Exit & Succession Planning
A sound exit plan, succession plan, or legacy plan maximizes the value of your small business and increases the return to you as the business owner.
Effective succession planning will ensure that your business not only survives your departure, but continues to thrive under the leadership of your successor.
At Cogent Analytics, our business advisors know that different plans are better suited to different goals and different types of business owners. Here are a few common planning methods small business owners use for succession management:
- Exit planning allows you to strategically and successfully retire from your business with enough liquidity to provide financial security in your retirement.
- Succession planning lays out the process of removing yourself from the day-to-day operations and leadership role within your business and smoothly transitioning obligations to your successor.
- Legacy planning outlines how you can use the wealth that your business generates through your exit to impact the lives of your children, grandchildren, and community.
Depending on your vision for the future of your business, our business consulting services can include exit planning, succession planning, and legacy planning. Cogent Analytics works with you to strategically design and implement the succession plans needed to meet your specific goals and minimize organizational impact.
Developing a thoughtfully designed exit plan is necessary to attract buyers to your business.
A typical exit plan should start years before the actual sale of your business and can be accomplished in many ways through Cogent’s succession planning process. The succession planning strategy you choose will depend on your goals for your company’s leadership transition as well as your personal goals for your exit.
A properly created and executed exit plan, succession plan, or legacy plan provides peace of mind to you and your employees. Whether you are looking to sell the business to your management team, sell to your children, put in an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), gift the business to charity, or sell your business to an outside party, Cogent offers powerful solutions to achieve your goals.
Exit planning plays a key role in ensuring a smooth leadership transition.
Your potential successor may be an internal candidate, such as a high potential employee or current key leader in your organization. In this case, you may choose to have this future leader closely involved with the succession management process and CEO succession planning. If you have several potential leaders or qualified successors you are considering, Cogent works with you and your human resource management team to provide professional development and employee development to close any possible skill gap potential leaders may have. Talent development can include employee training, employee career planning, and employee career path mentorship services. Cogent mindfully engineers our services to address today’s talent scarcity issues and ensure your team is operating at its best, both now and after your exit.
Our succession planning program focuses on preparation, not pre-selection, of your employees for the possibility of a leadership position.
The organizational development of your business is key to both talent management and performance management of any internal potential successor. Cogent works with your company’s HR leaders to implement an effective leadership development program or strengthen any such pre-existing program. This type of organizational engineering is proven to have positive effects in every aspect of your business. When the time comes in the succession process for your exit or retirement, your business will be cultivating a steady talent pipeline of capable leaders. Ultimately you and your leadership team will be able to choose the candidate from your talent pool who has both the tangible and intangible skill sets required for the leadership position as your successor in your unique business.
Effective succession planning plays a critical role in your generational legacy and personal wealth.
Instead of choosing an internal candidate or senior leader to take over your business after your exit, you may choose for your succession candidate to be an external party. In this case, Cogent works closely with you to determine your company’s key value drivers and to develop a transactional strategy that will yield the greatest return on your investment. With a strong succession plan in place, any third party potential candidate for buying your business will recognize the worth of the company you have built.
