We’ve written in the past about the importance of small business owners having comprehensive exit strategies planned. You can read our post on exit strategies here. Equally important are succession strategies, which you can read about here.
Last week, The New York Times’ “You’re the Boss” blog posted an article on exit strategies. It implied that the economic hardships of 2009 may require business owners to put re-thinking their exit strategies at the top of their 2010 to-do lists. Or it may have made business owners without an exit plan understand the importance of having one in place. The post says that because the median sale price for private businesses fell between 2007 and 2008, and because once all the numbers are crunched, there is expectation that we’ll see there was a further drop in 2009, business owners with a plan to sell immediately may need to put off that transaction in order to get the most out of the businesses they worked so hard to build. You can read the post here.
Of course, in some cases, business owners may have no choice but to sell before the marketplace improves. We discussed one such case, divorce, just last week. The most important step in planning an exit strategy is understanding the worth of your business, and it is important to work with an appraiser who understands all the intricacies involved in determining its value.
