It's not enough to build a business worth a fortune; you have to make sure you have an exit strategy, a way to get the money back out. The range of exit strategies includes taking the company public through an initial public offering (IPO), selling the company to a strategic acquirer, or recapitalizing and selling the firm to the management team, also known as a management buyout.

To do a successful exits you need to do considerable planning. The sooner you start, the more rewarding your eventual exit is likely to be. Many steps are involved in exit planning which includes, preparing the business, profiling the business, business independence, business evaluation, filling the gap, and fine-tuning the company's strategy. We can assist you in all the stages and steps in planning the exit strategy.

Prepare Your Business for Exit
Preparing your business for exit involves three main components – putting all the facts & figures of the business in the right manners so that the potential buyer can see the value with supporting information, transition of business and to maximizing the value of your business. Now is the better time to start preparing your business for an exit because takes some time to prepare it.

Business Profiling
Buyers look for different things in a business but at the end of the day they are looking for earnings and cash flow. Maximizing value of your business can be summed up simply as maximize both short-term and long-term profitability and cash flow. Some things investors look for are:

• Strong Revenue Growth
• Business revenue model – Is it recurring or project based? Do you have long term contracts in place with customers? Do you have significant repeat business?
• Customer base – Do you have one large customer? Multiple customers, direct customers, long term relationships, frequency of business transaction.
• Business Pipeline - Do you have a backlog with preorders, purchase orders, future pipeline etc.
• Profit Margins – Gross profit of the business and Net profit - growing or shrinking.
• Business Sustainability - It is vital to develop a plan to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Filling Up the Gap in the Business
In order to prepare your business for exit you also need to clean up the business and make it transitional. Some of the things to consider are:

• Having a good management team in place that can run the business when you are not there?
• Customers, vendors, suppliers and other peer’s relationship transitional.
• Related parties transaction demarcation
• Sieving out personal assets and business assets
• Business ownership and business title
• Track of your inventory valuation and verification
• All agreements and contracts signed and in good order
• Financial reports and statement review
• All of your trademarks are registered, everything you can patent is patented