This week we are launching a new service dedicated to private company owners who would like to sell their business in 2025 or later. Our Pre-Sale Operational Excellence Service is designed to address the following problem in the market. Hint it is not lipstick on a pig!
The Problem
Approximately 90% of companies that come to market are not ready for prime time. In the US every year approximately 6,000 businesses are sold for $10m or above out of a total population of 6.2 million enterprises. There are often too many weaknesses to attract a global audience of buyers who will pay a premium value.
Building a business buyers love to buy requires a playbook of actions. It requires an assessment of the company’s readiness for primetime. Owners are often too close to the action. They undervalue the characteristics that buyers cherish and underestimate the impact on key weaknesses on the saleability of the business.
The sweet spot requires aligning shareholders objectives with a strategic plan to address value leakage. The upside of this approach delivers a safer, stronger business even if you never sell it. We call it an Options Strategy not an Exit Strategy. Owners are giving themselves the option of selling out.
The key to building businesses buyers love to buy is to set out a clear strategy that defines the piece of the universe that needs your help, and demonstrates your credibility to meet those needs. Then go execute with a plan. However, the devil is in the detail. Too often when we look at businesses that have been around for many years, as we said above, there are too many weaknesses to attract a global audience of buyers who will pay a premium value. It does not have to be that way.
The Service
It is the essential 24 months of operational actions that are required to ensure your exit is a success at a premium valuation. TPP executes these actions alongside your team. Based on our proprietary 15-factor Saleability Test and decades of scaling and exiting businesses crystallizing over $1 billion in value, we look at your business through the lens of a buyer. We identify the value leakage and build world-class best practices into your business and achieve desired outcomes by working inside and alongside your team. TPP only hires seasoned executives with a minimum of 20 years of operator experience. These are the main areas we transform over 4 to 8 quarters:
- We establish a compelling positioning in the marketplace.
- We build storytelling around your superpowers and elevate your presence in the market.
- We initiate actions to improve margins gradually.
- We build reliable world-class marketing and sales playbooks automating them with the most appropriate technology.
- We attack customer dependency to ensure a more balanced profile come prime time.
- We reimagine new product and service launch programs to bring rigor and urgency to the plans.
- We build robust production systems.
- We build insightful financial and non-financial dashboards to ensure critical measurements are trapped and necessary actions are taken.
- We create robust forecasting models to ensure when the time comes you will ace due diligence.
- We assemble the essential documents for your data room to ensure the key facts are at your fingertips.
Credibility
In a nutshell, we are operators with deep M&A experience, not bankers. Preparing businesses for sale is an operational skill. All staff are successful C-suite executives that have held leadership positions across the globe including, Thomson Corporation, Capita, Mycronic, Web Industries, Mondi, Avery Dennison, Sony, and P&G along with several successful private software and technology companies. Across their careers in the US and Europe, the team has completed over fifty transactions with an enterprise value in excess of $1 billion.
Our one pager – Pre-Sale Operational Excellence Services is available for download.
Do it yourself?
Of course, we publish our playbooks to share our methodologies for one simple reason. Most entrepreneurial owners will want to execute the required actions themselves. So please download and use our playbooks to help you on your journey but if you want help, reach out to Ian or Kevin to discuss how Operational Excellence projects can transform value.
Ian@TPPBoston.com or Kevin@TPPBoston.com
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