Building value is essential to having a successful company as well as a successful exit. As a business owner, you will always be striving to improve your bottom line. What you’re looking for are big healthy profit margins that are always on the up. And yet, often we can be misled or confused into thinking that these high-profit margins directly correlate to the sellable value of your business.
Many businesses are never bought or sold because founders fail to focus on what creates true market value. Often owners get sucked into working in the business instead of on the business, which results in the business becoming too reliant on the owner. The owner becomes the subject matter expert that everyone, including customers, relies on.
“’ Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.”- Anthony Volodkin
If you’re a business owner and you’re still doing all or most of the job yourself, your company may not be worth as much as you think.
So let’s have a look at how to get off the tools and make your business something worth buying.
Build A-Team
You need to develop your team. It is vital that the staff in your employ work with independence, confidence, and competence. What you want is the staff that work independently and at the same time, accurately. You’re going to do this by setting up lots of instruction manuals and getting your systems and processes clean so that the business can run without you.
If your staff are valuable, loyal and accurate, they’ll be an asset to the sale. When buyers can see that your team is a powerhouse, they’ll want to take your employees together with your business.
Automate
The next thing that you need to do is to automate as much as you can. Taking routine, recurring tasks off your to-do list is essential for your business’s productivity. While you may be able to delegate some complicated, repetitious chores to employees, you can easily automate the simple ones using applications. There’s no reason to have people on the tools when you can have a cheaper, more efficient and accurate version of that function performed for you through automation. Once you have most of your tasks automated, this will attract buyers who want a seamless transition if they buy your business.
Outsource
There are so many functions in a business that don’t even need to be kept in-house. There are so many areas that you can outsource so start researching what areas of your business you would want to outsource. This is very attractive when you come to sell your business, and it will certainly maximize all of that healthy bottom line that you’ve been trying to work towards as you are building up that saleable asset.
The better shape your business is in, the more likely you are to sell it quickly for a premium price. Some of the simplest steps you can take are the most effective – build your team, outsource and automate. Take a long, hard look at every aspect of your business and start taking action to maximise its value right away.
