Marketing Systems

For a variety of reasons—to reach competitive advantage, achieve operational efficiencies, improve market position, diversify risk—you may conceive to sell a company to a different, larger, company in a merger transaction. Although they are fascinating consumers, a merger, particularly with a larger company, may be a process completely at another level from simply transferring ownership of a business from one person to another.

A successful sale ends when the sale concludes and you are procured your business. However a successful sale and merger requires integrating your organization into another once you have sold it. And your role in the process will be diverse if you and the client comply with your continued involvement with the new enterprise.

For your sale and merger to be the most engaging to patrons, you must begin to consider how to integrate your business at the primary moment you think about selling it no matter if you will be there to make it happen or not. A disposition of “that’s not my issue” will truly lessen the value of your business to potential buyers.  Unless your exit strategy is to leave immediately upon the sale and are willing to leave the fate of your life’s work in the acquirer’s hands, the goal of a successful integration may guide your deliberations and actions at each stage of selling a business.

Integrating more than one business can be swift and easy if the goal  of the merger is to have all corporations relatively separate. Integration is more sophisticated than linking firms legally and changing Net sites. In more advanced situations, it requires combining business ecosystems, partaking an advanced universe of stakeholders, establishing new norms, and growing the merged organization. Integrating two companies a procurement and merger could need modification inside every operation of all organizations and can definitely involve a blending of two, typically entirely dissimilar, organizational cultures.

After you sell an organization to merge with another, bear in mind that there is a psychological component to creating a merger work for you.  As an independent business owner, you are used to autonomy, determining power and hierarchical deference.  Moving from the voice of absolute power to one voice part of a chorus demands flexibility that an entrepreneur could realize difficult to adjust to.  Usually entrepreneurs left larger organizations to begin a business because larger organizations do not  seem to be a match for all parties.  Honestly assess your adaptability and willingness to work in a larger context.

If firms are integrated properly, customers, partners, and staff are engaged, sales move forward, and productivity does not suffer. Unfortunately, but, a majority of mergers never meet management strategic and monetary expectations. To avoid that common fate, integrating your business after a purchase needs clear and realistic goals, centered leadership, and superb execution.

You and additionally the new owner will need to design your ongoing role and work mutually, as you each deem appropriate. Even if yours may be a limited involvement, work to understand what to expect during the merger method and how you can contribute to its success.  Whether or not you are burned out and eager to depart, your exit strategy will need to embody doing all you will be able to to ensure the viability of your business when you leave it.

I invite you to use these concepts during your journey to sell a business.

Marian Cook is a highly sought after business transition expert and speaker with over 25 years experience helping business owners design their best-life exit strategy, and improve their business performance and valuation.  She is the co-author of “Selling Your Business For More:  Maximizing Returns For You, Your Family and Your Business” (published by Macmillan).  If you are ready to sell a business and jump-start your business sale process, connect with Marian via her free tips, articles, checklists and blog at Business Transition Experts.