Our Process
Build Transferable Value & Transition On Your Terms.
UNDERSTANDING GOALS & OBJECTIVES
Every transition begins with understanding what success looks like for you.
Before discussing valuation, buyers, succession plans, or exit strategies, we help business owners define the outcomes they are actually trying to achieve. These goals become the foundation for every recommendation and planning strategy that follows.
Strategic Goals & Objectives:
Financial Readiness
Define your income needs after ownership.
Personal Timeline
Establish the timing that supports your goals.
Successor Selection
Identify the ideal future owner(s).
Transition Approach
Evaluate the right transition process.
Business Valuation Services
Understand what your business is worth and what drives its value before you plan your next move.
A clear valuation gives you the insight to make stronger decisions around exit planning, succession, and long-term business strategy. Absolute Succession helps owners evaluate their business from both a financial and transition perspective. Many firms charge upwards of $10K for this type of guidance, but we do it for around $3K depending on the company and industry.
Know Your Value
GET A CLEARER PICTURE
Prepare Next Steps
A MORE SECURE TOMORROW
Stronger Decisions
PLAN WITH CONFIDENCE
OUR PROCESS
A structured approach to transition planning.
Every business transition is different, but every successful transition follows a thoughtful process designed around the owner’s goals.
1.
Assess & Discover
Evaluate goals, readiness, value drivers, risks, and opportunities.
Evaluate the current state of your business, its transferable value, organizational risks, and your personal financial readiness.
1. Assess & Discover
Every successful transition begins with understanding your current position. Before recommendations are made, we evaluate the financial, operational, and legal factors that influence your transition options and long-term goals.
Before designing a transition plan, Absolute Succession evaluates the current state of the business and the owner’s personal financial readiness. These assessments establish the baseline for the recommendations and decisions that follow.
Business Financial Assessment
Review the company’s key financial indicators to establish a clear understanding of its current financial position.
Value Driver Assessment
Evaluate the company’s transferable value, including its competitive strengths, weaknesses, and the factors that may increase or limit its attractiveness to a future owner.
Organizational Assessment
Review the company’s people and HR systems, internal operations, processes, and legal risks that may affect the business or a future transition.
Personal Financial Assessment
Work alongside the owner’s financial advisor to assess the owner’s personal wealth gap and determine how much value ultimately needs to be monetized from the business.
What You'll Gain
A clear baseline of the company’s current position, transferable value, organizational risks, and the owner’s financial requirements before transition planning begins.
2.
Plan Design
Build a transition strategy aligned with financial, personal, and business objectives.
Turn your goals and assessment findings into a customized blueprint for your business transition.
2. Plan Design
Turn what we’ve learned into a customized blueprint for your transition.
The Plan Design brings together your original goals, the findings from Assess & Discover, and the strategies needed to move forward. It becomes the roadmap for preparing the business and ultimately executing the transition.
Confirm Your Universal Goals & Objectives
Reconfirm the financial outcome you need, your desired timeline, your ideal successor, and the transition approach you initially envisioned. These goals become the “North Star” for the recommendations that follow.
Summarize the Discovery Findings
Bring together the findings from the financial, value driver, organizational, legal, and personal financial assessments to document your current position.
Develop De-Risking & Value-Building Recommendations
Identify specific strategies to address company-specific risks discovered during assessment and opportunities to increase transferable value.
Design the Transition Scenarios
Develop a best-case and close-to-best-case transition scenario, showing how each viable option could unfold based on your goals, assessment findings, and recommended strategies.
What You'll Gain
A comprehensive written blueprint that documents where you are, where you want to go, and the strategies and transition scenarios that can help you get there.
3.
Prepare & Build Value
Implement initiatives that strengthen transferability, reduce risk, and improve future options.
Implement strategies to mitigate company-specific risk and strengthen the transferable value of your business.
3. Prepare & Build Value
This is the implementation phase. The strategies identified during Plan Design are put into action to mitigate company-specific risks and, where appropriate, increase the transferable value of the business.
Mitigate Company-Specific Risk
Address risks within the company’s control that could interfere with a successful transition or reduce its attractiveness to a future owner.
Build Transferable Value
Implement selected value-building strategies designed to increase the company’s enterprise or sellable value and strengthen its position for a future transfer.
Prioritize the Right Initiatives
Not every value-building opportunity needs to be pursued. Strategies can be prioritized based on available time, resources, potential return, and the owner’s objectives.
Implement & Monitor
Put selected recommendations into action, coordinate with the appropriate advisors and team members, and monitor progress toward the goals established in the Plan Design.
What You'll Gain
A stronger, better-prepared business with reduced company-specific risk and greater transferable value as you move toward the ownership transition.
4.
Transfer Scenarios
Evaluate and structure potential transition scenarios that support desired outcomes.
Business owners typically pursue either an internal transition or an external sale, each with unique opportunities, challenges, and planning considerations.
4. Business Transfer Scenario
Once the business has been assessed, the plan has been designed, and the necessary preparation has been completed, the focus shifts to executing the selected business transfer scenario.
Confirm the Transfer Scenario
Finalize the selected ownership transfer approach based on the owner’s goals, successor, financial requirements, and the work completed during the previous phases.
Prepare for the Transfer
Complete the remaining financial, operational, legal, and organizational preparation required before ownership can change.
Structure & Coordinate the Transaction
Coordinate the appropriate financial, legal, tax, and transaction professionals as the terms, structure, documentation, and timing of the transfer are finalized.
Execute the Ownership Transfer
Carry the selected scenario through to completion while coordinating the transition of ownership, leadership, responsibilities, and other necessary elements.
What You'll Gain
A coordinated business transfer designed to achieve your financial and personal objectives while supporting the future of the business you’ve built.
TRANSITION PATHS
Not every transition follows the same path.
Business owners typically pursue either an internal transition scenario or an external sale, each with unique opportunities, challenges, and planning considerations.
Internal Transitions
All internal transitions fall into the following categories:
- Family Succession Strategies
- Management Buyouts
- Employee Ownership Trusts
- Internal Co-Owner Transitions
External Sales
All external sales fall into the following categories:
- Strategic Acquisitions
- Financial – Investment Acquisitions (private equity, recapitalization, or family office investment)
- Mergers and Consolidations
READY TO START PLANNING?
The best transitions are prepared long before they happen.
Whether you are planning years ahead or considering a transition in the near future, a clear strategy can help you move forward with greater confidence, flexibility, and control.
Business Valuation Services
Understand what your business is worth and what drives its value before you plan your next move.
A clear valuation gives you the insight to make stronger decisions around exit planning, succession, and long-term business strategy. Absolute Succession helps owners evaluate their business from both a financial and transition perspective. Many firms charge upwards of $10K for this type of guidance, but we do it for around $3K depending on the company and industry.
Know Your Value
GET A CLEARER PICTURE
Prepare Next Steps
A MORE SECURE TOMORROW
Stronger Decisions
PLAN WITH CONFIDENCE
