You’re in business to create a saleable asset … or are you?

Focus is a key area for business owners. In my experience it’s not an area that many excel at.

Distractions are everywhere and ultimately these distractions becomes a prime excuse and a reactive, not proactive way of working. In many cases, this leads to business failure and all the horrible impacts; on you, your family, your employees……… and many others. Just look at the business failure stats.

With many of my clients, they already have a profitable business but are “stuck” in how to take their business to the next level.

Many business owners I meet have “bought themselves a job” and have not thought through their end game.

By working with the clients in the right areas I move them from the “see saw” and “roundabout” behaviour to focus and work on the areas of strategic importance for their business. See saw behaviour is do the work, get paid. Many owners with employees and not teams in place are still spending their time sorting out issues of their people.

In many cases people are only waiting to be empowered and when given a chance by the boss they will excel. The boss’ job is to make sure they know what they expected to deliver, let them get on with it and reward achievement.

There are thousands of tools and templates to help with this process but being accountable to me as their coach actually focuses on driving this process and yes, achieves better results.

So what does this all mean in practice?

Firstly the business owner needs to spend the majority of his time working ON the business; the strategic areas of the business. Ultimately this focusses on turning their business into a saleable asset which will optimise your exit price and your EBITDA multiple thus creating a business which is attractive on many measures and which will earn a premium above a simple calculation of either turnover or profit.

For it to be a saleable asset it must be a “commercial, profitable enterprise that can work without the current owner or partners”. Much of the time the business owner is not focussed on this. His focus or mind set is often around getting by, paying the bills or overhead’s ………indeed focusing on surviving, not on thriving and creating the “saleable asset”.

So, what are some of the key steps to achieve this?

Defining your exit date…….after all if you don’t, when are you planning to have created an efficient and profitable business? What will determine your rationale for knowing it’s now saleable?

Setting a Vision and Mission for the business- how do you see your business in 5/7/10 years and clarity on what you will do for the customer and how you will do it.

Defining your Culture “who we are and how we do things”- remember, your culture will either attract the customers you seek.

Creating your marketing and sales machine……..a system that delivers the leads you want and an optimised conversion process

Creating a Team, getting the right people on your business bus and in the right seats

Systemising the business- “systemising the routine aspects in your business” so you can humanise the added value….ie focusing on marketing/lead generation and conversion of the leads to sales.

Setting Goals- properly defined goals, not wish lists and aspirations.

Setting the right Strategies to achieve these goals and setting the chronological actions against each strategy.

Many businesses fail even if they have well defined goals……they don’t apply the strategies and don’t execute…….the results come from doing the right things at the right time.

Testing and measuring performance in all the key areas of the business is also vital- not optional. What gets measured gets managed!

In other words, a joined up, practical and executable business plan. A business that progressively works without you as a well-oiled machine.

Too often I see “business plans” which are done for the bank and which then never see the light of day again.

And then, when you have your business in the right shape, a saleable asset, what then? How do you plan your next business? Do you want to franchise it? Do you want to make external investments in Property and Shares? Do you want to invest in other businesses…..the options are many. But you can’t easily do them if you haven’t created your own saleable asset first.

So, how committed are to take your business to the next level?