SELLING YOUR BUSINESS REQUIRES YOU PROMOTE THE RIGHT PEOPLE - Highly productive people are a blessing and a curse in selling your business, as described in the Harvard (HBR) article below.
In order to sell your business you have to KNOW-GROW-SELL. Know where you are at today, you need to know what and who needs to be changed to grow succession, and the business, to have a great exit. Because one of the biggest problems for many small-medium business owners I've worked with is that they've made themselves the nexus of control by surrounding themselves with great, highly productive people who can produce, but can't lead other people. The end result is they typically hit a glass ceiling, they can generate XX million annually, but can't get past it because that is the limitation of their productivity scalability. These people aren't the people who can grow the business to the next level.
I've found that succession and growth requires that you develop or hire a different type of person who can take over some of the management functions that the owners now hold, but do it differently. As this article outlines, they won't be the super producers, they will be leaders who are super at bringing out the best in other people, because that is what you need to GROW so you can SELL your business for a premium.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, please share in the comments and pass it on.
Remember, only 1 in 10 owners exit successfully, will you? If you want to exit in the next 5 years and you aren't diligently transitioning already, you are taking a huge risk. If you want an outside opinion on your exit readiness, and the things you can do to maximize value such as incorporating ESG, we have a pro-bono exit readiness assessment you can do in 5 minutes, that will give you some great insight, at no cost, no risk and no obligation. MExit – Value Builder PREScore - https://score.valuebuildersystem.com/prescore/proactv-business-solutions-inc/robert-welke
HBR ARTICLE - Why the Most Productive People Don’t Always Make the Best Managers by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman