Pre-Sale Business Makeover
Make the Business Easier for Someone Else to Own
If you are thinking about selling your business in the next year, there is a useful question to ask before you speak to a buyer:
What would worry me if I were buying this business?
If everything still depends on you, the business may work very well while you are there and look considerably less attractive when somebody starts imagining it without you.
Michael will spend the lead-up to sale helping you work through the parts of the business that make a buyer wonder what happens after you leave.
Start Before the Business Is on the Market
Trying to fix owner dependence while a buyer is already asking questions is fairly late.
If you have around 12 months, Michael can help you use that time properly.
The aim is to make the business easier to understand, easier to operate and less dependent on you before somebody starts looking closely at it.
This is not about dressing up the business for sale.
It is about fixing things that probably should have been fixed anyway.
Get the Business Out of Your Head
A lot of small businesses work because the owner remembers everything.
You know the customers. You know the history. You know what happens when something goes wrong. You know which jobs need checking and which person needs reminding.
That works until the person buying the business asks:
"How does all of this work when you're not here?"
Michael will help you look at where knowledge, relationships and decisions still sit with you and what can realistically be moved into the team, systems or processes before sale.
Michael's existing systems work is already built around a simple idea: the business should eventually need less of the director, not more.
In the lead-up to a sale, that becomes even more important.
Michael can help you look at:
- Decisions that still come back to you
- Work somebody else could own
- Customer relationships that only sit with you
- Processes that exist only in your head
- Managers who need more responsibility
- Problems you keep personally fixing
- Meetings or approvals that depend on you
- Areas where the team needs more confidence before you step away
The aim is not to remove you from the business overnight.
It is to make your eventual exit less of an operational event.
Fix the Things a Buyer Will Notice
The 12 months before sale is also a good time to look at the smaller problems everyone inside the business has learned to tolerate.
Poor follow-up. Old systems. Unclear responsibilities. Weak marketing. Messy customer information. Too much admin. No useful reporting.
Any one of those may be manageable.
Together, they can make the business feel much harder to take over.
Michael will help you work through the things that create unnecessary friction and decide which ones are worth fixing before somebody else starts asking about them.
Make Growth Easier to Explain
A buyer will probably want to know where the business can go next.
"There's heaps of potential" is not a particularly useful answer.
Michael will help you get clearer on where growth could realistically come from, what the business already does well and what has been left underdeveloped.
That may give you a much better story to tell about the future of the business because it is based on things that actually exist rather than a generic promise that the next owner could grow it.
The Week-Away Test Becomes Very Useful Here
Michael already uses the idea of the director taking a full week away to see what breaks.
Before selling a business, that becomes a very practical exercise.
- Can the team operate without you?
- Which decisions stop?
- Who gets nervous?
- Which customers insist on speaking to you?
- What problems suddenly appear?
Michael can help you use what that week exposes and work through the remaining dependencies before you exit.
The pressure test is already part of Michael's approach to measuring how independently a business can operate.
Use the 12 Months to Build a Better Business
Even if the eventual sale takes longer than expected, the work is still useful.
You should end up with a business that relies less on you, has clearer systems, makes better use of the team and is easier for someone else to understand.
Those are worthwhile improvements whether the sale happens in twelve months, eighteen months or later.
Thinking About Selling in the Next Year?
Michael can help you look at the business from the perspective of the person who may eventually have to own it.
Then you can spend the next 12 months working on the parts that need attention while you still have time to do something about them.