago this took place. So long ago, ... Read more Exit Planning: Telling Secrets Planning your exit from a business is a process of telling secrets. For many owners, it is the most terrifying part of selling. A rancher in South Texas once said to me, “I’m going to tell you a secret, and you have to solemnly swear not to tell anyone. When you do, you have to make them swear the same thing.” Most business owners are very cautious about with whom they share their exit plans. The logic is intuitive. The more the information is shared, the bigger the chance is that someone will use the knowledge against you. Competitors will tell customers, insinuating that your company will no longer ... Read more The Immortal Business Goes on Forever Do you run an immortal business? I hope so. If you answered “no,” or even hesitated to be sure of your response, then you don’t think of your business as immortal. So when do you plan to shut it down? Most owners react viscerally to that question. They’ve invested too much time and too much sweat to watch their companies become a memory. They care too much about employees and customers to entertain the idea of abandoning them. For many, the business is a part of them. Shutting it down would be like having a piece of you die. Ironically, we play mental gymnastics in our ... Read more Selling Your Business: Money isn't Everything When I was a kid my mother said “Money isn’t everything” in response to every envious glance at another kid’s stuff. As I became successful enough to afford things for my children, I reversed the meaning. “Money isn’t everything” became my reminder that their possessions didn’t make them better or happier than others. The same holds true for companies. An entrepreneur who is struggling to generate sufficient working capital is an unlikely prospect for a lender, let alone an investor. I regularly receive approaches from business owners who have a great ideas, but have run out of capital without generating cash flow. They usually have ... Read more Selling to Employees: Is Your Exit Strategy Right in Front of You? When I interview a prospective client for exit planning assistance, we usually explore selling to employees. The first reaction is always “That won’t work. They don’t have any money.” If you have a company with reasonable cash flow, a talented management team and sufficient time, selling to employees is not only a realistic option; it may be the best way to get value from your business. I’ll define those parameters for you in a minute. If you haven’t read my eBook Beating the Boomer Bust, follow the link for the free download. My research shows that the hard numbers will inevitably translate into a hard market. ... Read more What's in YOUR Nondisclosure Agreement? A Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) has become one of the basic standard documents in every company’s wallet. Between the rising swell of Baby Boomer owners entertaining exit planning, and greater caution surrounding the legal issues of strategic partnering, an NDA is now the standard next step following many initial exploratory conversations. What should you protect in an NDA? (Note: I am not an attorney, and I don’t create Nondisclosure Agreements for clients.) First, there is the question of who is covered by the agreement. Most allow for advisors to each party to see the agreement. That can encompass accountants, attorneys, consultants, bankers and employees. I think employees present the ... Read more Too Busy to Do Business Another tax filing season has passed, and the entire US accounting profession comes up for air. Of course, thousands of businesses and individuals have filed for extensions, thereby postponing the pain of calculating their final numbers for anywhere from a few days to six months. As the CPAs emerge from their winter burrows and blink in the sun, the rest of the business community reenergizes, suddenly able to move forward with planning and analysis that has been languishing while their numbers-crunchers were busy losing sleep and feasting on ramen noodles. I met with one firm about doing some valuation work in late February. They appeared ... Read more What is the Right Price? Of all the misconceptions by business owners, the ones surrounding their company’s value are both the most common and often wildly inaccurate. I’ve been working for the last couple of months on the training videos for advisors in our new product, The ExitMap®. (You can take the assessment for free at www.myexitmap.com). In one session, we role-play a vignette about a financial planner discussing the value of a business with a client planning retirement. Part of it goes something like this. Q: “So Bob, how much do you expect to realize from your business when you sell it?” A: “I’ve heard from my accountant that most small businesses sell ... Read more |