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Business owners want both growth and exit value increase for their businesses and why shouldn’t they? I certainly do for my current businesses now and am actively working towards both goals. Fortunately, with the right plan both can feed each other toward better results.
The challenge is that doing both with just your internal resources (you and your employees time and talent) is not advantageous. Sure, you save some $$ (maybe), but you will be spending a lot of company time that should be directed toward delivering the execution of strategy…not figuring it out.
My friend George Sandmann, Founder & CEO of Growth Drive, has a great section describing the roles outside advisors can take in his book “The Growth-Driving Advisor: Proven Strategies for Leading Businesses from Stuck to Best-in-Class” published by Forbes. I highly recommend George’s book.
George identifies the following roles:
- Connector - Often a financial advisor or accountant…they bring the team together and focus on collaborating
- Architect - They create the plan
- General Contractor - They run the long term execution of the plan alongside the owner/CEO
- Tradesperson - specific SME’s that execute upon specific parts of the plan (marketing, HR, etc)
- Fractional - Embedded professional working within the business to directly facilitate change (fractional CFO being a common example)
Those explanations are mine, not George’s. He goes into far greater detail in the book (go ahead and buy it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Driving-Advisor-Strategies-Best-Class/dp/164225875X
What I want to share with you as an owner is this: you have to make sure you are picking the right people to fill the roles. You absolutely need an architect and general contractor and sometimes they are the same person, sometimes not depending upon the complexity of your company's situation.
You should make sure that your financial advisor, the professional identified by the Exit Planning Institutes 2023 National State of Owner Readiness Report as the most trusted advisor, is up to the challenge of being a true connector for you. They are, in some ways, the most accountable member of the value growth and exit planning process because if they do their job well they will be involved with you long after the sale of your business.
Rarely are they, for regulatory and compliance reasons primarily, in position to take the architect and general contractor roles. Instead, if they are truly exceptional, they will have multiple relationships with experts in those roles that they can ‘connect’ you with.
My personal roles in helping business owners drive growth and increase exit value are the next two: the architect and general contractor. Professionals filling those roles must have experience and expertise derived from working with other business owners and ideally from their own personal business exits and current companies.
The tradesperson is pretty simple when you have the first three on board as often the general contractor will not only help manage them for you…they will be able to help you interview and select the best one for your situation.
Fractional is where it gets really interesting. I find it happening more and more in the marketplace, having made a new friend that is a fractional CSO for lower middle marketing companies on a regular basis. People like him are pure gold. He comes in and runs the sales team for a year or so, helps identify, recruit and onboard his permanent replacement and then often sticks around as a coach to support further efforts.
I hope this has been informative and convincing. The good news is that with organizations like The Exit Planning Institute, we have more and more quality professionals entering the market for you to hire.
Related: The Dark Side of Referrals for Successful Financial Advisors