Who does the selling in your business? My guess is that when you’re personally involved in doing the selling, your business is a whole lot more profitable than in the months when you leave the selling to others.
That makes sense because you’re likely the most passionate advocate for your business. You have the most industry knowledge and the widest network of industry connections.
If your goal is to maximize your company’s profit at all costs, you may have come to the conclusion that you should spend most of your time out of the office selling and leave the dirty work of operating the business to your team.
However, if your goal is to build a valuable company, one you can sell down the road, you can’t be your company’s number one salesperson. In fact, the less you know your customers personally, the more valuable your business.
The proof: a study of 14,000 businesses
The Value Builder System analyzed a pool of 14,000 business owners who had completed its assessment. Owners were asked if they had received an offer to buy their business in the last 12 months, and if so, what multiple of their pre-tax profit the offer represented. The offers were then compared against the answer to this question: which of the following best describes your personal relationship with your company’s customers?
- I know each of my customers by first name and they expect that I personally get involved when they buy from my company.
- I know most of my customers by first name and they usually want to deal with me rather than one of my employees.
- I know some of my customers by first name and a few of them prefer to deal with me rather than one of my employees.
- I don’t know my customers personally and rarely get involved in serving an individual customer.
2.93 versus 4.49 times
The average offer received among all of the businesses analyzed was 3.7 times pre-tax profit. When the study isolated just those businesses where the owner does not know customers personally and rarely gets involved in serving an individual customer, the offer multiple went up to 4.49.
Companies where the founder knows each customer by first name get discounted, earning offers of just 2.93 times pre-tax profit.
When value is the enemy of profit
Who you get to do the selling in your company is just one of many examples where the actions you take to build a valuable company are different from what you do to maximize profit. If all you wanted was a fat bottom line, you likely wouldn’t invest in upgrading your website or spend much time thinking about the squishy business of company culture.
How much money you make each year is important, but how you earn that profit will have a greater impact on the value of your company in the long run.