Thinking about life without your business can be tough, but planning your business exit strategy should be unavoidable.

As a business owner, there may be a multitude of reasons as to why you’d want to scale back your involvement. Whether you’re planning on selling your business, or simply want to take on a more strategic role with less focus on the day-to-day, handling the transition should be done with careful planning.

You could be:

• Looking to pass the reigns onto your team
• Looking for a buyer to buy your business
• Aiming to merge with another business
• Struggling with positioning and preparing your business to make it attractive to a potential buyer
• Understanding the true value hidden in your business and finding ways to uncover this for long-term handover
• Hoping to continuing to own the business but introduce new senior management or invite a management buy-out
• Liquidating the business and gaining revenue from the sale of assets

Whatever your long-term strategy looks like, it’s important that you start putting the building blocks in place today to build your business to a value that will bring you the best return.