How to Prepare a Company for Sale

The Wall Street Journal has a great website on many issues about selling businesses including the weighty competing agendas of what to do with a family business .

Also at the Wall Street Journal site are a series of webcasts called SmartMoney TV This series is well worth listening to.

How Leadership Training Helps the Bottom Line

Much has been said about companies needing ‘the right management’ team. But what does that term mean really? To understand the concept it might be useful to know the difference between managing and leadership and remember that it is the people performing the work under the right leadership that make or break the bottom line.

Managers set the strategy and work with staff on the action plan. Leaders set the vision for how this work should be done and where the company should be philosophically, financially and strategically once the project is complete.

Leaders mentor managers by respectfully holding them able and accountable. Managers delegate and work with staff to ensure they have the resources to do the work. Sometimes the best leaders are staff members. Sometimes those people with leadership titles don’t know how to do more than manage, nevermind mentor.

In our work, we’ve found that the hardest thing for manager/leaders to do is to delegate… to stop thinking others don’t do it as well as they do. Many managers think you should be able to show someone something once and then get mad at them the second time when they ‘don’t get it’. People should just know how to change how they work by being told what to do. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but humans don’t work that way. And neither should managers who want to be leaders.

If your management team isn’t getting results and gets more resistance than progress, read this article about how leadership training helps the bottom line.

Not everyone is born knowing how to take on the these two roles.

Business Owners Must Think Like Investors

Business owners today are facing a perfect storm of controllable uncontrollable variables. But according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 52% don’t know they need to take themselves out of harms way.

Think of the situation before Hurricaine Katrina: some people believed it was important to leave the New Orleans area, and some did not. Those that did not suffered and the rest of us were left wondering what it was that didn’t compel them leave New Orleans when they had the chance. Today, three years after Katrina, when the forecasters yell Hurricaine, the residents along the Gulf Coast don’t think twice, they go.

What’s going to galvanize business owners into getting ready to avoid the perfect storm?

The boomer bulge, born 1946 through 1962 will spend the next ten to fifteen years extracting their wealth out of the economy to put to other uses. Or I should say, attempting to extract their share of their company’s value. The only problem is, owners have not prepared their businesses so that they are attractive for investors to acquire them.

A perfect storm of influences will increase the supply of companies for sale right when the need is greatest for investors to buy them. The storm is manageable, but only if owners take preventive action now to be ready. It can take 2-3 years to put the company on a growth plan. It’s more than just slapping a coat of paint on and installing granite counters.

Here are the big clouds on the horizon for this perfect storm:

1. The economy is in a decline;

2. There are more than 1.7 million businesses in Canada. 50% are owned by boomers. 500,000 will want to sell. In any given year in Canada, roughly 25,000 businesses change hands.

3. Owners don’t like thinking about the day they won’t own the business

4. Owners don’t know who to talk to. It’s understandable that they don’t talk about it. They don’t want competitors or employees to find out they’re thinking of transitioning their ownership.

Business owners need to take heed and learn how to see their organizations through the eyes of an investor: get to know the key indicators they look for and make sure they are instilled throughout the company. Remember, an investor buys the future certainty of profitability, rather than the past. For every foggy indicator, the risk increases and so the price they are willing to pay decreases.

How to Maximize Your Company’s Worth: The CEO’s Guide to Becoming Prepared for Investment

Title: How to Maximize Your Company’s Worth: The CEO’s Guide to Becoming Prepared for Investment

Location: Surrey BC
Description: Are You Thinking about Recapitalizing or Changing Ownership of Your Company?

It might only be a thought in the back of your mind now or high on your agenda, however you should know now how to achieve a profitable exit, buyout or obtain growth capital, by getting your company primed to be seen in its best light. Is your company investor-ready? To find out, you are invited to attend,
Start Time: 08:30
Date: Thursday March 19, 2009

End Time: 19:00

Clean Tech Case Studies

Back in 1990 when we first started working with companies that environmental solutions that make business sense (our term), these products were called environmental technologies. Almost a generation later, Clean Tech is attracting millions in venture capital www.cleantech.com and governments are mandating their use. We have worked with more than 40 different clean tech solutions and companies over the last 18 years.

Clean Tech companies need smart efficient and fast growth strategies. Our philosophy is to get them joint venture partnerships with large companies that will gain market share by adopting a clean tech product and strategy. Here is a partial selection of the kinds of companies we helped grow. Have a clean tech company that needs more market leverage and is already revenue positive? Call us at 604-306-7707 to discuss where in the world we can help you grow to.

Clean Tech Case Studies

• Can an Alternative Energy Business be Built on a Nasty Waste Stream?
• Introducing New Consumer Products in a Highly Competitive Market
• Ocean Energy in Canada: Pathways to Commercialization
• Introducing Environmentally Smart Substitutes into Established Industrial Product Markets
• Greening a New Product in an Old Line Business
• Finding Joint Venture Partners/Buyers

Difficult People and Situations Case Studies

Frustrated with how some people are getting the job done? Don’t like how your people aren’t taking responsibility? Tired of the infighting, cliques or attitudes within and between departments?

As owners, your attitude sets the tone. Most of us don’t realize what attitude we are projecting on to others that results in a sea of conflict. The bad news is, that these situations exist for a reason. The good news is, you can do something about it. By changing how you view people, how you lead people and how you set performance goals, you would be surprised quickly the company culture, and therefore productivity and profitability starts to improve.

Got conflict? That’s the symptom. Read the case studies to understand the root cause and the effect that trying to weed out the conflict can have if you don’t address the real problems.

Conflict often means you are missing systems and processes needed to affect communications hand offs between departments: when people are in conflict, they stop talking. The customer’s message (what they hoped they were buying from you) gets lost in the communication chain through the company. Unsatisfied customers don’t tend to buy again.

Want a Turnaround Specialist on call with your team?

Call 604-377-4307. Having us on retainer means you solve the problem in a fraction of the time instead of ignoring all the warning signs. Then your good people start leaving before your challenging people do.

Difficult People & Situations Case Studies

• It’s Not My Problem, He’s the Problem!
• We Can’t Fire Him, We Need Him
• The Boss Blames Others