Trevor Clark â€" professional speaker, business and executive coach.

Do you plan to sell your business at some point in the (near or distant) future?

Whether you will be selling to retire, or are simply keen to pursue other opportunities, a question that may help get clarity on how easy the sale will be, and at how good a price, is “Do you own a Business, or do you own a JOB?” (Bear in mind that JOB stands for Just Over Broke)?

A business that cannot work when you are gone, is simply not going to be an attractive opportunity for a serious investor. He/she will want you out and will want the salary and/or profits you were taking out of the business to now deliver a return on the buyer’s investment.

If you can demonstrate that the business will be easy for the buyer to take over, or better yet that the buyer will hardly need to be hands-on or operational, your business will truly begin to look like an attractive asset.

We use a simple checklist to guide the coaching process in getting a business ‘sale ready’, and often find that, once a business is ready-to-sell, the owner no longer wants to sell as this business is now Profitable and (importantly) Working without you!

Sound good? Track your business against the structure below to get a picture of your current progress. While work around systems may sound dry and boring to some â€" trust me that fun and freedom will follow once this important work is done and put into practice.

Step 1
Your vision statement: Have you taken the time to articulate not what you do, but why you do it? What is the exciting ‘end goal’ or purpose for which your organisation exists in the first place. This simple statement must enrol and inspire. If it does not, do not be surprised if you attract the wrong people, and cannot motivate them to go that extra mile.

Step 2
Your mission statement: Now define the roadmap of how you will achieve this vision â€" ideally clarify the following areas:

• The products/services we currently offer and plan to offer
• The kind of clients we want to work for
• The kind of people we want on our team, and
• What makes us different, special or better (our uniqueness must be defined and captured for posterity)

Step 3
Culture statement: Defining the behaviour or values your team members can expect from one another. Culture is often a casualty of growth and we hear senior team members of established businesses complain
that, “It isn’t the same/as fun/etc. as it used to be when we were smaller.”

Write down your company core values now and keep them alive in the stories you and your team tell.

Step 4
Goals: This one goes without saying â€" goals give us a direction, and a point against which we can measure progress and speed. Without clearly defined goals (and a feedback loop), your team is literally going in circles.

Step 5
Your organisation chart: Quite simply, “Who reports to who.” Without a regularly updated organogram that is shared with the team, it is inevitable that there is going to be duplication of effort, and a lot of missed shots.

Step 6
Position contracts: A clear document for every position on the organogram on the core functions and duties of the incumbent. Signed by the person currently responsible for that role; updated and signed every time
there is a performance review/structural change.

Step 7
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Does every person in your organisation have three to four clearly defined KPIs by which you can measure his/her performance at the end of every month?

Step 8
How to manuals, videos and pictures: “I don’t care how you did it at your last company, when you work here, this is how we do things.” Training and induction guides, checklists, stickers and forms: they work â€" if implemented and accessible when a team member is stuck/unsure!

Step 9
Your company management system: Where do your staff go to find all of the above before calling you? It’s no use 80% of the above items being in your head or on your laptop â€" get it all organised and accessible on your company server, or in a cloud-based platform like Dropbox, SharePoint or Google Drive. It may also be worth your while researching some of the modern apps that facilitate this process and, at very least, a good
old-fashioned lever arch file with your company IP (and all your hard work) saved and shareable with your team.

Our Approach
I can pretty much guarantee that most of the above elements already exist in some form or other in your operation. Some in your head, some in a colleague’s head, in various laptops and multiple versions of various documents in different files/cabinets. Our coaching approach makes the process of getting this cleaned up, and completed, a lot simpler than you would imagine.

If you want some help getting the process started, or an accountability partner to give you the push/kick to get your systems file completed, get in touch with us today. 

T: +27 (0) 31 266 2258
durban@actioncoach.com
www.mastery.co.za