Processes: If It's Only in Your Head, It's a Risk to a Buyer

Every business runs on process, whether or not it's ever been written down. The businesses that struggle most in due diligence are the ones where the process only exists in the owner's head, because that's exactly what a buyer worries will walk out the door.

This area covers documented client onboarding and ticketing standards, standard operating procedures, quality or compliance certifications, business continuity plans, onboarding materials, and, the real test, evidence the business can run for a period without the owner actively directing every decision.

Here's where the size versus difficulty distinction matters most. Documenting years of accumulated, undocumented knowledge sounds like an enormous undertaking, and doing it all at once, under deal pressure, genuinely is.

Doing it gradually, a process at a time, over the twelve to twenty-four months before a sale, is simply routine good practice, the kind of thing that also happens to make the business easier to run day to day, sale or no sale.

If this has you wondering how ready your own business is, the free readiness assessment will show you where to look first, in about three minutes.