Strategic leadership and tactical project management skills are key when selling a business successfully.  According to Dr. Warren Bennis, leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. You have the vision of selling your company, and now are planning to translate it into reality. This is not a trivial task.

Throughout the process of selling a company, your future and the future of your family and business are at stake. Once you have assembled strong internal and external teams, you will work alongside them to shape and monitor project processes, problems, people, and strategic alignment.

You will oversee the creation of a project plan that outlines tasks, milestones, dependencies, and deliverables, just as you would with any significant strategic initiative. Jumping in and doing the work may be more fun than planning to do it, but execution cannot be a seat-of-the-pants endeavor. As management gurus in their book Execution point out, “unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they’re pointless.”

When reviewing your project plan, assure that goals and priorities are set and deliverables are tied to established dates. It’s customary to hold weekly meetings to track the advance of the selling process. These meetings will be small, for the initial team will have few members. Establish the discipline of weekly meeting early in your selling process. It will be helpful throughout the entire process as your efforts multiply and the number of team members grow.

A Few Pointers

While you are putting the plan together, assure you schedule first those projects and activities having the greatest immediate influence on the valuation and readiness of your business for sale. For one thing, qualified buyers appear sooner than expected. For another, as we’re fond of saying to our clients: tough stuff first. Get it out of the way and move to the next prioritized item.

Determine that all tasks are assigned proper resources, that everyone receives needed support including training, and that essential resources are not overbooked. Teams tend to over-rely on a few accomplished experts, spreading their energies and expertise too thinly. In our planning sessions with clients, we have teams take separate projects and create plans independently. When we bring them together and review their plans as a group, there are inevitably a few central people that everyone is counting on at the same time, and this process serves to highlight that. This is a genuine vulnerability, not just a dependency. Training, support, or outside resources may be the solution in these situations. Be alert to the need for them.  There is a point at which ‘lean and mean’ becomes ‘dead in the water.’  Don’t under-invest in experienced resources at this crucial juncture.

Another frequent problem is failing to build buffer time into the schedule. Unexpected interruptions and unanticipated tasks are inevitable; therefore, our experience has shown that adding 15 percent to the expected time frame is wise. Also be aware that three aspects of the process and project planning are frequently overlooked or undervalued: ownership transfer, communications planning, and contingency planning. Look to our other articles to explain these and how to plan for them when selling a company.

I invite you to use these ideas during your journey to sell a business.

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