How APB’s StressFactor™ will give you a competitive edge when it comes to selling your business…

When the time comes to sell your business you’ll obviously want to to maximise its value, and streamline the buyout process to make the sale as easy as possible. But how? In this article we’ll discuss some of the things you need to be aware of, and specifically how using APB’s StressFactor™ solution will give you a competitive edge in the negotiation process.

Why businesses are sold:

There are many reasons for selling a business, these include:

• You might be an entrepreneur seeking to cash out, or accelerate growth, after years of hard work building up a successful venture.
• A management board looking to merge with a parallel organisation to to ensure future growth by levering their expertise, resources, distribution & marketing channels and client base.
• A management buyout.
• A venture capitalist takeover.
• A sale due to owner retirement, health issues or other personal reasons.
• Recapitalisation due to financial liquidity issues where the exiting owner(s) retain a minority equity stake in the business. This allows a restructuring of the company’s debt due to a drop in share price, or to defend against a hostile takeover, or accelerate growth.

Pre-flight checking your businesses For Sale

Before you go out into the world and tout your business for sale, you need to ensure the basics are in place. If you don’t, you risk running into issues further down the line when you are negotiating a deal. Anything you can do at this stage to counter objections from buyers will significantly increase your bottom line, and potentially avoid losing a sale. And let’s be clear, buyers will look for any opportunity to lower your asking price.

Things you need to prepare for in advance:

• Ensure you have up-to-date, professionally audited accounts made up to the end of your last tax year. It’s also a good idea to try and sell within a few months of this to show no hidden debts have been allowed to accrue.
• Demonstrate that there are no hidden stressors within your workforce that might impact future growth. New owners will want to know that the key people who keep business running will keep on performing under their new management. This is where APB’s StressFactor™ gives you a competitive edge.
• Talk to professional financial advisors about the best tax structure to put in place in advance, for example, if you are an entrepreneur you might be able to claim Entrepreneurs’ Relief that will significantly reduce the Capital Gains tax on your profits.
• Look at the fine print of your paperwork: are your premise and equipment leases ready to roll over?
• Have you applied due diligence to your legal contracts with employees, contractors, suppliers and key stakeholders?
• Settle any employee disputes and litigation.
• Polish your public facing assets; One of the first things potential buyers will do is check your company out on the web. You need to have a professional brand presence, and ensure there are no negative mentions of your business online and on social media.

Why APeopleBusiness?

APeopleBusiness has in-depth knowledge and experience working with larger organisations and companies on both sides of the buy/sell process. We provide objective, quantifiable and verifiable information that facilitates the sales process.

Just like an accountant can show facts and figures about a company’s assets, transactions and balance sheet, APB’S StressFactor™ provides facts and figures about the people within an organisation. Why is this important you might ask? The truth is in the modern era due diligence is expected and compliance with regulation is a legal duty, you should be aware of  ISO45003 compliance.

How APB’s StressFactor™ gives you a competitive edge when selling your business

Where APB comes into its own is in the ‘People’ part of the business sales equation. As a business owner you need to demonstrate to potential buyers that you have a strong management team in place, and your workforce and key personnel that make the business a success are keyed in.

If there are issues it’s far better to surface them in advance rather than find out during the negotiating stage, where it could reduce your chances of maximising your return, or even scupper the deal completely.

20 reasons why you should use StressFactor™ to sell your business:

1. Help maximise your businesses sell price.
2. Demonstrate due diligence.
3. Comply with legal requirements.
4. Show potential buyers independent APB reports quantifying the personalities and dynamics within the business, ensuring there are no under the surface workforce issues.
5. Pre-empt and fix specific issues that might reduce the price or stall the sale if surfaced during the sale process.
6. Help preventing and/or reduce the potential for claw backs in a buyer’s agreement from kicking in.
7. Manage people through the sales process and prepare the team for sale by knowing issues and understanding how to alleviate them.
8. Plugging any training gaps.
9. Acting in time to reduce conflict & anticipate and dissipate conflict.
10. “killing the grapevine”.
11. Ensuring no major disruption to Business as Usual during the sale.
12. Make any transition process safer, e.g., in a merger, more viable without loss of valuable people.
13. Identify and mitigate key personnel and key man risks in advance of going to market. For example, you might want to encourage key employees to stay by considering Incentivisation schemes, or reassign people who might create friction points in their current role.
14. Protect implicit knowledge carried by your people and embedded in the value of the business. Are NDAs and relevant restrictive covenant contracts in place?
15. Have the option to show your people you care, that they are listened to and that their concerns are addressed in so doing, demonstrate that you are a “good employer”.
16. Show you meet the Social requirements, as they apply to your employees, set by the need to deliver on ESG principles – in this way widening the company’s appeal to ESG aware investors.
17. Ability to create competition among potential buyers, so that the company is more attractive.
18. Streamline the time to sale by removing potential obstacles.
19. You get personalised, professional advice and business recommendations from APeopleBusiness.
20. Ensure ISO45003 compliance.

What kind of businesses should consider using APB’s StressFactor™?

APB’s StressFactor™ is used to identify workplace and people issues. It can be of use to any size of enterprise going through a sale process, from SME’s and Tech Scaleups, to larger organisations with hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of employees.

Here are just some of the many types of companies, organisations and industry sectors with whom APB have worked or where StressFactor™ can successfully be used to preempt workforce issues and help you achieve the maximum sale price.

Your StressFactor™ Audit Report

When you work with APeopleBusiness you’ll have the confidence that you’re working with experienced, seasoned professionals who have your best interests at heart. We work with discretion and our findings and the reports we generate are confidential and limited to those we work with.

On completion of your StressFactor™ audit you will receive a full, detailed report. It will contain a summary of our research, heat maps, detailed comments, conclusions and our recommendations. Throughout our engagement with you we are always on hand to discuss the process, and specific findings and recommendations.