One of the fundamental characteristics of a company that receives multiple offers and a high valuation is increasing revenue and profit. For whatever the reason your company may have shrinking revenue or profit, buyers do not want a company that may have a diminishing future potential. Although you may have a convincing story for why revenue or profit has slid over the past few years, buyers are skeptical and typically move on to opportunities that present an obvious growth trend.

When times are good, it’s common for business owners ride the wave of prosperity thinking the cash flow will continue. Typically, when sales fall, profitability falls even more quickly and it typically coincides with other larger issues such as burnout/boredom, opportunity cost or retirement. At this point, you need to make a difficult decision about your company’s fate and your employees by choosing one of the following options:

Option 1: Continue running the company. If burnout/boredom or looming retirement exists, you may be able to continue to run the company, but growing the company is going to be painful and difficult. If you have other business opportunities that you cannot focus on, what is the lost opportunity cost of continuing to run your current business?

Option 2: Sell the company. Selling your company can be a great idea that can benefit you, your family, your company, and your employees. However, if your company’s sales are declining, it is going to be more difficult to find a company interested in buying your company and more than likely, you will still need to run the company for another two years.

Option 3: Hire a CEO to run the company. This can be a good idea, but it carries a significant amount of risk. What if your CEO doesn’t improve sales and just takes money from the bottom line? What if your CEO leaves and you need to return to the business? What if employees leave because they don’t like the way the new CEO operates?

Option 4: Let us turnaround the company and sell it, providing you with a significant upside. Having background in management consulting and performing turnarounds for private equity groups, we have the experience to run your company and improve revenue and profitability. We can even finance the growth.

Once we have returned the company to a positive trajectory, we take it out to market to obtain multiple offers and the highest valuation possible. We can serve as the ongoing CEO to provide an acquirer with the assurance of a smooth transition and an accretive acquisition. Our compensation is mostly equity based and so our interests are fully aligned.

Contact us to see how we can help.