Category: Exit Planning

Buying & Selling a Company, Exit Planning

What Makes a Company Sell Quickly? Or at all?

Gregory Pearl

The rule of thumb in the business brokerage world is that only 20% of companies sell each year.  This means that 80% do not.  Is your business in the top 20% or bottom 80%? If you are interested in selling in the middle of an economic crisis, the chances of selling your company are even lower. There are certain things a business owner can do to make their company sell faster.  Or even sell at all.  To start, the seller should know what buyers often look for. What are some of the things buyers look for? Good quality sales and…

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Exit Planning

How to plan a business exit

Gregory Pearl

Business owners are so busy addressing everyday challenges that postponing business planning  is common.  Planning for the inevitable business exit is left for another time. That’s a problem.  Proper Exit Strategy Planning puts you, the business owner, in control. Measuring the risks and benefits of a business exit plan can be quite a daunting task. It is quite a bit of work and requires specialized expertise.  But, many organizations have enjoyed remarkable success by using exit planning as a cornerstone of achieving their goals. At its most basic, exiting a business is simple.  It is turning business value to something…

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Buying & Selling a Company, Exit Planning

Legal Considerations of Exiting Your Business

Timothy Foster

No doubt your business exit will be a complex transaction. Without the proper planning and drafting of the associated legal documents the negative tax, business, and legal consequences may be far-reaching. A well designed exit strategy starts with your goals and executes your exit plan with the necessary consideration to the business, tax, and legal components of the available strategies. Caution must be exercised because too many attorneys practice “This is the way we do it” legal advice. Their methods may have adverse tax consequences and impact the amount you pocket from the transaction and on the business’ cash flow.…

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Decision Making, Exit Planning

The Stock Market Goes Up, Goes Down or Stays the Same

Gregory Pearl

Here are at The Value Focus we talk about business decision making around Strategy, M&A, Exit Planning and Business Valuation. Short term trading in publically traded equity markets is not what we advise on. Still, I get asked about this topic reasonably often.  So here is some perspective. Recently, the publicly traded stock markets have become more volatile. I do not know if this will continue or not. Neither you or I know how the markets will perform in the short term.  I do know that the markets tend to increase over longer periods of time. In fact, there is…

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Exit Planning

More Thoughts on How to Prepare for a Successful Business Exit

Gregory Pearl

Continuing from the last post, here are four more ways to better prepare for a business exit. Before getting to the next four ways to prepare, I would suggest that the startup/company management always be talking to private equity types (if you can get their attention). If you can get one of them on your side, even if they will not invest directly, you will often receive excellent advice. A good PE type, and not all are good that’s for sure, are extremely knowledgeable and can help with everything from sales, and marketing to operations to product strategy. Here are…

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Exit Planning

Thoughts On What You Can Do For A Successful Business Exit

Gregory Pearl

In the startup world, there are more failures than successes. What is a success? It could be an Initial Public Offering. That means listing equity on a stock exchange. This is a long drawn-out process and complex. It’s expensive and only a very few businesses are truly eligible for this type of liquidity event. Selling your company (being acquired) is the most common exit. This includes both tech startups and non-tech companies. And this should be mentioned: Just keeping going is always an option. But sometimes personal circumstances of the owners don’t make this an attractive option. Statistically, most companies…

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Business Valuation, Decision Making, Exit Planning

Business Valuations Are Good for Your Business

Gregory Pearl

There are over 10 million small businesses in the United States. At any given time at least 10% of these businesses are facing a business transition issue. Most of those businesses facing a transition issue need valuations for tax reasons or for optimum financial planning. Or for an ownership change due to retirement or related issues. The number of businesses facing the transfer of ownership issues will continue to rise over the coming years as more baby boomers hit the age at which they would rather be on the golf course than in the office. Baby boomers’ children and new…

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