Succession Planning: Think Well Ahead

Are You Excited About Your Future?

What Happens To The Business After You Have Gone?

You will spend a great deal of your lifetime building
your business.

Come the time when you are ready to transfer
the business to a younger generation, how will
you plan for it? Have you done so already?
Discover some of the unique issues in planning
for and implementing the transfer of the family-owned
business. Business coaching can help to navigate some
of the delicate areas of your succession planning process.

Estate Planning And The Business Person

How long is it since you have clearly analyzed,
what you would like to happen to your personal
and business estate upon your death?

Have the following matters really been addressed?

For example:

What is the business really worth today?

What amount of debt is outstanding?

What is the net worth of your estate?

How would your spouse be provided for?

Would a family member take over the business?

Would this person have to buy out your share?
Or perhaps all shareholdings?

Are there any other family members you would
like to provide for?

Would you want to sell the business and would you want your estate to provide an equitable inheritance to each family member?

If not where would the cash come from?

What are the Capital Gains Tax consequences of your Will?

You can ensure that the right amount of cash
is available to carry out your wishes
through estate planning.

Key Difficulties

Lack of viability of the business

Lack of planning

Little desire on the owner's part to transfer the firm.

Reluctance of offspring to join the firm

Heirs or beneficiaries...how to tell?

But wait a minute... We've talked about what happens if you die. What happens if you don't? What do you want to happen with the business into the future? You plan to stay working until you drop, or do you have other things you want to do with your life in the years to come. Do you want the business to continue when you retire? Who will run it then? Will you sell it or pass it on to your children? Do they even want it? How will you get paid for it?

Business succession planning should be an ongoing process, not an event. It is planning to be in charge of the future you want for your business, and for yourself.

Picture the future you want... see it - feel what it's going to be like - and then you can build toward making it the reality.

Thinking Of Getting A Business Coach?Lindy AsimusDesign Business EngineeringGet Help For Your BusinessDownload your free 24 Page Action Plan Marketing Workbook! Subscribe to Actionbites Blog

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The Secret Asset In Any Business

Business owners often work hard and try to think of everything in their business. Yet this element which can eventually become the biggest asset in the business... is overlooked completely.

What is it? It's your client or customer base.

Your secret business asset

View more presentations from Lindy Asimus Business Coach.

Corporations are getting amazingly good at collating information on customers now using bar codes on coupons and the like. Some might consider this "too much" information. For the small business owner though, while this level of data collection is less available, there is a lot more information available - and known to merchants - than ever get collected, stored and analyzed.

This information, on both a Prospect database, as well as a Customer Database that is set up for marketing purposes (and no, your customer list for invoicing won't do!), can be the key to retaining business, gaining new customers and growing referrals from customers and your networking partners. In fact, your networking partners can have their own database! This attention to detail can form part of what makes your business stand out as different.
This is crucial to take in hand and get right, since it will have a direct effect on the profit potential of the business and the price the business may sell for at some time in the future. It will also have a big impact on making the next buyer WANT to buy the business.

And don't forget, there is nothing more stress-relieving than happy long term customers, buying more and bringing their friends with them!


What can you do to get started?

Here are four things to get you started.

Create a system to capture information you have on prospects.
Improve your data collection process for customers.
Implement a customer 'touch' program.
Start!


Have more ideas? Let's see them!



PS Yes, love to work with clients on issues like these!- Lindy


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Step up in your business - Here's how to improve performance
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Thinking Of Getting A Business Coach?
Lindy Asimus
Design Business Engineering
Get Help For Your Business


Download your free 24 Page Action Plan Marketing Workbook!

Subscribe to Actionbites Blog

Love Your Customers. Engage.

The social media world is abuzz with messages on how the future is all about caring for customers and your network, showing you care and being authentic in our engagement with people online.

I see this and I know it's true, and I wonder if this should give me hope that business will soon come to understand this too.

Now while I'm prone to be optimistic, I am perhaps not optimistic enough to expect that this will happen for the great majority of businesses. More than that, I predict a great many businesses will continue to not 'get it' at all, and will keep doing what they are doing, without regard for the changing face of business and the new way that people are coming to expect to deal with businesses as they look to buy goods and services.

For the smart business owners, they will realise The Jig Is Up... and if they want to be relevant to customers, if they want to have their loyalty and their ongoing business, then they have to smarten up the way they do business. The smart ones, will do just that. And in doing that, they can own that segment of the local business, if that's what they want and if that's what they incorporate into a strategy to accomplish this as an outcome.

Enter the era of Engagement. Well it isn't such a new era. Years ago my parents opened a corner shop to let them earn money when my eldest brother was hospitalised for quite a long time. The corner store was a great example of local business engaging and relating to local customers and responding to the market. The shopkeeper was a part of the community and 'they knew where you lived', so your reputation was important, as was your ability to provide a service model that accomodated the needs of your customers and made your business an integral component of their day-to-day life.

In 2010 that's still the way it is. I hear business owners say "customers aren't loyal any more". And they are probably right. Customers have no reason to keep coming back to your store if you aren't providing them something different in the experience. If you train your customers to just look for discount prices, then guess what? They will find the stuff cheaper somewhere else. Probably at a big box store that can buy supplies cheaper than you can. So there is no future in that kind of selling model. What the big box stores can't do - and the family business can - is provide expertise, and engagement and responsiveness. The family business can determine to be the best in their particular field, sell stuff that is worth the price to buy and be there when things go wrong, to make them right again. That's what business can do - and that's what business will do... if it wants to stay in business in this new economy.

But that's not all bad. And technology lets us not only provide this expertise and superior service model in our local downtown area, but potentially, across the internet to those people who want what you specialise in. If you set your business up well, you can sell your stuff to people close by - and people not so close by, but who want what only you can do.

So what is the 'takeaway' from this? Simply this.

If you want your business to be vital into the future you need to start approaching it as a business. Understand the way the market works and you make sure you have:

• A clear Vision for what you want to achieve
  
• Communicate that Vision to your employees, friends, partner, and customers
  
• a strategy of your own to follow in implementing your vision
• actions and steps in place to deliver what you promise
• methods in place to monitor and track your progress
• a clear understanding of who your competitors are - and
• what strategy they are using.

It's not good enough now to just turn up each day and do what you do. Think. Plan. Take Action. Engage.

That's what will keep your business healthy in the new economy.

Oh and one final thing. If you don't love your customers ... get out of business now.




Thinking Of Getting A Business Coach?
Lindy Asimus
Design Business Engineering
Get Help For Your Business


Download your free 24 Page Action Plan Marketing Workbook!

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