1. Ask your customers to recommend you on LinkedIn. When you pull the trigger to sell your business, you’ll have a built in list of customers an acquirer can talk to during due diligence (yes, they will ask to talk to your customers).
2. Pick one product or service to stop selling; the less you offer, the more your staff has a chance to become specialists.
3. Hire another sales person. Business owners often rely on their own rainmaking to supplement the sales their staff makes. Who will top up the funnel when you’re gone? If you’re doing the selling, your business isn’t worth very much. Hire one more sales person than you think you need. It’s a great time to hire now and it will take the first six months of the year until they are ramped up.
4. Make at least one decision that will make your company less profitable in the short term and more valuable in the long term. After your cash flow statement, a valuation statement is more important than your P&L.
5. Pick one procedure that currently resides in your head and document the process for your employees to follow. It could be how to lock up at night or how to update your website. Start by documenting the simple stuff and work up to the more complicated procedures.
6. Charge more up front. The less cash you burn, the less cash an acquirer needs to commit to your business and the higher their potential return on equity. The higher the return on equity, the higher the price you’ll get for your business. If you charge 25% up front, would anyone really protest if you charged 35%. The extra 10% will go along way to reducing your working capital requirements.
7. Pay a little slower. If you pay in 45 days today, is anyone really going to cut you off if you start paying in 55 days? See point 6 for the payoff of paying slower.

What are you doing differently in 2010?

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