One of the most stressful times in an organisation’s life is when you buy another business – or you’re the target, and you’re being bought. Most people selling a business are doing it for the first time. Even for the acquirer, this is often new. So how do they get it right, and avoid costly mistakes? How much do they know about the market, the people in the business? How solid are the plans- are they budgets – or dreams?
This is where we can help. We’ve done it before; so for the seller, we can help:
- Creating an exit strategy – if you ultimately want to sell the business, how do you put yourself in a place where that will happen? Start that early!
- Identifying possible acquirers, understanding their motivations and drivers. Again, this needs to be done well in advance of starting a sale.
- Ensuring the competitive thirst and “tension” that drives the best price for the business. You don’t want to be dealing with the only game in town – a little rivalry goes a long way.
- Working with the team, and managing staff morale. While selling your business may be the pinnacle of your career, it may not be everyone’s dream outcome. You used to say “our people are our best asset?” It’s easy to forget that now, but you must not.
For the acquirer, we help you take the rose-tinted specs off. From the start of the acquisition trails, we can:
- Help you understand what sort of acquisition you want to make
- Identify targets which are aligned to your strategy
- Work with both parties – initially opening the doors for discussions, understanding the people drivers to enable proposals that are likely to work for both sides
- Implement due diligence – understanding the claims and projections for the business, bringing common sense to forecasts, and providing an emotionally detached viewpoint.
- Facilitating the smooth progression of the deal – again, working with the two teams to minimise staff disruption
- Post-acquisition, working with the combined team on integration. That can mean re-structuring and re-architecting the business, perhaps also re-branding – we’re here to help.
We can be part of the team – or just use us for specialist support in one or two areas.
We place very high importance on people issues throughout this process. It is critical to understand the ambitions and drivers for the stakeholders, to ensure the deal happens – but also the team, as a loss on productivity, or loss of key staff, can end up scuppering a good deal.
We’re here to help – talk to us!