How to Plan and Prepare to Sell Your Business


FACT:"All closely-held and family-owned businesses will lose their primary owner to death or retirement."  Dr. Joyce Brochaus, author of Succession Planning

Exit Planning helps business owners set, sort through, and achieve their exit objectives. It enables owners to leave their companies when they want, to the successors they want, and with the amount of cash they need.  Without exception, every owner leaves his or her company. Whether you do it in style depends on the specific exit planning actions you take before you leave.

The Seven Step Exit Planning Process

Step 1 - Identify Owner Ojectives
Step 2 - Quantify Business and Personal Financial Resources
Step 3 - Maximizing and Protecting Business Value
Step 4 - Ownership Transfers to Third Parties
Step 5 - Ownership Transfers to Insiders
Step 6 - Business Continuity
Step 7 - Personal Wealth and Estate Planning

The Exit Planning Process - What we offer business owners:

  • In conjunction with our professional partners, we use  "The Completely Revised How to Run Your Business So You Can Leave It In Style Workbook for Owners and Advisors," the blueprint for an owner's exit success. When we help you to complete the Workbook, you will have a clear Action List stating actions to be taken, due dates for each action and the name of the advisor responsible for its completion.
  • No-cost initial consultations to explain how the Exit Planning Process works.
  • Access to state-of-the-art Exit Planning resources through our professional partners.
  • We can help you to find the advisors you need.
  • We present seminars on a variety of Exit Planning topics.

Exit Planning involves answering "Yes" to seven questions:

  1. Do you know your exact retirement goals and what it will take—in cash—to reach them?
  2. Do you know how much your business is worth today, in cash?
  3. Do you know the best way to maximize the income stream generated by your ownership interest?
  4. Do you know how to sell your business to a third party and pay the least possible taxes?
  5. Do you know how to transfer your business to family members, co-owners, or employees while paying the least possible taxes and enjoying maximum financial security?
  6. Do you have a continuity plan for your business if the unexpected happens to you?
  7. Do you have a plan to help secure financial independence for your family if the unexpected happens to you?