What is an Exit Planning Call?
Do you want to raise your valuation?
Do you want to sell your business for more profit with less effort?
If you said yes to either of those questions, then an exit planning call could help you accomplish this.
Many first-time sellers are unaware of what an exit call is and how to take advantage of them. Exit calls are free and there is no obligation to sell with us after having the calls, but they can be tremendously helpful in getting sellers in position to consider selling.
In this article we’ll discuss what to expect in exit planning calls and help you to better understand your timeline from your first call to when you’d realistically be ready to sell.
First, how far in advance of your exit timeline should you have your first exit call with us?
When Should You Have Your First Exit Call?
It’s a common misconception that the best time to have an exit call is when you want to sell your business. Depending on your target sales price and the characteristics of your business, these exit planning calls can be simple or complex.
It might be a 30-day plan to get the last key things in place to sell your business, or it might be a several month-long process to fine tune everything from the ground up. It all depends on the kind of business you’re running right now, the size of it, and how many moving parts you need to manage.
That said, it’s best to begin your exit calls well-ahead of when you want to sell. We recommend treating the calls with sales advisors as guidelines for how to adjust, organize, and grow your business in a way that will set you up for a successful sale at the price you want when the business is placed in front of our buyer pool.
The first call, therefore, is just meant to just get to know you and your business.
Getting to Know You
The first call is meant to help us get to know you, your business, and your specific goals. You might be someone looking to sell as quickly as possible and would be willing to negotiate a lower price to make that happen. Or perhaps you’re not in a hurry to sell and it’s more important that you exit with a specific valuation.
These factors can affect our recommendations about what changes to make with your business and the subsequent exit conversations.
This is also a chance for us to learn about your business and how ready it is for an exit. Our team understands what buyers are looking for in each monetization and price point.
We will point out common pitfalls that you might not even realize you’re making right now, and we will help you see the true strengths of your business that will help you eventually sell faster with the appropriate leverage.
Once we understand your goals and your business, we can then have a more detailed conversation about how to reach a target price point.
How We Help You Reach a Specific Price Point
Ultimately, your valuation is determined by your monthly net profit and a valuation multiple that is assigned to you during the vetting stage.
The business valuation multiple typically ranges between 30-50x and is dependent on multiple factors, such as the growth/decline of your profits, the defensibility of your business, and diversity of sales and traffic channels.
After getting to know your business, our next conversations with you will be centered around methods to improve your net profit and ways to maximize your valuation multiple.
Perhaps we’ll determine areas in your business where you can reduce monthly expenses or ways to increase monthly revenue.
We might also identify simple changes you could make that could add a few more points to your valuation multiple.
We recommend speaking with us prior to making changes to your business, as depending on when you want to exit, certain changes can actually hinder your ability to sell.
Timing of the Sale
The timing of the sale is a determining factor in what changes we’ll recommend. If your goal is to exit in the next month, we might recommend not making certain changes to your business, as buyers may be uncertain about how those changes will affect business performance.
Regular Check-Ins
Once we’ve agreed upon an exit plan and your steps for preparing your business, we’ll schedule monthly check-ins to discuss progress, questions, and any changes.
Preparing You For The Vetting Phase
One your business is ready to be sold, the next step will be preparing to list it on the marketplace. At this point, you’ll work with a vetting advisor to prepare your profit and loss (P&L) statement and pull together all assets that make up your business.
The Process Starts With the First Call
The exit of your business can be an emotional journey that can potentially come with obstacles and challenges. Because of this, we encourage sellers to trust our process.
We’ll help you create an action plan, define your goals, and keep your implementation of that action plan on track, getting you ready to sell your business.
Through this, we’ve helped entrepreneurs from $25k businesses to multiple millions obtain a better valuation through our exit planning services and process.
If you’re not yet ready to submit your business with us, then click below to get a free exit planning call with our experts.
You and your wallet will thank you in the end.