Will Your Business be More Valuable this Time Next Year?
Most business owners set goals that focus on hitting certain revenue or profit milestones. But If your goal is to own a more valuable business by this time next year, you may want to add the following targets:
- Take a two-week vacation without checking in with the office. Why? When you return, you’ll see how well your company preformed and where you need to make changes with personnel or systems.
- Commit to paper at least one process per month so that others will be able to clearly follow your system. If you document one process each month, the task will be less daunting.
- Offload at least one customer relationship. Like most business owners, you are still your company’s best salesperson, but this can be a liability in the eyes of an acquirer. By the time you are ready to sell, your key customers should not be relying on you as their relationship manager.
- Cultivate a new relationship with a new supplier. An over-reliance on one or two suppliers can create a liability for your business. By spreading some of your business to other suppliers, you keep your best suppliers hungry and you can make a case to an acquirer that you have other sources for your critical inputs.
- Create a recurring revenue stream. Valuable companies can look into the future and see where their revenue is going to come from. Recurring revenue models can vary from charging customers a small amount for a special level of service to offering a warranty or service contract.
- Check your contacts and make sure they would survive the change of ownership of your company. If not, talk to your lawyer about adding a line to your agreements that states the obligations of the contract “surviving” in the event of a change of ownership of your company.
Instead of just building a bigger company, also consider making this the year you develop a more valuable one.
