This is part three in our ten part series on driving your business value. Today is about how to identify the players on your team that are holding your business valuation back.
Who are the folks on your team that are diminishing your business valuation? Well, it’s not the A and B players on the team – the folks that are generally doing a good job and who you’re not really worried about.
It’s the folks that are on your radar for all the wrong reasons. It’s your C and D players.
It’s the ones that they might be good at what they do but they have an attitude issue.
It could be that they’re not that good at what they do,
and you’re trying to get their performance up but it’s just not happening.
Those C’s and D’s, are the ones that create friction, interpersonal issues, complaints, drama, chaos, politics, and are generally just slowing the business down. And sometimes, they’re just not that pleasant to be around.
Now you might not have that many of them on your team and that’s a good thing. But if you have any of them, it’s important to recognize that they’re going to also be impacting your A and B players.
They’re going to be dragging their performance down and could even cause your A and B players to want to look elsewhere to work.
There’s a two-fold reason that your business valuation is going to be diminished if you’ve got these C’s and D’s on your team:
To get a good valuation for your business, one of the key metrics that a buyer is going to look at is a proven track record of high performance. If you’ve got low performers on the team, your performance is not where it could be.
When they do their due diligence and analyze the team, they’re going to see how many A and B players you have and how many C and D players you have.
And if you have too many C and D players, they’re just not going to value the business as highly because they’re going to have to deal with those C and D problem children.
You want to make sure that you diminish the number of C’s and D’s you have on the team, and continue to grow the quantity of A’s and B’s on the team.
Those A’s and B’s, they’re the lifeblood for the business. They don’t cause any drama, they do a great job. It’s the C’s and D’s that are keeping you distracted and having to deal with all the little fires that they create.
Imagine what your business would be like if you were staffed with all A’s and B’s, and you didn’t have to deal with the drama of the C’s and D’s. It is possible. You don’t have to have C’s and D’s on your team.
Sometimes we accept it, we don’t notice it. Sometimes someone goes from being an A or a B down to a C or a D over time. The business outgrows them.
Over time you’ve got to make sure that you’re upgrading your team, you’re making sure that you’ve got the C’s and D’s moved on, the A’s and B’s are being well rewarded, looked after, because they’re the ones that are going to take your business forward, grow the valuation, and help you have a successful business and a successful exit.
This week your job is to identify who are those C’s and D’s in your business, and if you’re not sure what to do about it I’m happy to have a conversation with you how to help them “find success elsewhere.”
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