A sellable business is one that has the potential to change your future. If your business has sellability then you could – at some point – find a buyer who will give you the opportunity to move on. For any business, at any stage, thinking about sellability is important. It’s not something that you can establish overnight and so, if it’s important to you, needs to be integrated into strategy and planning at the earliest possible stage.

 

What does sellability mean for you/your business?

 

  • Financial freedom. You may not want to sell your business on now. In fact, this may not be a part of any of your imminent plans. However, if you start considering sellability at an early stage it’s like you’re making an investment in future financial freedom. Effectively, you are building something that could appeal to a potential buyer further down the line with the result that you get to create the financial freedom to move on.

 

  • Flexibility and responsiveness. Life has a habit of being unpredictable and none of us knows what’s around the corner. When you’re building a business it’s rare to spend much time considering what might happen if you were no longer able to run it – or if you decided that a career change was desperately necessary. Building a sellable business can introduce an element of flexibility and responsiveness into your life that allows you to go much more with the flow. You can create processes and systems that aren’t reliant on you to continue to drive the business towards profit and growth. That means more time to spend on what you love and want to focus on, even if that changes further down the line. Ultimately, it means that if you want to be completely free of the business you’ve grown you’ll be able to move on profitably.

 

  • Maintaining perspective. As a business owner it’s very easy to get dragged down into the day-to-day minutiae of running a business. While these details are all essential they are not necessarily where you – the owner – should be focusing your time and efforts. If you’re aware of the need to create a business with sellability then you’re much more likely to find ways to pass the auditing, financials, performance reviews and bank reconciliations etc on to someone else. That will leave you free to focus more on the big picture strategy and planning. Not only is this the most enjoyable part of business ownership but it’s also essential if one day you might want to sell.

 

  • Creating a legacy. If you have plans to leave your business to the next generation, either when you die or retire, creating a sellable business will give them many more options to do something constructive with your legacy.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. And a sellable business can’t be shaped overnight. If you want to ensure that the enterprise you’re moulding has this essential element in place for the future then it’s time to start integrating it now.