Business Optics

HOW TO SELL YOUR BUSINESS

Preparing you and your business for a successful exit

How we help you
Getting you 'exit-ready'

Our Service

Successful Exit Strategies for Small & Medium Businesses

Are you relying on your business for your retirement, to pay off your mortgage or to move onto a new opportunity?

Unfortunately, for most business owners this rarely happens!

Planning your exit strategy will maximise your available options and help to secure the highest possible value for your business.

Do not leave planning your exit too late or do no planning at all, if you do this will leave you with only three options:

  • Continue working in the business
  • Sell it for a fraction of what they had expected
  • Close the business down

Creating a successful exit strategy and preparing your business for a profitable sale takes around 5 years. The earlier you start, the better! This will mean both you and the business are ready for exit, allowing you to achieve the best price for your business and make the greatest profits along the way.

Putting in efficient systems, making the business profitable and delivering consistent growth takes time, thought, planning and preparation.

So act now and be prepared.

More Time = More Options.

If you are looking to exit your business in within the next three years, don't worry - we can help with that… All is not lost; we just need to work a little smarter to get everything in place and to work our magic.

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12 Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business

To find out what options are available for selling your business and what you need to consider for your business to be ready to attract the right offers.

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Our Approach

Through experience and research, we have developed our unique six-point approach and RAP system to support you in getting your business ready for sale:

Build Systems

Create systems that consistently reproduce the desired results.

Build a Team

Get yourself off the organisational chart and away from the day to day running of the business.

Increase Earnings

Having a more efficient and growing business will increase your earnings potential.

Improve Your Job

Not having everyone depend on you will give you the space and time to develop and grow the business.

Control Financial Records

Looking at key indicators and making changes where necessary.

Create Balance

Ensure your business is not exposed to unnecessary risks.

Create Balance

Ensure your business is not exposed to unnecessary risks.

Our RAP SYSTEM

Every business is different. Every owner is different.

With this in mind, and by using our unique RAP system, we focus on both the business as well as the business owner to ensure both are ‘exit-ready’.

REVIEW

We start by having an honest conversation about you and your business. We want to fully understand where your business is currently and what your goals are. By looking at both you and your business, we will be able to get a full 360° view of your situation.

During this phase we will look at:

Personal
  • Timescales
  • Target Price
  • Type of exit
Business
  • Company Structure
  • Carrying out a MOT
  • Current Value

ANALYSE

Once we have established our starting and end points, we can then plan the best route to your destination based upon your time scales.

We do this by analysing and implementing strategies for:

Personal
  • Partner Alignment
  • Personal Risk
  • Personal Tax
Business
  • Company Risk
  • Creating Transferable Value Strategy
  • Commercial Systems & Growth

This is where the real work begins but also where you will see the greatest changes and benefits.

PREPARE

Whilst constantly reviewing progress and ensuring you and your business are on track, we will start preparations for the sales process. Making preparations beforehand will ensure that everything is in place for a smooth sales process, saving a lot of stress, time and money when fielding questions and providing information to each potential buyer, their accountant and solicitor.

We will address the following areas:

Personal
  • Five F’s
  • Future Life Plans
  • Factoring the Unexpected
Business
  • Controlling the Negotiations
  • Concluding the Due Diligence
  • Completing the Sale

We will support you to recognise where you are right now, ascertain where you want to be, create transferable value and understand the sales process. Working together will help to secure a successful and profitable exit from your business and provide you with the best opportunity to realise your long-term goals.

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Cliff’s knowledge of business development, finance and systems facilitates growth and productivity. His friendly yet frank approach is welcome and refreshing. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience from running his own companies, which means he understands what it is like to be a business owner and can empathise with the pain that can be part and parcel of running a business.
Simon Alder, OWNER OF ALDER SECURITY
I have had the pleasure of working with Cliff at the start up of my business. I have been able to contact him to seek advice on marketing, branding, market research, strategy and may other skills required in setting up a business.
Brian Conroy, DIRECTOR OF WOAPA
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Cliff several times over the last few years. Most recently hiring him as a speaker at a business workshop event earlier this year, where his presentation was extremely well received by the attendees. In an industry filled with business “experts” and “gurus” it’s a welcomed relief to come across someone with a plethora of experience in building and scaling businesses in a vast array of industries.
Suzy Olivier, DIRECTOR OF MOTHERS OF ENTERPRISE
I have worked with Cliff for several years, he has shown knowledge in marketing, customer service/retention, sales and finance – especially in maximising cash flow. He is reliable and always happy to help. He will be an asset to any business.
Marc Fry, DIRECTOR OF CLEARSITE SOLUTIONS LTD
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Our Approach

A unique six-point approach to fast-track your business growth

01. Culture
Many problems within a business can be traced back to its culture. Fostering an environment where people are encouraged, feel valued and that they have something worth giving will allow them to share and express different ideas and concepts that will feed into growing a business and keeping it on trend.

As a business owner, this can be a difficult task because employees can be naturally suspicious or cautious. They may not want to share or contribute new ideas for fear of standing out or losing their job.

Having a third party can cut through this fear and get to the heart of the matter. Being able to gauge the temperature of the business, we will find hidden gems within your company and help you to nurture these vital assets: your employees.
02. Strategy
Strategic planning is an area in where a lot of organisations struggle.

We will help you identify, define and clarify what your company is trying to achieve. Then we will look at how to communicate this goal to your team and what part they will play going forward. Once that is achieved we will then help you to ensure every team member is engaged by having clear objectives and being held accountable for their contribution to the company.

Business Optics will work with you so you can continually PRIORITIZE key tasks, carry out those ACTIVITIES that deliver on the priorities and measure the RESULTS of those activities.
03. People
People are your most valued assets. It is imperative that the company only has people who are aligned to and adopting the culture of the company.

Business Optics can be that fresh pair of eyes, helping you to implement the correct culture and strategy, all the while ensuring you have the right team around you to give you every chance of success.
04. Systems
Good systems remove waste and inefficiency from your business. Having robust systems will contribute to stronger growth, better profit margins, satisfied customers, improved cash flow, employee retention and make the business more saleable, to name just a few.

Business Optics will work alongside you to create effective systems and assist you to put them in place. We will provide the ability to test and measure how each system is working, which will allow you to tweak each system to ensure everything is running at optimum efficiency.
05. Resources
Resourcing the activities and actions to achieve your goals is imperative. It is demoralizing when people are given a task to do but no resources or proper tools to help them complete it.

Creating the balance between providing resources whilst protecting profit margins and cash flow can be a challenge. At Business Optics we can help you achieve this balance by creating KPI’s within each of the activities or actions being taken, providing you with the information you need to make key decisions.
06. Execution
Execution is the implementation of all five approaches and is where information overload can occur, when all the inner workings start to move and data from all the measuring floods in.

Business Optics can take all the gathered information and give it back to you as a quick-reference dashboard, meaning that you have your key figures in an easy-to-understand, usable format.
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Cash Flow Simulator

The Cash Flow Simulator enables you to forecast your profit and cash flow for the next 12 months based upon simulating any changes you may make to your company.  This allows you to test what will make the biggest impact to your business before actually taking action and enables you to plan strategically for your company’s development and growth.

Register here to gain access

Cliff Spolander

As an ex-military Officer, Cliff gained valuable leadership and management skills.  He has been trained to adapt and to seek effective solutions in an ever-changing environment.  This has formed the backbone of his success in running his own companies for the past 19 years.  Throughout this time, he has started, bought, sold, franchised, licensed and systemized several businesses in a variety of sectors.

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Get in touch

To learn more about what we do, or to find out how we can help your business grow, send us a message.

07921 358317
info@businessoptics.co.uk
@BusinessOptics on LinkedIn

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