Getting value for your Business

Client Viewpoint by Geoff Dodgson, former Director of Chamberlain Partnership Limited

Business consultants are good at drawing two-by-two boxes that highlight how most managers spend their lives in the ‘urgent, non-important’ quartile. Little wonder business owners pay so little attention to the need for an exit plan.

The exit plan is very important – after all it should be the reward for decades of blood, sweat and tears; not to mention financial risk. However, in the hurly burly of everyday business, it is rarely seen as ‘urgent’.

Having now managed to get myself through the door marked ‘exit’, I look back and wish I had made more time to address the issue.

While we achieved a successful sale, I wonder how much better we could have done if we had prepared over two or three years, not just 12 months?

Given my time again, I would have sought professional advice sooner. The agenda would have been to understand how best to package the business; what would appeal to potential buyers; what could we do in terms of accounts and profile to increase its appeal.

Few of us ever sell more than one business in a lifetime. The experts do it week in, week out. It does make sense to tap into that expertise so that when you stop worrying about those urgent, non-important matters every waking hour you can really enjoy life.

Geoff Dodgson was a founding director of The Chamberlain Partnership and is now a senior consultant of Chamberlain, a specialist division of the strategic and creative marketing agency Ware Anthony Rust.

Thank you for your input into Project Toucan. I really enjoyed being part of the Prism process, and couldn’t have done it without you. I am very happy with the outcome and look forward to a new chapter.

Barbara S - Project Toucan