Exit Coach Bill Black interviews Top Advisors for Tips, Ideas & Precautions for Business Owners who want to grow and protect their company value and plan for a successful Business Sale or Transfer. Listen daily so you can be well-planned!
Episodes
Friday Feb 21, 2014
Friday Feb 21, 2014
To grow a valuable business – one you can sell – you need to set up your company so that it is no longer reliant on you. This can be easier said than done, especially when, like a PR consultant or plumber, what you are selling is your expertise.
To
scale up a knowledge-based business, you first have to figure out how to impart
your knowledge to your employees, so that they can deliver the goods. However
it can be difficult to condense years of school and on-the-job learning into a
few weeks of employee training. The more specialized your knowledge, the harder
it is to hand off work to juniors.
The
key to scaling up a service business can often be found by offering the service
that prevents customers from having
to call you in the first place. You have to shift from selling the cure to
selling the prevention.
Fixing
what is broken is typically a hard task to teach; however, preventing things
from breaking in the first place can be easier to train others to do.
For
example, it takes years for a dentist to acquire the education and experience
to successfully complete a root canal, but it’s relatively easy to train a
hygienist to perform a regularly scheduled cleaning.
It’s
almost effortless for a real estate manager to hire someone to clean the eaves
trough once a month, but repairing the flooded basement caused by the clogged
gutters can be quite complex.
For
a master car mechanic, overhauling an engine that has seized up takes years of
training, but preventing the problem by regularly changing a customer’s oil is
something a high school student can be taught to do.
For
an IT services company, restoring a customer’s network after a virus has
invaded often takes the know-how of the boss, but preventing the virus by
installing and monitoring the latest software patches is something a junior can
easily be trained to do.
When you’re selling your expertise, it can be tough to hire a team to do the work for you. As ironic as it sounds, sometimes the key to getting out of doing the work is to offer a preventive service, which not only maintains your business income, but also eliminates the need for someone to call you in the first place.
