Why Your Business Is Like My Too-Small Bungalow (And What To Do About It)
Let’s say you’re not sure you want to sell your business any time soon. You’d love to hold onto it, but it’s giving you headaches.
It keeps you up at night like the little drips that fall from your leaky bathroom faucet.
I’m going to encourage you to go ahead and make whatever fixes you can, right now. This ultimately will make your business more sellable down the road, AND it makes it more enjoyable to run today.
It’s kind of like my current housing situation. Family of 4 at the time of writing this (and likely a family of 5 by the time you’re reading this), living in a bungalow that we feel like we’ve already outgrown.
Our first thought was, ‘man, we really need to sell this thing and find something new.’
Our second thought was, ‘mortgage rates are nearly 7%, so nevermind’
So then we stepped back and thought about what we’d like to change about the house and got started.
The kitchen is outdated, the paint is too dark, and our kids have said that the bathroom in the basement is “spooky.”
Honestly, they were right about the bathroom. It hadn’t been updated since the last Lions’ playoff win, but both of those streaks came to an end this year. In less than 24 hours, I had swapped out a toilet, tiled the floor (peel & stick), painted the walls, hung a mirror, and fixed the faucet. Boom. Basically brand new. No longer spooky.
With working mostly from home, I also need a spot to have a desk. In my efforts to find the best spot, it’s moved around more than a backup QB you didn’t know was still in the NFL.
It has found a home on each floor of the house, in two of the bedrooms, and now resides in our basement laundry room. While that initially wasn’t ideal, it’s amazing what you can do when you paint a few walls, hang a couple of shelves, and improve the lighting.
Since then, I have updated every inch of trim in the house, drywalled parts of the basement, and modernized the fireplace. All of these improvements make the house more likely to sell, but they have also made it substantially better to live in each day. In the end, it’s been a win-win.
Step into a prospective buyer’s shoes and look at your business like a house.
What areas need improvement? Let’s be honest, you probably already know what they are.
Recommended Read: Preparing Your Business For Exit is Just Good Business Strategy
Just like a House on the Market, Some Discoveries Can Kill a Sale Immediately.
Messy financials are like mold behind the walls in the basement.
Flat or declining growth is like leaky plumbing.
Full dependence on the owner is like a hole in the roof.
All of these impact the actual sale and the potential value.
Now is a great time to start proactively cleaning up the areas that you know are issues for you and your team. They’ll make your life better in the short term, and ensure a better selling process down the road.
3 Simple Improvements You Can Begin in Your Business Today:
You see the bank balances and have a feel for when business is good vs. bad, but developing a budget and managing your business on it will make those gray areas become black and white.
When can you afford a new hire? Are you on track to yearly goals? Can you make that next investment in equipment? All of these become answerable questions when you know the numbers of your business.
Recommended Resource: Free Budget Template with Video & PDF Guides
Is your business optimized with documented processes, a budget, and an organized sales pipeline management system?
Document your Processes
What is the first step you need to take upon signing up a new customer? The second? The third? If this information currently lives in the heads of your employees, it becomes more and more difficult to duplicate with new hires.
Open a word processing document and start writing out the steps of how you do what you do. This allows your team to understand their expectations, easily communicate with new hires, and repeat with all of your customers to ensure nothing gets missed.
Organize your Sales Pipeline
It’s great to be able to speak to future sales and how you expect your business to grow, but it’s even better to show it. We recommend doing this by implementing a CRM tool for your company that allows you to keep tabs on all the active and potential opportunities you have for new business.
By implementing better practices around how opportunities are tracked you set yourself up for closing on more of them.
All three of these make a business more ready when the time comes to sell AND allow you to run more effectively as you own it. Plus, no more spooky bathrooms.
If you’re looking for guidance on how to get started with any of these, let us know and we’d be happy to help out.
