Continued Success in a Mature Market

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Continued Success in a Mature MarketA lot of business press focuses on the “next big thing,” or unicorns that roam around (or more often than not, get killed) the rarefied air of Silicon Valley. But you won’t often hear about those “boring” businesses that quietly bring in significant incomes for the owners and employees, because these businesses are in mature, established markets. And while it’s true that longevity (simply outlasting your competitors) is a big part of that success, we’ve identified five key factors that we see in businesses in mature markets that go on to have excellent exits.

Product/Service Quality

While you don’t have to be the best in the world at what you do, or even the best in the country, you certainly need to be among the best in your region or city. This means that people have a reason to talk about you in superlatives when recommending others who might need what you provide.

Customer Service

While there’s always talk about automation and delegation when it comes to customer service, it’s important to make sure your team is as empowered as you, the business owner, when it comes to customer satisfaction. Most business owners, when dealing with a disgruntled customer, want to please that customer within reason. If those in charge of customer service feel that level of ownership and accountability, customers will feel it come through in every interaction (and will rave about it to others).

Clean Processes and Documentation

We say it all the time, but that’s because we can’t ever say it enough: have clean books, pay your taxes, and document how the business works. This doesn’t just make a business attractive for acquisition, it’s a simple method of “housecleaning” that makes businesses more efficient and enables them to create best practices. No employee was ever stressed out about having clear processes with which to do his/her job.

Staff Development

Those same employees need to know, more than ever, that they aren’t just economic ciphers or cogs in a machine. They want to continue to develop personally or professionally. The most successful companies invest in their people as they would invest in equipment or infrastructure. Everyone always talks about wanting to hire the best. These successful companies are actually willing to pay for the best, and that includes benefits that go beyond salary.

Roadmap

We are champions of annual meetings for employees and one of those reasons is the ability to share the roadmap with them. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? If people feel included in a vision and desire to help achieve a goal, they are going to perform better than if they are kept in the dark. Making sure everyone knows what the short, mid-term, and long-range goals of a company are empowers them to contribute every step of the way.

Use the Net Promoter Score to Increase the Value of Your Business

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Ten out of TenWe’ve seen the question posed so often after completing a transaction that we know the words by heart: “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”  Unless you had a strongly positive or strongly negative experience, you’ll usually just click past this online or walk past the various happy to sad faces waiting for your judgment at airport security or in bathrooms.

Everywhere, it seems, there’s an opportunity for us to give feedback. But why does this matter for selling a business? Because you’ll be able to give a seller real data, not projections.

Origin of the Question

This question has its origin in Fred Reichheld and his book The Ultimate Question.

Fred is a loyalty expert who found the answer to this question of recommendation provided important insights on the customer experience and ultimately, loyalty. The number, which Reichheld eventually called “Net Promoter Score,” often accurately predicts how often a customer will purchase and repurchase from you and refer other clients to you.

A score of 9 or 10 means that customer is a promoter.

They love what you do and tell others about it. Now, just because someone is a 9 or a 10 doesn’t mean that they will take the time to answer in an online survey. That’s why you have to ask the question in multiple channels until you obtain an answer that can go into your CRM and/or database. When you do, you no longer have projections but hard data.

A score of 7 or 8 means a customer is “passively satisfied” or neutral.

While you might think a 7 or 8 out of 10 isn’t bad (and in other circumstances, it might be not so bad) in the Net Promoter Universe, this is a person who can either take or leave your services. It doesn’t mean that every 7 or 8 can be moved to 9 or 10, but if you aren’t even asking the question, you don’t even have the opportunity to move them up.

A score of 6 and below means that the customer is a detractor of yours.

Worse that the “passive satisfaction” of a 7 or 8, this customer tells others that he/she wasn’t happy with your work and attempts to steer others away from you.

Questions like the one at the heart of Net Promoter Score are treasures in that they give you an opportunity to have a deeper conversation with your customers. Those who are neutral or detractors are actually giving you opportunities to learn. Because you’re asking them indirectly about their experience — not “how was your experience” but rather “would you recommend us” — you are giving them permission to share what they think can be improved.

This essentially free information (free because how much does it cost you to ask a single question of a customer who has already bought from you?) can lead to great changes in your business and possibly an increase in the 9s and 10s in your customer base.

Not only has your business become more valuable with this information in the short and medium term, but in the long term a buyer can see that you’ve been actively soliciting customers for feedback and have built a culture that isn’t afraid to ask customers directly how to improve.

Case Study #29: Replacing Yourself

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Replacing YourselfSome years ago, Jim Brown started a software company called TerrAlign. This Sales Territory Management Software designed the best possible territories for sales representatives. They started in pharmaceuticals, but quickly entered into the consumer goods and medical products sectors as well. They would eventually be acquired by a fellow software company, but that couldn’t have happened if Jim hadn’t started the process of replacing himself.

Enter Ken

Ken Kramer had helped design some of the earliest versions of TerrAlign’s software and kept having good interactions with them as a vendor. So when the opportunity came for him to join the company, he took it, and started in partnerships and marketing. He was soon promoted to sales and marketing, and not long after that, was one of three employees that Jim chose to replace his functions as an owner/operator.

This is, of course, the best case scenario: promotion from within of those who have risen through the ranks on merit. They’ve had a chance to build relationships across the company which will only make taking on the new responsibilities easier.

Creative Tension

But, while an owner may be willing to delegate tasks, he might not be willing to let go of profits and cash flow. Ken wanted to use profits to invest and grow the company, while Jim focused on maintaining profitability. Ken had negotiated shadow equity as part of his promotion into the job of president, so while he was frustrated with Jim’s desire to keep things status quo, he knew that circumstances could always change.

Soon enough the ground started to shift. A competitor was acquired after it had been taken private by a VC some time prior. This changed the competitive landscape and led to MapAnything making an acquisition offer. MapAnything was also a software company, but focused on route optimization, so it was a sensible companion product for TerrAlign’s core competencies.

Transition

Ken led the transaction team, though he says if he had to do it all over he would have brought in help (like a banker or broker) to cut his learning cycle down and help him make better decisions. It also (naturally) took away his time from helping to run the business. In the end, his focus was on making sure the TerrAlign team all kept their jobs or had opportunities for new positions post-sale. The terms of the sale weren’t made public, but 1-3X revenue is a normal multiplier for slow-growth software companies.

What Ken couldn’t expect or predict was Salesforce acquiring MapAnything just a few months later. Most of the team was surprised, but given that it wasn’t their company anymore, they could hardly do anything other than try to continue on with Salesforce, which many of them chose to do.

Key Takeaways

  • As we’ve said before, apart from having a solid manual in place of how to run the business, demonstrating that the company can run without you by having a president in place makes it very easy for an acquirer to make an offer.
  • Even if you’ve had the foresight to plan for your own succession, you also have to plan for an acquisition. Jim had brought in Ken to do the former, but stifled him as he tried to do the latter, by growing the company aggressively.
  • Consider getting a broker (we’re a bit biased). As we saw with Ken, we help make the process easier, more educational, and often  more profitable.

Remote Work and the Business of the Future

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Remote WorkEven five years ago, most people would not have known a single person who worked remotely. Now, many people know at least one person who has either a location independent job or business, or who has some kind of flexible work arrangement with their employer.

It’s clear that remote work is not a passing fad but a trend that will only grow as technology includes more of our world in building prosperity. That means employers need to realize that remote work is very much the future and figure out how to adapt their businesses to accommodate that.

Nothing Replaces In-Person Interaction

There are some companies that are entirely remote, like Automattic, the company that powers WordPress, and as a result, powers a third of all websites on the public internet (including ours!) They’ve discovered that whatever the joys are of location independence, there’s nothing to replace the camaraderie that comes with in-person interaction. This might mean annual, or even semi-annual or quarterly retreats, whether it be for certain divisions or for the entire company.

We are humans, after all, despite all the talk of self-driving cars and refrigerators that will tell Amazon what needs to be ordered. Whatever steps you take towards allowing remote work, remember that employees need to be together at least occasionally to build the camaraderie that every functioning team needs to perform. Technology doesn’t change human nature.

There are Savings All Around

Just as employers no longer need to take as much office space to accommodate remote workers who no longer need it, so too workers no longer need to spend money on commuting or on business attire expected to be worn in the office. The savings can be reinvested in other areas to help the company grow.

Resilience and Diversity Develop

It’s no secret that remote work requires more discipline than the in-office equivalent. No one is “supervising” you and the couch and television, should you be working from home, can issue never ending siren songs for you to join them.

Remote workers will develop more discipline or lose their jobs. This means your staff who go remote will get an upgrade you can’t get in an on-location employee. The newly developed skills of time management and task focus will spill over into other areas of their work and provide you, after a trial period for the first-time remote worker, with a more resilient team member.

For you as the employer it also means you have more avenues to find potential employees. There are many workers distributed around the world now who are willing to take less pay for equivalent positions in the United States. This is because they’re remote and working in a country in which 50% of the salary they would normally command lets them live at 150% of the lifestyle they did in the United States. This seems too good to be true, but websites like Dynamite Jobs consistently feature Inc. 5000 companies hiring remotely, and sometimes hiring the lower-priced of two candidates because of this gap.

Pay More Attention, Not Less

While it’s true that “out of sight is out of mind,” it’s important to remember that however resilient remote workers may be, they can still feel isolated and lonely. Ultimately unable to reap the rewards of personal and managerial development that can come from a traditional workplace. This requires employers to lead the way in setting aside time to catch up apart from regular virtual work meetings and to make sure their team members know they have an open door to communicate. Remote employees, like on-site employees, want to be valued. Thoughtful and intentional communication is one of the best ways to show you value them.

An Exit Interview for Sellers

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Exit Interview for the SellerIn the due diligence process, a lot of documents and statements have to be delivered. What are sometimes forgotten are those crucial discussions about the heart and soul of a business. The information that is difficult to put into even the best owner’s manuals of the most systematized businesses. It’s also true that not all buyers and sellers develop the kind of rapport where an easy discussion about challenges and mistakes can organically happen.

In this article, we’ll offer four possible questions you could ask in a hypothetical exit interview for an outgoing seller as you undertake to replace him or her. The hope is that you can learn key lessons that will help you take the business you are buying to the next level.

What would you have done differently?

Very rarely will this question result in a quick, “Nothing.”  There are people who are either extremely intentional with what they did and proceeded along that line or those who are totally blind to self reflection. Most sellers will take a deep breath, exhale, and pause to think or just as quickly say, “Lots of things.”

The goal of this is not necessarily to capture every single thing that the seller could have done differently. Hopefully you will see a pattern that can help you avoid those potholes or make improvements that the seller couldn’t have. These discussions can also lead to broader philosophical conversations about the business. It’s an opportunity to introduce key questions for the buyer to fire his/her imagination and problem solving skills.

One of our sellers told the incoming buyer that he’d had personality and management style differences with one of the staff. This caused her to resign. But that the seller found her to be remarkably professional and dedicated to clients. He thought she would probably come back to the firm knowing there had been a change of ownership. He happened to be right and the employee returned to the benefit of the buyer, herself, and their clients.

What skill(s) do you wish you had that would have made a difference?

Some skills people are born with. But many can be acquired with diligence and patience.

If a seller confesses a weakness in a skill set that you also share, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. Obviously, he/she didn’t possess that skill but still managed to build a sell-able business. But it does offer you additional insights and guidance from someone who has been in the position you are aspiring to. It gives you a head start so that rather than realize, “I need to be able to work better in the early evening, when a number of clients check in with us” a few months into the sale, you are told ahead of time by someone who has been doing it for years.

Sometimes, owners were too blind to hire their weaknesses, convinced of the “up by your bootstraps, do it yourself” attitude that parades as humility but is actually (and ironically) a very subtle form of pride. If an owner identifies a skill he/she wishes that you had, that’s a great sign. If something is missing, however, you can begin to brainstorm how to deal with it, including perhaps delegation to an existing employee or a new hire.

Can you share some war stories of experiences with clients or employees?  How you handled it well and/or how it might have been handled differently?

This is perhaps the most controversial question you might ask and one that is taboo in our “we are all scared of lawsuits” society. And the seller is always free to refuse to answer. But this again is part of the honest, goodwill effort for a smart transaction to occur and for a business to continue to grow, and indeed, thrive.

The new owner should be warned about a problematic client or an employee who created a bad atmosphere at the office. Likewise, the owner should be proud to share some times when a big risk was taken in client or employee relations and it ended up very positively for all involved.

We know of a client who had made personal deliveries to their clients on Mother’s Day. Some of those mothers were key factors in his company’s success. While it had been noted in the operating manual as a key part of marketing operations, it was important to share the reactions from those grateful clients. Many had probably never received Mother’s Day flowers from any business they had ever worked with (much less, the seller was told, even their own children!) This personal context is valuable and should be saved and shared.

Who is the most important staff member in the company at the moment? Why?

All sellers dread the loss of staff during a transition period. Sometimes the staff leave for no reason directly related to the incoming owner. A sale just signals a “change” in life and that can trigger a number of things related to their own career trajectory and plans, leading them to believe that perhaps it’s time for a change for them too. Where you have to hope to make the opposite case is with the most important member of the team.

Find out from the owner who this person is, what makes him/her tick, and what’s his/her “why” in relation to the company. After the acquisition, have a heart-to-heart conversation with this person as soon as possible and find out what his/her vision for the future of the company is, and if there are any ways you can incorporate that vision into yours. If so, you’ve just guaranteed a major factor of success for yourself in any business endeavor: retention of key staff.

We have other exit interview questions we’ve developed over the years to help you successfully acquire a new business. Ask us about them today.

The Value of Goodwill

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The Value of GoodwillGoodwill is part of many transactions we do here at Apex. The best businesses have it in spades, and they are able to incorporate it into their valuation and their final deals. But like company culture, it is created in many different, not easily traceable ways. In this article, we will talk about some of the more obvious paths to goodwill in your business.

Reputation and Name Recognition

Many new business owners dream of the day when someone they don’t know will say, “I’ve heard of your business” when they speak to a stranger. It means that the business is a reference point in the community. It’s a barrier that competitors have to deal with and one that you control.

Good location

Location isn’t the most important thing for every business, but no one ever says, “I wish I had a worse location.” Visibility matters.

Custom-built factory/tooling/designs

Another barrier for your competitors to surmount is designs and tooling that cannot be easily or quickly duplicated. It gives you an edge with clients who don’t just want a generic looking product and it can allow you to command a premium price.

Loyal Customers and a Mailing List

When we say mailing list, we mean both postal and email. They have come back and become valuable as our society has shifted in the way it communicates for business and personal motives. The lists are not just valuable for the people you reach, but a mailing list can tell you where your customers live (and where you don’t have any customers) so that you can think more critically about your marketing and product offering.

As for loyal customers, there’s really nothing like them. They often are just as attached to the brand as to the owner, and as long as the new owner continues the best practices the old owner put in place, they will continue to spread your name around town.

Contracts

Recurring revenue is a good thing… having a contract for it is even better. Contracts are trust personified. It shows you are someone that people feel comfortable doing business with.

Great Staff and a Supplier List

Customers will often be loyal because you have a great team who deliver a good experience. Great staff who are doing work they enjoy will often very happily stay on and work for a new owner. A good supplier list is helpful as well. Often, business owners learn the hard way and have to remove bad vendors over time. A new owner has the comfort of knowing the list is vetted.

Trademarks, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets

This could be a great web address, a smart slogan, or the special herbs and spices that make what you have something that people have to have. Very often they are just best practices that an owner insisted on until it occurs to him/her just what a differentiator they were in the marketplace. In an ever more service-based economy, intellectual property (and legally securing it) really matters.

Curious about the goodwill in your business and how it can relate to a valuation of what your company is worth?  Give us a call today so we can chat about it!

3 Stupid Tax Mistakes

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Tax MistakesIt’s that time of year in America when taxes are on our minds. When we get to pay the government for the privilege of providing fellow citizens with jobs, supporting the economy, doing something that matters to our community, etc. However you might feel about the tax system in general, one thing you shouldn’t do is make stupid tax mistakes, especially with your business. We can tell you we’ve seen them all, multiple times, and they will usually bring any sale to a screeching halt.

Not paying taxes

Small business owners have cash crunches at times, and it can be tempting to take money from any available source. One of the most obvious places is the withholding for your employees. Many small businesses don’t use a payroll service and  are responsible for paying the withholding to the IRS on a timely basis. Instead of doing that, they “borrow” the money that isn’t theirs. This never, ever works out well.

Worse, if you do have a payroll company that files timely reports, the IRS will be immediately notice the discrepancy between the filings and what has been deposited and you’ll get some lovely new fines and penalties to go along with what was already due.

Other small business owners don’t pay their estimated taxes, or fail to even regularly file taxes. If they’re thinking the government won’t notice… they will.

Inventory games

Inventory is only deductible when you sell it, and sometimes people want to make their balance sheet look better, so they fidget with the value of their inventory to “create” tax savings. Then they change inventory values back the following year. Sometimes they lose track of what they’ve done, and now the books don’t just look bad in the case of an audit, any potential buyer will be confused as well. Their suspicions will be rightfully aroused as to what else might be not quite right in the business. Check the new tax law to see if you’re eligible to treat inventory differently. Some businesses now are.

Have Low Revenues or Consistently Poor Profitability

We often say we’ve “seen it all” here at APEX, but the IRS has truly seen it all. The difference is that they have the legal power to make you pay for your mistakes, whereas we can only cringe around the office.

Suspiciously low revenues or consistent significant pass-through losses, especially in S-corporations, are blinking red lights that say, “Come audit me!” There are better ways to make tax savings than using a corporation beyond the limits of the fairly generous tax allowances that we get in the US.

Every business is different and has its own set of challenges. But they all answer to the IRS. And the lesson we’ve taken from dealing with so many businesses and transactions year after year is that taxes are what Mark Twain said they were years ago: as inevitable as death.

Have you made some of these mistakes but are hoping to sell your business?  We can connect you with the right people to get these issues handled so we can help your business go to market. Give us a call today.

Real Estate Gives You More Options

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Commercial Real EstateOne of the challenges we sometimes face in putting together the sale of a business is real estate that is intertwined with the assets of the company.  Sometimes that’s the perfect way to run your company and you shouldn’t change it. Other times, the circumstances are such that rearranging things would be too costly and ineffective.  But given time, deliberation, and good advice, you can use the real estate that’s involved in your business to great advantage.

Control the Lease

We can tell you that we’ve seen deals that were on the way to the bank crash and burn because of mishandled landlord/lease situations.  This is why a lot of businesses situated in key real estate will seek to acquire the property and hence control the terms of the lease themselves.  Depending on how the property is being acquired (perhaps it will be with partners who are unrelated to the business) it could make sense to form an entity not related to the company that you’re operating so that there is a separation of assets, yet an alignment of interests.  By creating a different business entity, you’ve not only created a smart hedge against changing market conditions – either for your business or for real estate – but you’ve simplified a possible future sale of the business for a buyer.

Sell Either

The reason separating your real estate from your business makes things simple is that it provides more options.  You are free to, at any time, sell only the real estate and not the business, or only the business and not the real estate. Such a move allows you to take some money off the table right away while still watching how things play out.  It also means that a buyer interested in relocating the business can do so, since he/she no longer has to commit to buying real estate with your business.

Sell Both

But you may have an acquirer who seeks to have the same comfort you’ve had in owning these separate entities.  Because you’ve taken the time to separate them and keep them separate via responsible bookkeeping, accounting, and timely tax filings, now the real estate no longer becomes an “of course” part of the sale, but an option that can carry a premium.

There are many times in business when someone will say in retrospect, “I wish I had done it that way the first time.”  We know that business doesn’t always happen the way that it’s described in business books (or even blogs!) but real estate is one of the oldest and smartest forms of investment.  There’s every reason to put it to work for your business as a partner, in a separate entity.

We have a lot of real estate experience in our offices.  Give us a call to see if we can help offer some advice on your situation.

Should You Grow Through Acquisition?

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growthThere are two ways you can grow your business: the fast way or the slow way.  What’s important is that there is no easy way.

Both have their pros and cons, and in this article, we’ll examine the question of whether you should grow your business through acquisitions.

Organic Growth

If you have the time and the money, organic growth is almost like compounding interest: it will happen as long as the fundamentals are sound.  

You can add new products or services, increase sales, increase market share, etc. This growth will be part of a narrative that will make for a valuable exit one day, but it is a day in the far future, as organic growth is slow.

Growth through Acquisition

On the other end of the spectrum is growth through acquisition.  You can instantly acquire new revenue, resources, and introductions to markets.  But you have to pay for it with time and money as well, just at a different pace.

  • You will have to pay for the acquisition.  Sometimes a good earnout can be negotiated with an outgoing seller, or good payment terms negotiated.  What is important is never to pay too much in cash or to take on too much debt.
  • You need to have a plan.  Since this business will need to be integrated with your existing one, you’ll need to have a plan as to how departments will come together, including the hard decisions to let some people go.  Those first 100 days after the acquisition are a key part of success.

Beware of Deal Fever

We’ve seen this illness before, and it can happen to the most rational and cool-blooded among us: like Ahab chasing the white whale, people can get lost chasing a deal.

  • Keep in mind that pursuing an acquisition can become a part-time job/project.  Don’t let yourself be distracted from your core business that you are looking to improve through this acquisition.  Either have someone (like a broker) help you through it, or make sure you delegate parts to your team so that you don’t take 2 steps forward only to take 2 steps back.
  • Don’t let deal fever blind you to the facts.  Sometimes we want a deal to happen badly enough that we will ignore our own due diligence and say our “gut” is telling us to move forward.  Deal fever can confuse you: that’s why it’s important to have an unbiased third party (like a broker) help you evaluate numbers and your integration plan.

It’s not binary.  You can grow organically and through acquisition.  What’s important is to stay focused and enjoy the journey, never letting present success go to our head as we plow forward to possible future success.

Are you considering making some acquisitions to grow your company?  Give us a call to see if we have any listings that are a good fit for you.

Alternative Financing for Growing Businesses

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FinancingWe’ve said before how important it is to cultivate a relationship with your banker.  

Such a relationship will be important not just throughout the lifespan of your business but particularly when you want to craft an exit.  

That said, sometimes market conditions, or the conditions of your business, call for alternative forms of finance, and in this article we will discuss just three of the many possibilities in this growing space.

Lending Club

Of the many options in the fintech space, Lending Club is the most like a traditional bank.  They will require that you’ve been in business at least two years, with annual revenues of at least $75,000.

They will also make sure that the borrower has a minimum 620 credit score, with no recent bankruptcies, and at least 20% ownership of the business.  

All these factors get put into their internal rating system, and then once approved, your loan gets put into their marketplace, where various people can buy part of your loan. Once the note is fully funded, which can take as few as three days or as many as 21, the money is disbursed and you’re held to regular payments across terms like 36 months.

They don’t offer revolving credit and the rates can vary from 7.77% – 35.11%.  Depending on how good your credit profile is, it’s an interesting alternative if conditions don’t allow for a traditional bank loan.

Kabbage

If Lending Club is most like a bank, Kabbage is most like our future powered by artificial intelligence.  The platform is entirely algorithm-based, assisted by machine learning. There are no human parts in its credit decision process.  

You create an account and give Kabbage access to various accounts you use as a business owner, be it your credit card processor, your bank account, your email software, your social media accounts, and using all these different factors they will create a revolving offer against a 6-month repayment window.  

The effective interest rates can range from 15 – 50%, again depending on your business, rather than your personal credit, profile. There are no minimum revenue requirements, no personal guarantees, and with over $3B loaned since 2009, there is clearly a need for this type of financing.

PayPal Loans/PayPal Working Capital

The most specialized of the options we’re discussing in this article is Paypal Loans, which has also been called Paypal Working Capital.  This option is only available to you if any part of your business accepts payments via PayPal, because the funding mechanism examines your PayPal activity in the past 12 months and will allow you to borrow as much as 18% of topline revenue processed through PayPal (up to $97,000).  

Repayment is made as a percentage (which you can determine, depending on how quick/slow you want the repayment horizon to be) of each incoming sale, so repayments can be made daily if you’re processing payments at such a rate. PayPal provides the capital for a fixed fee, so there’s technically no interest charge, though you can calculate effective APRs to vary between 15 – 30%.

We also have access to some local resources that may be able to help you. Give us a call and let us see if we can help!