Unlocking Business Success: Expert Insights on Sales and Exit Strategies

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: And welcome back. This is Joshua Kornitsky. Professional iOS implementer and your host of Cherokee Business Radio. I’ve got a couple of great guests here in the studio live with me this morning. Let’s jump right in. So good morning first. Uh, Dean Nolley, founder of Sales Growth Imagination. Welcome to Cherokee Business Radio.

Dean Nolley: Thank you for having me today.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m so glad to have you here. So, Dean, tell us a little bit about about yourself and about what you do.

Dean Nolley: Well, about myself. Um, I’m very blessed with a great family. Uh, three adult children, uh, all out in the workforce. Um, beautiful, wonderful wife. Um, it really is a big part of why I do what I do today. Because I think, as you know, I made an intentional decision to leave corporate America. And that decision was we had been married. Um, I had moved five times in 11.5 years. And at that point, we were being asked to move again. And I could tell with my wife being pregnant with our oldest son, um, moving again was not a good idea. So. Okay, that gave us the courage and the path to start my own business. Digital Imagination, at that time.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. And what is it you do to help folks?

Dean Nolley: Well, um, what I do today is I help them grow sales. Um, and building out the sales model. I kind of see the group of where I focus in three different categories. And I would like to tell you that most of the companies I’m touching, they’re working well. That’s great. And we’re looking to try to scale their growth. Generally what happens? I get calls from people that need help, and it’s usually one of two areas. One they really need. Things are broken. It’s normally sales process. It’s people. It could be CRM, a whole litany of areas around strategy, process, measurables and people. But the key is you can’t you got to dive into the work. And that’s why I call myself a builder and an architect, because if I handed them a roadmap or consulting, you know, results, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. The other area is sales led business owners, so they you can’t say things are broken because they never existed. But let’s take an example of an owner that was three, 4,000,005 years ago. Now they’re 1015 million. She or he have now simply outgrown their structure. So if my dad were still living, he would laugh because he tied back to when I had my own company. I would have been the absolute worst sales lead owner to make a sales cone. So now I get to have the fun of going into those owners who put their heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears in their company. And I need to help them rebuild it. And I’ve got to touch their baby, so to speak. And again, as my dad would say, paybacks are hell, son.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so I know you shared with me that you’re a Six Sigma green belt, but you’re also a certified sales leader and, uh, an objective management group, um, certified.

Dean Nolley: Well, objective management group certification. But, you know, when you start looking at the different certifications, some of them don’t tie together very naturally. Matter of fact, you might say that I’m a little bit of a freak of nature.

Joshua Kornitsky: We would never say that. But my my point in bringing it up is it shows that you’ve got process background, you’ve got sales background, and we’ll delve into your background in a minute. But you’ve not just got your own experience, you’ve got certifications as well.

Dean Nolley: I’ve gone through the sales leader certification. Um, I’ve also gone through the Harvard Business School development program. Wow. Um, if you want to tie to Dale Carnegie. Also, Dale Carnegie advisor. So you have that part under the belt, but then you get into a large litany of I in the sales process. Uh, AI sales tool certification. Um, OMG, I will stay there is really around business or people’s skill sets. And do they have the requirements to do the job in the sales area that is so critical, especially with the five generational gaps that we’re dealing with. Making sure they have the skill set, and do they want to sell that product or service? Because what Gen Y and Z want to do is quite different than, say, Baby Boomer aging X or traditionalists.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, so so let’s back up and let’s talk again about how you help the people that you help. So it sounds like you can help on the process side. It certainly sounds like you can help on the technology side. And then obviously, as I came to know you, you help on the sales side. Correct. So that’s a that’s a lot of diversity in your in your knowledge. Where does this experience come from other than the certifications.

Dean Nolley: Well, if you take a look at the career path, when I left Eastman Kodak I was such a good employee, I went to put film out of business. Um, I started with the Silicon Valley startup. Um, I worked for gentlemen that were from Apple, Logitech. Sun micro SGI. Small companies? Yeah, a lot of tech companies and none other. The consultant for our group was none other than John Sculley. So I learned entrepreneurship like I had never seen. And it was a great venture. A gentleman by the name of Pete Orsini and I, um, once that group was being sold, started our own services business called Digital Imagination. Started it from scratch. Uh, built it to 5.4 million. We sold that to Applied Graphics Technology, a newspaper company in New York. Um, and I can honestly say to this day. And Peter Sydney is one of my dear friends in life to this day. So we started, we built, we sold. Um, that led me into the PE world. So, you know, mainly software services, both on enterprise, some print related, a lot of front end server. But that whole software world, I was working with the port codes and I was not running the company, but I was running sales. So we were either at scratch three, 4 or 5 million trying to take to 30, 40, 50 million to have that equity event.

Joshua Kornitsky: And it sounds like you’ve got a fair amount of experience helping businesses scale up from, from both the sales and the process side. Um, you know what? What’s the general impetus? Why do people reach out to you to to where do they start?

Dean Nolley: Well, that’s a great question. Um, unfortunately, they generally reach out about 3 or 4 years after they should reach out.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So the time to call is now.

Dean Nolley: Correct. And if you think about it because I was one of them. If you’re a sales lead owner, there’s a lot of pride. There’s a lot of work you’ve put in your business to build it. So it’s kind of hard to reach out and ask for help. And if you are the sales lead owner, The one area that is probably most difficult to ask for help on is on the sales side. So when they reach out, normally they’re going backwards on sales. That’s generally the biggest issue I see. They do not have a sales process. And more recently in the last year and a half, everybody talks about the baby boomer owners that are leaving the workforce for every owner on a $20 million company. There’s generally three baby boomer sales professionals retiring, retiring for health, relocating for family. And it’s a major issue to replace those individuals. And most of them haven’t had to deal with this or replaced or hired in quite some time.

Joshua Kornitsky: So how do you help that type of organization? I think they call it the the silver tsunami. Right. That you’ve got this large group of folks that will be leaving the workforce and certainly on on the sales side, they’ve got a great deal of tribal knowledge, right? So what do you do to help a business plan for survive and thrive?

Dean Nolley: Well, the most important part and that that is where O-m-g comes in. You absolutely have to understand the skill set required to have an individual sell your product or service, and then you’re not going to probably hire perfect. So you need to understand what else do I need to do to train? Say with the rain group, you know, part of the training program that I work with within the company as well, because you’ve got to develop that individual. And can you get them to where you need them to sell the product? With the generational part, you got to make sure that they want to sell it, because I can tell you, there are certain industries that Gen Y and Gen Z are not attracted to, and it’s quite different again than baby boomer traditionalists.

Joshua Kornitsky: And you can help those business owners kind of traverse those waters.

Dean Nolley: We’re going to help build the job description, the requirement with amplify, we’re going to help recruit the people and get them in place. We’re going to onboard them. We’re going to train them. And most importantly, with the sales process, you’re going to document that because everything you’re doing needs to be repeatable, not just for the people you’re bringing on board today, but for future people you’re going to bring bored.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. That’s where scalability lives in documentation. Exactly. We share that with our clients all the time. So in addition to to that onboarding, in addition to that training, you also build out the process.

Dean Nolley: Yes. Um, the security stat is 92% of companies do not have a documented sales process, 97% do not have a strategic sales playbook. So when you’re going into an account, the thing that you’ve got to be most important is curious, because I don’t what I will come in and do is a discovery touching every element of strategy, process, measurables and the people both computerized, but also one on one interviews with every customer facing individual in the company, or a subset if it’s a larger company. But that is critical as a but it’s just a starting point. I can tell you that if anyone ever tells you they’re going to nail the discovery, you need to run like Forrest Gump, because you better be curious. And it’s not all bad stuff.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure, but you still got to understand.

Dean Nolley: And find ways that you can help the client. And most importantly, it’s got to be individualized to their business. So when you’re building out the sales process, think of it this way from a time that you’re generating a lead to the time you’ve closed the deal, every step in that sales funnel has to be well documented. It has to be the right activities, most importantly, and it has to be repeatable because it’s not that you want to help someone wing it, you want to make sure that every person they have today and in the future can do it. Repeatable. But the other miss, it’s got to be balanced for the company because you could be doing a lot of great activities, but if it’s not producing the right revenue and the right gross margin output and other objectives that you have as a company for growth, then it’s not going to be balanced and eventually it’s going to break again.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like it’s a fairly long engagement for you potentially. Is this one size fits all or do you tailor this.

Dean Nolley: You know it starts out as one size but it winds up tailoring it. And I’ll give you an example. And one account went in to build the sales process. Um, it needed a lot of work. What we determined in the process, the sales professional, they had said, I can’t do the job now, but we built something that was fair for the salespeople. It produced what the company needed for growth. So we then started hiring. And I think the company was blown away with the fact of, wow. The new sales professional knows what to do. And it’s like, well, we do have a pretty good sales process now. We hired the second sales rep in the third. All three are doing well. What happened is they in their case, they’re never going to get past three people. So the question was who’s going to manage these people? So that actually expanded my engagement both time and commitment, because I’m now managing those three salespeople and other engagements. When I come in, Joshua, it’s predetermined that I’m there to help them build out the team. We’re going to hire a sales leader. I’m going to get that sustainable, and then I’m going to graduate, and hopefully I will have earned a very loyal customer and testimonial. And maybe there’s other one other initiatives I can help them with.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. So. So it sounds like you’re there for however long it takes to get them to where they need to be.

Dean Nolley: Correct. On the infrastructure where you’re fixing and putting things in place, you’re probably there for a 3 to 5 month engagement. If you’re managing people, it’s most probably a 8 to 12 month engagement. Um, and if you’re going into where things are working pretty well, and now we’re going to document build out the framework and roadmap with the strategic sales playbook that would look similar to world, you know, that would look very similar to EOS, because I’m going in with three sessions in the first 90 days, and I’m capturing about 60 elements well documented. That’s going to align to a strategic sales playbook that’s already been framed and educated with AI. So I’m taking customer data. That’s most important. Uh, probably 30, 40 hours of work on my side. Not to mention all the the customer side that’s into the playbook. But what that’s doing, it’s it’s perfecting the ability to scale. Also. And then I’m back in like once a quarter, similar to what you do.

Joshua Kornitsky: Touch base make sure okay.

Dean Nolley: Make sure they don’t jump back into what they were doing before.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well it sounds like it’s a pretty comprehensive engagement. Let me ask you, Dean, because of your experience at at everything from a startup through through what I presume is probably a fortune 100 company. Um, what’s your ideal client size? Who do what size companies do you work with?

Dean Nolley: Well, I would say it’s in the 5 million to 50 million range would be the sweet spot. Okay. Um, if you expanded that, I’m getting calls from people in the couple million range to 100 million range. And again, it depends on the services. If you’re up on someone’s scale, you’re generally in the larger companies. Sure. Um, and with the framework and the strategic sales playbook, uh, when you’re fixing and repairing, you’re probably more in the 2 to 20 million range.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So it sounds like you can help, uh, really quite a wide swath of folks. Uh, that’s fantastic news, really, for anybody that’s listening, because it means, at the very least, you’ve got some guidance and direction for them. So what’s the best way for people to reach you?

Dean Nolley: Uh, the best way for people to reach me is on email or the website. So sales growth imagination at gmail.com.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. And we’ll all we’ll post all of your social all of your contact data. But I always like to give you that opportunity. Uh, is there a phone number they can call?

Dean Nolley: Yeah. The cell phone is (404) 307-1841. And the thing that I enjoy the most is having a conversation. And my commit as a sales guy is I won’t sell, which sounds backwards, but I think we’ve all seen animal House and I kind of feel like I’m the Delta. Meaning I’m on double secret probation. Okay, so people expect me to have a silver bullet. I don’t, uh, they expect me to sell them, I won’t. But what is critical is my personal goal. And I’m doing it this year very well. Is to have one conversation a day with the business owner. Right? And last week, I was in front of one of the Vestager chairs and a CEO group. You know, I spoke with 16 CEOs.

Joshua Kornitsky: So does that mean you take the rest of the month off?

Dean Nolley: No, it means this Thursday I’m back over here in your neck of woods at KSU, and I’m in front of 15 business owners. That’s fine. But you know, I love the one on one, the individual just to have a conversation. Because probably the hardest thing around this is people understanding what you do. And, you know, the more business owners that know what I do and you know, the better. So that’s why I don’t try to sell people, because you may not need my service or you may not today, but in a week or two you may know someone through church, through business, um, through your neighborhood. That’s like, I think you need to call Dean. And, you know, it’s just like you did, uh, a few weeks ago, you called me with a friend of yours who’s also a client, and he needed help with the CRM. That process. I got him in with an integrator. They are working with him. In this case, it’s HubSpot. Wonderful engagement. Uh, I think you’ve probably have heard the same feedback.

Joshua Kornitsky: He’s very happy with him.

Dean Nolley: Um, and I got to tell you, the CRM and then rain Group training, because rain Group is individual based training that could be in group structure. But for those owners that have 1 or 2 salespeople, it’s very affordable. It’s like a license of $985 a year. So it’s built for that. Um, most people don’t want to ever touch someone and train if they have 1 or 2 people. But, you know, the bottom line is those categories. And there’s other areas that I touch with a lot of sales tools, especially in the AI world, that help clients find clients, help them better engage with clients, and also help them better relationship manage. So there’s a lot of individual tools that can help companies that doesn’t require them to get a full engagement with me.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like there’s a lot of reasons to call you. Well, Dean Nolley, founder of Sales Growth Imagination, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your wisdom and your insight. I hope you can stick around. I’ve got another fascinating guest coming up who I believe you know. Uh, Bob Tankesley, can you stick around?

Dean Nolley: Oh, I would love to, because I’ve read his book. Okay. I did not know we were on the show today. A small world. We’re also in a networking group together, so I’m anxious to hear more because he’s put a lot of heart and soul into this book, and he nails on the exit teams part so well.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic.

Dean Nolley: I can’t wait to listen.

Joshua Kornitsky: More then stick around. Thank you again. Dean Nolley, uh, founder of Sales Growth Imagination. Let’s move over and talk with my next guest, Bob Tankesley. Thank you, Bob, for being here. Bob is, uh, the principal and an M&A advisor at Walden Mergers and Acquisitions. And he’s also, uh, as Dean alluded to, the author of Exit Teams, which has the subtitle of Build a Team of Advisors for Your Business sale to get a higher price. Bob, welcome. Thank you for being here. Dean. Uh.

Bob Tankesley: Joshua, thanks for very much for having me. This is, uh, this is great. Like Dean said, you’re over here in my neck of the woods. Now, I live in Cherokee, too.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, wonderful. Well that’s fantastic. I live in Kennesaw, but we’ll just have you guys on all the time. We’ll talk about all kinds of great stuff. Well, Bob, tell us, what on earth made you want to write a book?

Bob Tankesley: So there’s a lot of books out there on exit. Okay. I think a lot of them assume that the the reader of their books, if an owner of a small business that that owner is, uh, running a business that even can be sold. So let that sink in for a minute.

Joshua Kornitsky: So explain that a little. Because I think I know what you mean, but I’d rather we not. Yes.

Bob Tankesley: Yeah. Um, let me just throw out a quick stat. I love stats. Uh, 4% of companies ever sell.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Bob Tankesley: Okay. So 20% of companies are ever taken to market. Only 20% of those ever transact. It’s a stat that every time the surveys are done, it’s a stat that just keeps showing up year after year. So a lot of these books that are out there make the assumption that their reader, if a business owner is running a business that can even be sold. I wanted to put a book out there that said, hey, yours might not be ready for prime time at this point. And like Dean said, a lot of it has to do with that critical sales role being held by the owner themselves.

Joshua Kornitsky: So I see this a lot in in some of the work that I do with my clients, where, you know, often you have this entrepreneur who, who took a chance, brought a product or service to market. And for lack of a better analogy, it’s their baby, right? And it is difficult as speaking as a parent, it’s difficult to let your baby go out into the world. But when you’re when you’re speaking about a business, as your business grows in skills, how do you help them understand that it’s time to to to let go.

Bob Tankesley: Great question. So I’ve often asked I’m often asking owners where is this going? Right. You know, it’s the most open ended question I could think of. I used to lead off with, hey, do you know what your business’s value is? And that’s a very technical, you know, left brain kind of sure Question.

Joshua Kornitsky: But if you can even answer it. Sorry to interrupt you, but how many can even answer that question?

Bob Tankesley: Another statistic for you? 2%. Wow, 98% of owners don’t know the true transferable value of what they’ve got. So I often lead with this question of where is this going?

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Bob Tankesley: You’ll get them talking. They’re thinking about where this business is going. They’re thinking about the employees that they need to be hiring. They’re thinking about the lines of business. They need to be starting the thinking about potentially a customer that they need to, you know, win or sell more product to or a competitor that they’re thinking about buying. That very open ended question of where is this going? Will create. If you’ll give them a time, it’ll create an hour plus of conversation.

Joshua Kornitsky: So so what are some of you would you’d given such a low statistic for the actual ability of these businesses? Understanding that the answer to this question is it depends. But trying to bring it down to just a high level conversation. What are some of the reasons why that number is so low?

Bob Tankesley: I think you have to start with the highest on the list being owner dependance.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Bob Tankesley: The business is unbelievably intimidating, is unbelievably dependent on the owner being in the business at all times. The owner’s got the key customer or client relationships. The owner knows they were there from the founding, or if they bought it, they were there from that point forward. They’re in the business, what, 60, 70, 80 hours a week? Hopefully not that long.

Joshua Kornitsky: Ideally, yeah. But often the case.

Bob Tankesley: They’re doing all the hiring, all the firing, all the contract management. And obviously what we’re describing here are our businesses that are, you know, toward the smaller end of the size spectrum. Like Dean said, you know, somewhere in that 525 to $20 million range, we we tend to see these problems, though, even at companies higher than that, where you extract the owner from the business. You’ve got something that now is worth 20, 30% less, maybe even half as much.

Joshua Kornitsky: Because they’re the bottleneck. Yeah. And I presume in those circumstances and sort of what Dean was talking about regarding the the silver tsunami. Right. Similar but different. You’ve got all this tribal knowledge because the founder or founders are the people that know where what’s in every closet, what’s in every drawer, the client relationships that go back forever and, and the special arrangements that were made. And that knowledge is difficult to transfer, I presume. Yeah. So when you find a situation like that, that is that who this book is for? Or is this book for, for really anybody that’s thinking about the long term destination where it’s going.

Bob Tankesley: It’s for anyone. Quite honestly, it it’s I wanted to tactfully and through story form. If you buy the book at Amazon, you’ll notice that this this book plays out in a story form with, with lots of of, uh, of truth sprinkled throughout the book. But I wanted the owners that pick up this book to get that, that jolt, that sense that I don’t know as much about the future of my business as I thought I did. There are things beyond what I thought were important when it comes to selling my business. If their future does not include them selling their business externally, but selling it internally, it’s better to have these kinds of conversations sooner rather than later. Not not deep into due diligence when your buyer is picking apart your company. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I want to ask you because obviously it’s important enough to be part of the title of the book. Tell me about this concept of of a team of advisors. What do you what is it you’re advocating that they think of or think about.

Bob Tankesley: If you’re going to go to market? First and foremost, if you’re going to find an external buyer, you have got to realize your buyer is going to have a team of their own, okay? They’re going to have a finance person or or people. They’re going to have a legal person or people. They’re going to have valuation people on on site. They’re going to have investors, maybe with, uh, industry knowledge that weigh in with their opinions and their observations. You as the potential seller, someday you must have a team of your own. It’d be kind of silly, for sure. You know your favorite football team to get on the field. Their uniforms look like garbage. They got drunk the night before. They they haven’t run plays in three weeks. The other team gets on the field, their suits look great. They’ve run the plays. They’re confident. They can put lots of points on the board. You know where this outcome is going. You know where the game is going to end up. It’s kind of an unfair balance. Uh, or contest if you will. But buyers know what they’re doing and sellers are putting themselves up into this kind of situation every day.

Joshua Kornitsky: And and does the book offer guidance, broadly speaking, for the types of team members that they need to consider assembling for sure.

Bob Tankesley: I call it the core deal team. You got to start there. It’s your CPA, you know. Preferably a forward thinking CPA, preferably someone who’s, you know, open to new ideas. It’s a transaction attorney. I’m not necessarily talking about a real estate attorney or an estate planning attorney. Those folks have their areas of specialty. I’m talking about an attorney that has managed the back end of sell side transactions on a regular basis. They do this on a regular basis. Transaction specialist okay. Wealth manager I think you have to put that person on the team as well. Uh, valuation specialist, someone who knows how to comparatively value companies, uh, in a given marketplace. And then I’ll, I’ll play up my own side a little bit. You must have an M&A advisor call them a business broker if you want, but someone who regularly takes companies to market, someone who regularly gets feedback from buyers about the companies that are being presented for sale.

Joshua Kornitsky: And how important is it for that role to have a kind of a pulse on what’s going on? Because I presume one just like in anything, one market can be very different. Atlanta from Charlotte is going to be a very different environment.

Bob Tankesley: Correct resume and and industry sectors. Certain industry sectors can play hotter than others at certain points in the economy. You know, 2 or 3 years ago I would have said pretty much anything home services would have just would have sold very quickly. But at the same time, just a year back, further post-Covid, anything in the hospitality or restaurant space would have taken a very long time because the interest level of buyers for that type of sector was was unbelievably suppressed. So a sell side advisor, who knows for any given industry, you know what the what the momentum is for buyers when people make an introduction to me of a business owner that might want to sell. My mind immediately goes to the buyer pool because that’s where you have to think. Sure. How difficult or easy is it going to be to. To build a buyer pool for this company?

Joshua Kornitsky: I grew up in the car business. Very different business. My father taking a like Dean. My father was a big influence on me. And and it comes down, if I may draw the analogy to the book value. So the book value is I in the case of a business, I went and looked online and similar businesses to mine are selling for x millions of dollars. Great. Pick up the internet and shake it. When the money falls out, you can sell your company. It sounds like there’s a whole lot more complexity in determining what a business’s actual value is versus its perceived debt.

Bob Tankesley: And that has gotten more so in the last 4 or 5 years. Buyers have gotten unbelievably selective as to what they put their capital toward. I heard a stat the other day in the private equity space, one firm only buys one company out of the 3000 that they look at. Well, if you had told me one out of a thousand, I would have been surprised. Years ago, it might have been. You know, when things got really frothy and private equity was falling over themselves to buy companies, they might have bought one out of every 200 or 300 they looked at. But we’re at a ratio of one every 3000 companies that PE will actually commit capital to.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and even if you are that that lucky lottery winner right. That you’re one of those 3000. I work with a number of folks in the trades plumbers, electricians, HVAC, and they still remain a pretty active area. Um, to your point, the buyers, if they’re private equity, not only they don’t just have a team, they probably have multiple teams of multiple people because they’re not looking to come in and give you a fair price, are they? Uh, they’re coming into.

Bob Tankesley: Not in every.

Joshua Kornitsky: Case. Yeah. Not to speak ill of them. They’re coming in to acquire a business like any other asset. You want to buy it as cheaply as you can and.

Bob Tankesley: Um, realize they’re going to they’re going to bring in some leverage. They’re going to, uh, to Dean’s point earlier, they’re going to try to apply some type of of business efficiency to it. Sure. I wonder if a lot of them are seeing unlocked value in, in, uh, mid range, lower to mid market companies where I can be used to unfortunately end up displacing a lot of the workers. But, you know, subscribe to an AI tool and replace a team of ten people within the company. That’s massive savings. Push to the bottom line. And then you put a seven, 8 or 9 x multiple of EBITDA on that. Sure. And you’re looking at a much more valuable company.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, it sounds to me like the book is a great guide and a great starting place. So I, I know from having talked to other people in the M&A space that there’s not there’s not a perfect answer to this question, but but if I’m a business owner and I’m thinking if I’m in the early stages of thinking. It sounds like the book is a great idea, but ideally, how far out should should that thought process be before they are serious about execution?

Bob Tankesley: If you had to pin me down, Bob, what’s just one number? I would say three years. Okay, three years is three years worth of improvements, and optimizations to a business is enough to impress that future buyer and that buyers provider of capital, whether it’s a bank or investors. But three years to an owner who might sell someday is not so long that they’re being asked to, you know, pay for consultants and advisors for five, ten plus years. You can hold their attention for 2 to 3 years, make these positive changes, and, frankly, show an enormous amount of improvement and optimization in a company in just three years time. If somebody says, I’ve only got, you know, 12 months, 18, 24 months, there can still be some significant improvements, but it won’t be as much necessarily as if we gave it much longer amount, a longer period of time.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and that’s great information. It seems to me that the book’s a great way to get started with this. And again, just to repeat the title, it’s it’s exit teams build the team of advisors for your business sale to get a higher price. And the higher price is obviously the the ultimate goal, but the necessary planning that it takes to to arrive and to do the work to get there, uh, it sounds like the book’s a good purchase really, for any business owner, because it just sort of gives them a long term thought process about, I think, in I would imagine Dean would agree with this from, from his, uh, objective management group certification and his sales certification. It gives them a roadmap. Your book tells them these are the things that are going to matter. And based on your time in industry, are the items in the book the types of things that have always been important?

Bob Tankesley: Yeah, yeah, but but even more so now because buyers are getting more selective, their due diligence process is taking longer. They’re taking longer to to commit the capital, whether they’re a sophisticated buyer, like like a private equity or a family office or a strategic or they’re at the other end of the spectrum and they’re an individual. Like any one of the three of us, buyers are simply taking longer to to commit.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I think with that being the case, the the more ducks you have in a row, the better the opportunity is for you as the business owner or owners. So the last question I’ll ask before I ask how obviously we can get the book from Amazon, but if anyone wants to speak to you directly, we’ll have that information available as well. Um, what are some of the things that that if your business owner listening to this now and maybe, maybe this is somewhere in your 5 to 10 year range, what are some of the things that the 1 or 2 things they should keep top of mind?

Bob Tankesley: I would say value. Start with value. Benchmark value today. Get into that elite 2% club that now know or have some rough understanding. If they took it to market at that point in time, what would the range of offers look like? Valuation is it’s more expensive than the cost of a tax return, right? For sure. But I can tell you it is 100% worth it. Think about it. If an owner’s got 60, 70, 80 plus percent of their net worth tied up in a business and they’re sprinting toward retirement, and they don’t know what the value of this thing is worth. And yet, three out of four owners are, depending on the sale of this business to have a successful retirement. It’s an amazing disconnect. So I would say start with value, have that be a benchmark re-up on that value every year if you wanted, but 2 to 3 years if if ten years is your time frame out, re-up that valuation every 2 to 3 years. Things change, the market changes. But you put enough of these valuations together and it’ll paint a picture for you. It’ll tell you a trend. Is your business becoming more valuable or less one?

Joshua Kornitsky: And I think that’s the kind of thing that that any responsible business owner or owners wants to know. Excuse me. And ideally, they want to know that as early as possible. So I imagine the book is a great jumping off point.

Bob Tankesley: That’s what I hear. Everyone that reads it got a bunch of five star reviews on the on Amazon to.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well.

Dean Nolley: Just one thing, because I do have the book and this was not staged. We did not stand here today, but it is an easy read. Um, if you pay attention to Bob on LinkedIn, you can see the story being told and you’ll learn about Dave, I think is his name. Um, it is an easy book. Follow him on LinkedIn. Um, I’ve heard him talk about the book to the trust group and some reconnects. But the key is it’s a very easy read. Um, and I think probably everyone in our group has read the book at this point.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and it sounds like something some of my clients would like, so I’ll be picking up a few copies. Maybe I can get a signature.

Bob Tankesley: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Fantastic. Well, I, I, uh, last question, Bob, uh, other than Amazon to buy the book, if someone wants to engage you directly, uh, we’ll have that information on our website. Is there an easy way to get to you or just go with what we put up?

Bob Tankesley: Um, email Bob at TMZ.com. Try to make that as simple as possible. Uh, and then, uh, I’m sure we’ll have the the cell phone number in there as well.

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely. Well, I can’t thank you enough for sharing, uh, really valuable information that I think every business owner should know, even if they’re nowhere near considering selling their business. Uh, I was at a local networking event this morning and talking with people that are that literally were in businesses months old. And all I can think of after talking with you about this is, is this is not a how to book for them. It’s a hey, this should be on your radar book. But if you are a more mature business or you’re considering taking that exit, it’s not exactly. I presume it’s not exactly a how to, but it’s a pay attention to.

Bob Tankesley: It’s a wake up.

Joshua Kornitsky: Call. It’s a wake up. That’s fantastic. Well, uh, Bob Tankersley, um, principal and M&A advisor at Walden Mergers and Acquisition and author of the book Exit Teams build a Team of Advisors for your business. Safe your, excuse me, your business sale to get a higher price. I can’t thank you enough for being here. Dean Knoll, founder of sales Growth Imagination. Thank you for being here. I think it was a fantastic show today. I appreciate everything you guys shared. And, uh, we’ll see you next time. This is Joshua Kornitsky professional iOS implementer and your host on Cherokee Business Radio.