"If you're thinking about a transaction in three years, then I would say you need to get started now."
That's how AO Co-Founder and Chairman Ed Offterdinger opened his conversation with Wayne Zell on the Blueprint for Wealth podcast, where the two discussed a part of exit planning that owners tend to leave until last: their people.
When a prospective buyer asks an owner to describe their team and the answer is someone in sales, someone in operations, and me, that isn't a team — it's a risk. And it shows up directly in the price a business commands.
Ed and Wayne call this a value gap: the distance between what a company is worth today and what it would be worth with the right people and systems in place. In this conversation, that gap has a job title — a financial leader who has been through a sale before.
Buyers aren't trying to expose a weakness here, either — a leadership gap isn't a dealbreaker. Private equity firms routinely bring in coaches for the leadership teams they acquire, because what's built into a company's people is part of what gets sold.
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Learn more about AO People Partners and how they help leaders close the value gap before a transaction.