When selling a business successfully, strategic leadership and deliberate project management skills are essential. Dr. Warren Bennis says, leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. You have the aspiration of selling your company, and now plan to translate it into actuality. This is not a inconsequential task.

During the process of selling a company, your future and the future of your family and business are at risk. You must work in conjunction with the strong internal and external teams that you have brought together. Work with them to form and supervise project processes, problems, people, and strategic alignment.

Just as you would with any important strategic project, you will manage the creation of a project plan that outlines tasks, milestones, dependencies, and deliverables. Rolling up your sleeves and doing the work may be more enjoyable than planning it, but implementation cannot be a seat-of-the-pants venture. In the book Execution, management gurus emphasize, “unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they’re pointless.”

Assure that objectives and priorities are defined and deliverables are tied to established dates, when reviewing your project plan. Holding weekly meetings to follow the advance of the selling process is customary. The original team will have few members, so these meetings will be small. Institute the discipline of weekly meeting early in your selling process. It will be useful throughout the entire process as your efforts multiply and the team grows.

A Few Pointers

While the plan is being developed, make sure you plan first those projects and activities having the utmost immediate influence on the valuation and readiness of your business for sale. First, qualified buyers appear sooner than anticipated. Also, as we’re fond of saying to our clients: tough stuff first. Get it out of the way and tackle the next prioritized item.

Make sure that all tasks are designated proper resources, that everyone receives needed support including training, and that fundamental resources are not overloaded. Teams tend to over-rely on a few skilled experts, which causes them to stretch their energies and expertise too thinly. We have teams take separate projects and generate plans independently, in our planning sessions with clients. When we reconvene and review their plans as a group, there are always a few central people that everyone is relying on at once, and this process serves to bring that to light. This is a real vulnerability, not just a dependency. In these situations, training, support, or outside resources may be the solution to these situations. Be attentive to the need for them. There is a point at which ‘lean and mean’ becomes ‘dead in the water.’ Don’t under-invest in experienced resources at this crucial point in time.

Neglecting to build buffer time into the schedule is another recurrent problem. Unforeseen interruptions and unexpected tasks are unavoidable; therefore, our experience has shown that adding 15 percent to the expected time frame is prudent. Also be aware that three aspects of the process and project planning are often overlooked or undervalued: ownership transfer, communications planning, and contingency planning. Take some time to look at our other articles to explain these and how to plan for them when selling a company.

I invite and encourage you to use these ideas during your journey to sell a business.