Insider Information

Find out what buyers look for and how to make your company saleable the right way. Free online video training shows you how investors think about acquiring businesses so you can become what they are looking to buy.

How to Make the Right Decision

We find that many businesses don’t think about the impacts of their decisions. The tasks they assign themselves are irrelevant if the bigger questions have not been addressed.

They work on a solution before fully understanding the problem. Therefore the only tool that we use is asking the right questions. “What problem are you trying to solve?”

“How will that solution affect the way things work and how people exchange information?”

“What will be different when you implement that solution?”

“Who do you need on board before you start to make sure a change actually is sustainable?” Now you know the tasks will pay off.

What do you think your company is worth?

Imagine your team winning the semi-finals of the big league play offs. You’re all set to play the game of your life. The one that will put your name down in history leaving the kind of legacy and trophy story you had always envisioned. You get to the day of the event and suit up. You’re all set to go out on the field and suddenly you discover you don’t a playbook. You don’t know the rules that will be used to govern your team’s play in the championship. Yet you will be expected to play. You’re chances of winning are close to zero.

This is what is happening to business owners today. They think their companies are worth a certain amount. Confidently, they step onto the playing field to find a buyer. Like a player who didn’t see the hit coming, they suddenly discover they needed to have prepared a playbook long before that big day. Not sure if this applies to you? Here is a business owner’s experience going forward with the wrong playbook.

 

When a buyer comes to call what should you do next?

Kudos to Brad Cherniak of Sapient Capital Partners for outlining what to do and what not do when a buyer calls your company to see if you want to sell.

It’s insider secrets like these that many business owners never find out about until it’s too late. Getting the low-down on what to do and when to do it to prepare your company for sale without devaluing or exposing your company to risk is why we wrote Fast-Track Secrets for Making Your Business Saleable.

 

How Social Media can power up your B2B marketing

Great article today in Canada’s National Post by Jacquelyn Cyr of Espresso Brand Agency. One of the big ways to stand out from the competition is to educate your customers and prospects about various ways to use your product, or add tips to make their business run better or provide expert opinion on issues that your business clients struggle with. Social Media is the perfect platform for these short and sweet but deep insights.

What kind of results can you expect? Depends on the strategy you select and the consistency that you deliver. Expect the unexpected. More name recognition, means you are better able to attract new employees. Better lead generation because people trust you to deliver value, not just say you do. You’ll be the first company on their mind because they hear from you regularly.

Want to power up your 2012? Work with a strategist to make sure the efforts you put into social media pay off. You want to be of influence in your target market, not just the guy who sends out the goofy you tube videos.

 

 

Own a Community Bank? Need a better 2012? Register for this Webinar

Bank Mergers & Acquisitions – THINK LIKE A BUYER !
Lorraine MacGregor of Spirit West Management and Erich Bollinger, EVP of Plaza Bank will review 2011 bank merger and acquisition activity as well as provide a future outlook for 2012 and beyond. Friday December 16, 2011 9:00 AM PST.

For more information and to register go to Community Bank Advisors

Will you play your game, or the economy’s game?

Today the head of the IMF and the Conference Board both declared the next decade the lost decade for economic growth. And the decade only just started!

Remember, economists deal in global statistics which are the AVERAGE of every country’s economic potential. You, the business owner, do not have to be an AVERAGE statistic in the next decade. Want more in your future than doom and gloom? Then change the game you’re playing in your business. Take back your future. Get your team together and brainstorm how you can deliver more value to your customers to earn their business and their loyalty.

Here are our top three tips for delivering top line value:

1. Reinvent your customers’ experience buying from you. Get their feedback. Search out their pet peeves. What works and what doesn’t. Choose to listen by being curious, rather than defensive. Every pet peeve has a golden opportunity in it for your business, but only if you choose to see it that way. Then analyze based on the complaints where the problems are in your customer experience system. Put together a team made up of someone from each part of the business, including those departments not part of the ‘problem’. Mandate? Reinvent how the process works to deliver what the customer really wants. Set a deadline and give this team carte blanche to come up with a game plan, budget and implementation plan you will approve.

2. Deliver value in surprising ways. How can you and your team go the extra mile for your customers? Can you teach them something that will help their business? Make introductions that will help generate more traffic? Show them how to get more mileage from your product or service. It’s like those Apple iPhone commercials that show you how to use their product. Or the webinars that Nevada State Bank put on featuring Darren Hardy from Success Magazine for how to build a successful mindset to deal with the economy. Or the supply salesperson who designed a supply cart for a hospital and filled it with her products so that the nurses didn’t have to take valuable time away from nursing to stock the shelves with new product deliveries.

3. What are you talking about? Are you adding to the doom and gloom mentality when you talk to your staff, suppliers and customers? Are you dwelling on the headlines or spending your creative energy with your team dreaming up how you are going to outshine the economy. Your mindset powers your business. What fuel are using?

As business owners, we can be part of the problem or part of the solution. We don’t have to succumb to the headlines. What will you choose to do?

 

 

 

Is it your time to sell your business?

According to John Warrilow of the Globe and Mail there are seven reasons you should sell out now because we are at the fork in the road in the economy. Warrilow makes some good pitches that all business owners should consider in evaluating whether this is the right time to sell the business. However he misses one mega problem. John suggests that an owner should consider selling his or her business if any of his seven reasons hit close to home. But most business owners who may want to sell, won’t be able to even if they resonate with Warrilow’s suggestions for selling. Why? The owners didn’t take the time to make their companies saleable, attractive to buyers. It takes two to four years to make a business saleable. That’s little secret is not broadcast to owners in any meaningful way. Now that would be something that the Globe and Mail should write about to educate the 3.2 million business owners looking at grey hair in the mirror and the ticking economy affecting their future. Find out not only what to do but how to make your business saleable by ordering an advanced copy of “Fast Track Secrets for Making Your Business Saleable” from Amazon.

Brand new Economy?

Don’t you wish we could wake up tomorrow to gleaming news on the economy? News so bright and shiny you need your shades just dreaming about the possibilities for your company? Because right now it seems like Groundhogs day redux over and over. Bad news drips on to everything we deal with in life. Where’s the fresh shower to clean it all off? And it doesn’t just smear your daily newspaper or favorite Internet site. The economy’s trail of dirty news blows into your business and mucks with the bottom line. It muddies the minds of your star performers and puts powerful ideas on hold.

Is a brand new economy wishful thinking? Not for some business owners. They’ve stopped listening to the news and that’s as good as shower. “You have to focus on what you do want, not what you don’t want. Then you see the possibilities unfold before you,” says Rob McGregor, a specialist in coaching business owners. Don’t want to hang on hold any longer? You need new indicators to guide your thinking.

What’s good, what’s new, what’s coming?

1. Capital IQ, the market research firm says that the mergers and acquisitions outlook data shows there are a lot of great companies on the market which means great buys for acquirers. Some owners are getting premium offers because they have discovered what it takes to make their business saleable.

2. Mobi Ditto, the new start up that’s transforming main street businesses into mobile marketing machines with their community heros program is racking up new accounts everywhere. Owners are signing on to use their text messaging program to help bring in new clients and give back to charities that help the people and animals of their communities. Their customers use the coupon to try the new business and get their investment back on the first purchase as well as know they are giving to charity. Everyone wins.

3. Success Magazine is pursuing stories of business owners who have made big come backs. The common theme? Every author of a comeback had to write a new chapter in their business strategy manual. Following the pack was not the way out. Innovation, recognizing the truth of the situation and talking to customers brought out the way forward.

What are you doing to separate your self from the muck that slimes the best of intentions? Tell us your story and we will select the best ones to showcase.

Condolences to Common Sense

Obituary printed in the London Times – Interesting and sadly rather true.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common
Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how
old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic
red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable
lessons as:

• - Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
• - Why the early bird gets the worm;
• - Life isn’t always fair;
• - and Maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t
spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not
children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned
but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old
boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens
suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher
fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for
doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining
their unruly children.It declined even further when schools were required to get
parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student;
but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted
to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became
businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself
from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for
assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman
failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a
little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and
Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by
his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

1. I Know My Rights
2. I Want It Now
3. Someone Else Is To Blame
4. I’m A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was
gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority
and do nothing.

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