Selling a Business

How To Make Your Business Desirable Enough To Be Sold

Written by Ashwin Satyanarayana for Gaebler Ventures

Developing businesses that can be sold is the key to building assets that can make money multi-fold. Here are some ways to make your business desirable enough to be sold.

Ray Croc of McDonald is a genius because he did not help bring out great burgers; instead, he developed a business which can be sold.

McDonalds is much like "business-in-a-box" – all you need is some money to invest and you have a business that is semi-automated. All you do is to push a couple of buttons each day. Do you have to build your business this way? What must you keep in mind when you want a business that can enable you to be free, runs like a clock and makes money for you all the time? Here's how you can make your business desirable enough to be sold.

Think everything out before starting – make a business plan: Visualization is extremely powerful; it ultimately aids you in giving a direction to your vision. Think about how you want your business to be – the sights, smells, sounds, colours, logos, situations, etc. What does it take to get to the point you visualized? Write everything down and make a business plan. Your business plan should not be rigid and it must be the guide post for you to run your business.

There ought to be a way for doing everything: There are lots of things you do when you run your business – like doing sales and marketing, working on processes to deliver services or to set-up manufacturing units to bring out products. You will need human resources, a way to manage accounts, etc. All of this has to be done efficiently and quickly. Are you documenting everything you are doing? Are you on a constant pursuit to bring each of these processes to perfection? Developing systems cannot be complete until you document it all.

Duplicate everything done to run business: All actions you perform when dealing with business functions like sales, accounts, manufacturing process or service delivery process must be developed such that anyone joining your company in any capacity should understand what role they play in the organization. Also, whatever they have to do is already laid out for them – everything is done according to the systems you developed. Duplication is the key to successful businesses.

Standardize everything: Your business functions now work on systems – a specific way to do things which is purported to be highly effective, profitable and productive for your company. However, that point is difficult to reach if the systems you already deployed are not standardized. Standards bring about quality – the best possible processes are undertaken to roll out highest possible quality products and services.

Make it simple, but effective: The most successful business systems are effective, but simple. Businesses should be built such that anyone sitting on the leading chair can literally run the business. Everything should have been thought about when developing the business up to this point but from here on, it is just a matter of following steps.

Ash has an undergraduate degree in engineering and an MBA from Ohio University. Today he is a corporate trainer, business coach and a freelance writer.

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