Busi­ness Exit Planning

Whether you intend to sell your busi­ness or hand it on, the suc­cess of the tran­si­tion and the val­ue of the sale will depend on the qual­i­ty of your exit strategy.

Yet devel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful exit strat­e­gy begins long before the actu­al sale.

The busi­ness exit strat­e­gy process

It is nor­mal­ly a two to five-year process, depend­ing on a num­ber of fac­tors. These include:

• The health of your busi­ness and your brand
• Its appeal to a buy­er who is will­ing to spend the money
• Your real­is­tic per­cep­tion of what the busi­ness is worth
• A strong team of advi­sors who can dri­ve a suc­cess­ful sale
• Your readi­ness as a busi­ness leader to step aside and move on to new projects
• The needs of your shareholders

The dan­ger of leav­ing your exit to chance

How­ev­er, the process can take a lot longer for own­ers who do not have an effec­tive own­er­ship exit or tran­si­tion plan in place. With­out a plan, your busi­ness could end up in a very dif­fer­ent place than you intended.

You might be faced with an unfore­seen cir­cum­stance, like the loss of the key fam­i­ly mem­ber or investor, forc­ing you to make a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to move away from your busi­ness. With­out an exit plan and a busi­ness that is well posi­tioned for a sale, your busi­ness is like­ly to be under­val­ued and you will not gain the max­i­mum return for your years of hard work.

Many small busi­ness­es in the UK are owned and man­aged by the ​“baby-boomer” gen­er­a­tion, who are now approach­ing retire­ment age. It is a sad truth that many of these small busi­ness­es will be sim­ply closed down because they have not been ade­quate­ly pre­pared to be hand­ed on or sold.

How we can help you

At Gor­dian Solu­tions, we work with you to review your busi­ness, deter­mine what you want from exit­ing the busi­ness, and iden­ti­fy the bar­ri­ers pre­vent­ing your busi­ness achiev­ing a max­i­mum sale val­ue. We also eval­u­ate your post-exit goals and iden­ti­fy how you can best tran­si­tion into the next phase of your life.

In par­tic­u­lar, we look at the key dri­vers of busi­ness val­ue that are most prized by poten­tial pur­chasers and iden­ti­fy the actions that need to be tak­en to place you on the best foot­ing to obtain the best pur­chase price for your business.

The out­come is a com­pre­hen­sive exit plan detail­ing the strat­e­gy and key activ­i­ties you and your busi­ness need to under­take to deliv­er a suc­cess­ful busi­ness exit.