Culture: The Life of Your Business

When it comes to selling your business, the fourth critical step to maximizing its value lies in its culture. A strong, healthy culture forms the heartbeat of your organization, fueling productivity, growth, and long-term success. It creates a cohesive environment where employees are motivated and work well together. This not only improves the company's performance but also makes the business more attractive to potential buyers.

What You Can Do Now: Develop and Document Your Culture

How can you ensure your business’s value shines through? Start by clearly documenting your culture so potential buyers take note. Focus on these key areas:

• Leadership Development: Build organized leadership teams that can effectively take charge and inspire others.
• Training Programs: Implement regular training initiatives to develop employees’ skills and capabilities.
• Employee Satisfaction: Foster a happy, engaged workforce through recognition...

If you're considering selling your business, or even if that’s not on the horizon just yet, you'll want to think about the next key step outlined in our Whitepaper, 7 Essential Steps to Maximizing Value When Selling Your Business. Step 2, Enhancing Your Sales and Marketing, is a vital pillar of any successful business.

As Cathedral’s CEO, Seth Buechley, puts it:

"Where’s my next dollar coming from in this business? How reliable is that dollar? And how visible is that dollar?"

Areas to Focus

At a high level, here are some areas to focus on, as any potential buyer will expect to see this type of data when evaluating your business:

• Invest in building strong sales and marketing teams
• Track your SEO and website traffic statistics
• Maintain accurate customer and prospect lists
• Demonstrate clear, actionable marketing strategies
• Track your sales history and understand trends over time
• Secure long-term contracts with customers

It's essential to ensure no single account...

In our Whitepaper, 7 Essential Steps to Maximizing Value When Selling Your Business, Step 1 is Develop Strong Financial and Accounting Systems. If you want to sell your business for a profit, you have to be profitable! However, potential buyers are not just looking for a profitable business; they want to see clear evidence of that profitability that creates transferrable value. That’s where financial and accounting systems come in.

Financial statements pull out meaningful insights that can tell the story of a business’s performance. Transparency is key — buyers want to understand what has happened, how transactions unfolded, and any trends or anomalies that need explanation. But beyond that, it’s about creating a story that explains the "why" behind the numbers.
If you want to sell your business, now is the time to start shoring up your financial systems.

Financial Records that Buyers Will be Looking for 

Your financial records should clearly document...

Are you considering selling your business, but feel you’re not quite ready?

Selling a business is one of the most significant decisions an entrepreneur can make. It’s not just about finding a buyer; it’s about ensuring that your business is valued at its highest potential. The team at Cathedral Consulting, with years of experience in guiding businesses through successful sales, has outlined seven essential steps to help you maximize the value of your business when it’s time to sell. These steps are all outlined in our report, which you can download here.

The 7 Essential Steps are:

1. Develop Strong Financial and Accounting Systems

A profitable business is a valuable business. To attract the best offers, your business needs to demonstrate a consistent track record of profitability. This is achieved through meticulous financial and accounting systems that document every success. Prospective buyers want to see clear, accurate, and organized financial...

Four Important Steps to the Ideal Exit™

Does this sound like you? You've built something of value, but you're not certain how you're going to get that value into your actual bank account, or you're aware of activity in the marketplace, but you're starting to wonder if you're going to miss or have missed your window of opportunity?

Perhaps you've told your loved ones, “Someday soon I'm going to slow down working”. Maybe you've heard that the process of selling a business can be overwhelming. Maybe you even hired a business broker, and that process was disruptive, and you didn't get a qualified buyer.

What is the Ideal Exit™?

An Ideal Exit has two components:

1. Maximize the sale price of your business.
2. Set your team up for success.

Step 1: Value. What is your business worth?

Knowledge is power, so you must know what your business is worth. Cathedral uses a process that helps us understand where we calculate the value for your business using a combination of...

How much is your business worth?

Owners without an accurate view of their business value waste time and lose confidence in the process. When you know the real business value, that knowledge is powerful.  Spend your time and energy efficiently with serious acquirers.

The Four Traditional Methods of Valuing a Business

First, it’s important to understand what business “value” really is and how it is measured. Acquirers determine a business’s worth through a value analysis using four traditional methods:

1. Discounted Cash Flow Model: Value is determined by looking at the business’s trends over time, both backwards and forwards, to see if it reliably produces a level of profit.
2. Market-Based Model: Pricing is estimated based on what similar businesses sell for in the current market.
3. Asset Assessment: Buyers evaluate the assets of the business.
4. Cost and Risk Analysis: Buyers consider how much time, labor, and risk would be involved in building a similar...

Roseburg, OR – August 7, 2024 - Cathedral Consulting, a specialty consulting firm providing strategic growth and advisory services, announced the significant expansion of its Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) team. This strategic move enhances Cathedral’s focus on assisting business owners in building enterprise value and navigating the M&A process.

New Senior Advisors joining Cathedral M&A team include;

Jim Tracy: Mr. Tracy is the founder of The Legacy Companies and has 3+ decades of senior management in commercial development and infrastructure construction. He was CEO of Legacy Telecommunications for 23 years and is an instrument-rated jet pilot with 2200+ flight hours. Jim is a popular keynote speaker, author and podcast host and has led the National Association of Tower Erectors and The Tower Family Foundation. He has been recognized with the Bill Carlson Lifetime Service Award, the Business ICON of Idaho award, and was recently inducted...