Matt Blackwell
on
A sale is one of the most significant moments you can experience in your career as a business owner in this profession. So many factors are important when it comes time to sell, including the final purchase price. But for so many owners, it’s not the only thing. Reputation, legacy, and the relationships built in the community matter just as much, often times more. In fact, the 2023 NFDA Member Succession Study found that only 13% of owners said price was the most important thing to consider when selling or transferring the business. Leading that poll was “Maintaining Presence in the Community”, and “Family Legacy” at 30.8% and 26.6% respectively. This study shows that a successful transition is not just a financial decision, but also about protecting your name on the side of the building. At Foresight, we view every engagement as an opportunity to protect both our client’s legacy and our own reputation as being stewards of the profession.
Why Does Reputation Matter?
Your funeral home or cemetery’s reputation is it’s most valuable asset, as it takes years and years to cultivate, but can quickly be tarnished with some bad practices. The consistent and compassionate care shown to families, your involvement in the community, and the identity of your business is built slowly over generations. Many owners like yourself are leaders within civic organizations, sit on boards, lead the chamber of commerce, or volunteer with various charitable groups. Owners are often time anchors within their towns and serve far beyond the walls of their facilities. The thought of selling your business and being able to walk down the grocery store aisles with your head held high goes a long way. Here at Foresight, it’s our job to ensure that the values, service standards, and community commitments align with your potential successor.
What Legacy Really Means
Your legacy goes far beyond a last name. For some of our clients, it is the employee who has greeted families for 40 years. For others, it’s the annual support of a local charity or the long-standing standard of service.
Because legacy means something different to every owner, Foresight believes that it is essential to clearly define what matters at the beginning of every sale process. Once that definition is established, we work to translate those emotional priorities into tangible and specific terms of a deal. Retention of the name, staff continuity, community involvement, or specific roles for a seller post-transition, to name a few.
Where Reputation is Most at Risk
Reputation is very fragile, and can be damaged at any stage of succession. Before a transition is announced, breaches in confidentiality can create panic among staff or spark rumors in your community. During the process, inconsistent messaging or mismatched expectations with buyers can undermine trust. After closing, abrupt changes to “standard” operations can give the impression to both staff and families that the business they knew no longer exists. Reputation is fragile, and even a single misstep in communication or planning can create lasting damage.
How To Protect Reputation In a Sale
Education on Buyer Profiles: In order to make a sound decision on who the successor will be, you must know who the people vying for the business are. We keep up to date information on the different buyer entities, about how they operate, what they value, and how they manage the businesses they have acquired in the past. By laying this out up front, it prevents surprises and sets the stage for a better cultural fit.
Maintaining a Tight Buyer Pool: Part of understanding who the potential buyers may be is also understanding that more is not always better. Foresight will never blast your business “to the open market” or a create a public listing. Casting too wide of a net creates the risk of breaches in confidentiality and your business reputation. Instead, we curate a controlled buyer pool of trusted potential fits, as we want to protect the privacy of your business.
Planned Communications: Communication is key in everything, however specifically when it comes time for succession, how the message gets across can make or break the perception of your business. This means thoughtfully creating plans for internal and external communications that dictate when employees, families, and the community are informed. Working with both buyers and seller to do this right from the beginning will help preserve trust with all parties involved.
Defined Post Sale Roles and Expectations: Clarity prevents confusion. Depending on how involved with the business you want to be post-sale, we work to identify that up front so that both sides are informed. Foresight ensures that whether it be an extended employment agreement, consulting role, or just a simple community ambassador position, that these agreements are set in stone for both the buyer and seller. This also allows the business to maintain important relationships across the community.
Transparency: At the end of the day, there is no reputation to be protected if there is no trust. Being transparent helps garner that trust between buyer and seller. While going through the process with any buyer, if there is ever a doubt about sharing something with them, the answer should be yes. At Foresight we always strive to understand any areas of concern, and address them head on. This shows that you are not just worried about yourself and closing the deal, but about the future of the business under new ownership.
Foresight’s Role: Here at Foresight, we understand that reputation is the currency of the profession. Every decision during a transition influences how the community perceives both the business and the professionals that are involved. We have seen business sales where the legacy has been kept in tact and both parties remain happy, and the cases where unfortunately reputation has been lost due to a variety of reasons and relationships broken.
Our role is to ensure that your priorities are understood from the beginning of a sale process. We bring up-to-date insight on the buyer landscape, structure deals that reflect your values, and manage the narrative with clarity and consistency. We protect your legacy and reputation like it is our own, because it is. Every successful transition reinforces our commitment to honoring the history, leadership, and identity of your business.