What is your business actually worth?

It seems like a simple question, but oftentimes business owners only start to consider it when they start thinking about selling their business. Almost every business owner assumes either implicitly or explicitly that either part or substantially of their retirement assets will come from the sale. In fact, 78% of small businesses intend to sell their businesses to fund their retirement, but nearly 50% have no exit strategy or succession plan. This begs the question: How can you plan for retirement, assuming you sell your business, if you don’t even know how much your business is worth?

There are as many quantitative factors, such as net cash flows, overall profitability, debt to equity ratio, as qualitative factors, such as quality of management, the importance of the founder, and unique competitive advantages, that can impact the value of your business. As a business valuation contains significant professional judgement, a full, in-depth, certified valuation of your business can run tens of thousands of dollars.

Fortunately, for the business owners that want a starting point for pro-active steps to maximize the value of their business to a potential buyer (and thereby maximize the money received in a sale), you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars. We can provide the internal use valuations of your business that provide both a starting point for how much your business is worth at the time of measurement, as well as comparisons to other businesses in your industry for only a fraction of the cost of a certified valuation. So not only will you know how much you could potentially receive in a sale, but you will also receive comparisons to your specific industry average Key Performance Indicators. Thus, you will know what areas to work on improving in your business so you can receive the largest payout you possibly can.