In Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer‘, Tom attends his own funeral, missing and presumed dead by his family. In so doing, he briefly glimpses a world without himself in it. It is much like James Stewart’s character, George Bailey, in Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a wonderful Life‘. In reality it’s difficult to conceive of a business world without ourselves in it because we still see this imagined world through our own eyes.
Many company owners are very hands-on when it comes to the running of their businesses. But what happens when it comes to selling a company on?
Research from Uscita Solutions’ Value Builder Score has shown that companies that can perform without their owner over a period of three months are 50 per cent more likely to get an offer than those with greater owner dependency.
So how can business owners, with an eye on selling up, gauge how effective their companies are at running independently of their involvement?
“It is difficult for business owners to let go but why not take a break?” suggests Uscita Solutions’ Paul Dodgshon. “If you want to know how your company will work without you, go on holiday, without your laptop. Switch off your mobile. See what develops”.
The result is likely to be a mixed bag of resourcefulness and problems. Resourcefulness in how employees run things in an owner’s absence. Problems arising due to queries and issues piling up, because only the business owner knows the answers to them.
“When business owners take a break, it gives them the opportunity to look at the issues raised by their absence and work out who can deal with them in the future.”
“This analysis can then feed in to the company’s procedures and processes, in order to capture and clarify how future issues should be dealt with, without the owner’s involvement”.
Business owners need to get a picture of how things can run without them and then take real, workable measures to make this happen. The end objective is to make a company sellable. If getting it to function smoothly without owner involvement increases this possibility, then it is worth exploring.
Uscita Solutions have produced a guide which covers the issues highlighted in this article along with 7 other key drivers that can improve the value of your business.
To download your free copy of this guide, please click on the link below;
