Get the business ready before you sell it.
From $2,500 a month, for 6 to 12 months, we implement the fix list with your team: books, owner dependence, customer mix, procedures, deal file. Fixed monthly fee, in writing. Stop with 30 days' notice.
Owners one to three years out, and owners whose Review found real money.
The Program is for two kinds of owner. The first is one to three years from selling and has time to fix what a buyer will push on, rather than pay for it at the closing table. The second has just finished the Exit-Readiness Review and found a fix list worth six figures, which is common when the books are on a cash basis or one customer carries a third of revenue.
It isn't for an owner who wants to sell this spring. If that's you, go to market with the Review's 90-day fixes done and we'll price the rest honestly. And if the Review shows the gaps are small, we'll say the Program isn't worth paying for.
Month by month, on site, with your people.
Books first, because everything else is priced off them. The Review's fix list sets the exact scope.
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Months 1 to 3: the books
A monthly close. Revenue that traces to deposits. Add-backs documented with the receipt and a one-line reason. Alex Nejad, CPA, works with your bookkeeper rather than replacing them. By month three, a buyer's accountant can rebuild your earnings from your records and get the same number you do.
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Months 2 to 6: sales and marketing that don't depend on you
Who quotes, who follows up, who owns each top account. We move the relationships and the pricing decisions off your desk and onto a named person. If one customer is over 20 percent of revenue, we start on the mix here, because it takes the longest to change.
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Months 3 to 9: operations, controls and manuals
SOPs for the things only you know how to do. Internal controls a buyer will ask about: who can move money, who approves a price, who signs. Genevieve Andres ran operations as a COO; this is her part of the work, done at your business.
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Throughout: the deal file, built as we go
Every document diligence will request, filed as it's produced: leases, contracts, equipment schedules, permits, insurance, returns. When the business goes to market, the data room already exists.
From $2,500 a month, fixed, in writing.
The exact monthly fee depends on the length of the fix list and how much of the work your own team can carry. We put it in writing before month one, and it doesn't change mid-engagement.
Engagements run 6 to 12 months. You can end the Program with 30 days' notice. No obligation to list with us afterwards, and we don't take a share of the increase in value. Your own bookkeeper, accountant and attorney stay yours and bill you directly.
A worked example.
Take a $4 million distributor in DuPage County. Two accounts make up 40 percent of revenue. The books are on a cash basis, closed once a year by the tax preparer. The owner quotes every large order and knows every purchasing manager at the two big accounts by first name.
A buyer's accountant reads that as three separate risks and prices each one. Cash-basis books with no monthly close typically cost 5 to 10 percent of the price in diligence, because what can't be verified gets treated as risk. Sales relationships that sit only with the owner usually take about half a turn off the multiple in the deals we see. Forty percent of revenue in two accounts rarely changes the headline number; it changes the structure, with part of the price pushed into an earn-out or holdback that pays only if those customers stay.
Suppose the business earns its owner around $600,000 a year. Half a turn of the multiple on that is $300,000. Ten percent off the price on a business this size is a similar amount. Fix all three over nine months and the effect is usually several hundred thousand dollars in price and terms, against a Program fee in the tens of thousands.
The ranges are wide because every business is different. The Review gives you the specific figures for yours before you spend a dollar on the Program.
When the Program ends, you decide what happens next.
Most owners list with us, at the same 10% success fee everyone pays, agreed in writing before we go to market. See how we sell a business.
Some owners hand the business to a manager or a child. A few take it to another broker, and that's fine; the books, the SOPs and the deal file are yours. Nothing in the Program agreement obligates you to list with Lakeshore. And if we'd like to buy the business ourselves, you'll hear it in writing, not in a hint at month ten. See Sell to Lakeshore.
What owners ask before they start.
Can I do the Program without the Review first?
You can, but we'd rather you didn't. The Review tells us which fixes are worth the money and sets the monthly fee. Without it we're guessing at scope, and so are you.
How much of my time does it take?
A few hours a month from you, and more from the people we're moving work to. Most of our time is with your bookkeeper, office manager and seconds-in-command.
What if I decide to sell partway through?
Then we stop the Program and start the sale. You keep the work that's done, and the finished fixes go into the pricing memo. Thirty days' notice ends the monthly fee.
Do you take a cut of the increase in value?
No. The Program is a fixed monthly fee, in writing. If we list the business later, the 10% success fee applies to that sale, and nothing else.
Two years out is the right time to call.
Thirty minutes with a CPA on what the business would bring today and what a year of work would change.