Your success in building your company is not the result of “winging it” but from anticipation and preparation.

Why wouldn’t you use the same approach when it comes to selling it?

Exit AdvantageSM‘s 10-step approach walks business owners through every stage of exit preparation, from personal readiness through closing, so nothing is left to chance when it’s time to sell.

Owner Readiness

How prepared are YOU to exit?

Owner Readiness Review

How prepared are you to exit? It is critical for us to understand the owner’s emotional and financial readiness for an exit.

Company Readiness

How saleable (or transferable) is the business?

Company Readiness

How dependent is the company on you?

Most private equity investors and strategic buyers will agree that the biggest roadblock to selling a business in the lower middle market is its dependency on the owner.

Business & Financial Assessment

Examines management practices in a wide variety of functional disciplines foundation to all industries.

EvaluSys® starts with a free online assessment that gives you a quick look at how your business is doing across the areas that matter most to a future buyer. Based on your results, it points to where a closer look would be most valuable.

Once you’re enrolled in Exit Advantage℠, your advisor works with you to go deeper into those areas, strengthening your business well before you go to market.

  • Executive Leadership
  • Business Planning
  • Exit Planning
  • Financial Planning & Control
  • Human Resources
  • Management / Supervision
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Product/Service Innovation
  • Business Process Quality

Recast Financials

Discover the true earnings of your company.

Discover the true earnings of your company.

  • Review and document 4-year historical financials and current year forecast.
  • Normalize (recast) income and expenses to project the true earnings the acquirer will receive.
  • Addback and adjust for owner perks, personal, and unusual or extraordinary business expenses.
  • Prepare financials in a format attractive to larger acquirers and financial buyers.

Range of Values

Understand the financial and premium value of your business.

The Estimate of Value (EOV)

Is a comprehensive report that includes all the components that support a “market based” valuation result.

  • Our EOV methodology and results provide insight into your company’s value range that is comprehensive, professional and affordable.
  • Utilizes recast financials to determine the financial value range of your business
  • Includes an initial EOV and up to three annual updates at no additional cost.

Tax Optimization

How to reduce your tax burden
  • Determine the tax burden on the sale based on your entity type (C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC)
  • Identify strategies to minimize taxes such as minority gifting, trusts, etc.
  • Explore tax credits for manufacturers and others engaged in R&D

We will work with the client’s Accountant, Trust Attorney and/or Wealth Manager to explore strategies that may help the client reduce or delay tax burden upon a sale.

Acquirer Risk Assessment

Assess and mitigate risk from an acquirer's perspective

What is the Acquirer’s perspective of risk and how do you mitigate against it?

We will review employee, supplier, customer and environmental issues, among others.

Review and analysis by the advisor will prompt discussions with the business owner regarding these important topics.

There may be steps the owner can take that will to mitigate any issues.

Transition Options

What are your best options and why?

What are your best options and why? The advisor will explore and discuss the types of buyers in the marketplace with advantages and drawbacks of each including

  • Strategic and Synergistic acquirers
  • Minority and Majority Recaps with Private Equity
  • Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
  • Estate & Gifting
  • Management Buyout (MBO)

Discussions with third party advisors may be required to determine if some of these options are viable such as ESOP, MBO and Estate/Gifting

The Touchstone Advisor will lead these discussions.

Assessment Recommendations

A scorecard highlights areas of weakness and provides specific recommendations for improvement.

  • Recommendations focus on improving both operational and financial performance.
  • In a competitive sell-side process many of these improvements will result in higher offers.

Some recommendations can be implemented by ownership or management directly. Others may require support from a Touchstone Advisor or an outside consultant.

Annual Performance Review

Are you heading in the right direction? We’ll annually review your progress, and when you’re ready, we’ll take your business to market.

Mergers and Acquistions

Our seasoned team has the expertise in the transfer of ownership of privately-held companies.