Business Management Archives - Green Pro Marketing

It’s that time of year again – MANTS 2017 Conference and Trade Show is this week, from Wednesday January 11 through Friday January 13. The numbers associated with MANTS are impressive: over 900 exhibitors, and typically in the 10,000 attendee range. It can be pretty overwhelming, especially for first time attendees. I’ve had a booth there twice and have gone as an attendee many, many more times. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years.

Stay overnight if you can

This is less of an issue if you live, say, within an hour of the convention center. I live about 2-2.5 hours away and to get there when they open, I’d have to drive through morning rush hour on the DC Beltway. Heck no. This gives me plenty of time to walk the floor, plus it means I can get in some…

Networking!

Odds are, one of your vendors or trade groups is doing a happy hour somewhere in the area after the show closes for the day. Additionally, groups like the DC chapter of APLD get together for lunch, some groups have breakfast meetings, and it’s amazing how many people you run into once a year at MANTS. It’s a terrific opportunity to pop out to the lobby, grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich, and catch up.

Be curious

The one problem I have with shows like MANTS is that because there are so many booths, and so many people, and everyone wants to get the heck out of Dodge before evening rush hour, a lot of attendees only go to see the exhibitors they know. If you see a booth that looks well put together but you don’t know the company, just slow down for a minute and check it out. Having worked the floor in the past, I can tell you it’s a bummer seeing all these people streaming past – and knowing that you have a product that could help their business.

Travel light

I should collect catalogs and brochures from every booth at MANTS and weigh the resulting stack. I’d wager it would be in the hundreds of pounds. The free bags they give you get heavy fast, and doing a roller bag is just awkward in a crowd. A lot of vendors now offer their catalogs on a USB drive, or they can give you a login to their online catalog. For some projects I do like to have a catalog to thumb through, but for those I either very selectively pick up print materials or I ask them to mail me one after the show. And let them scan your badge, because that way if you lose their card or brochure they can get in touch with you.

Get the yardstick

Every year there are one or two booths giving out these stout wooden yardsticks. If you want a conversation starter, pick one up. You’ll have everyone and their brother coming up and asking where you got it. Guys that spent $30 on a tape measure go nuts for a free wooden yardstick. I don’t get it, but there it is!

Plan for lunch ahead of time

There’s plenty of food for sale at MANTS, but let’s be honest. It’s a convention center, which means you’re going to pay a lot of money for not-exciting food. There are loads of places to eat within a short walk of the convention center, and once you have your badge you can pop in and out as much as you want.

If you do end up eating inside of the convention center, don’t go sit at a table by yourself! I’ve made some fantastic connections just by grabbing an empty seat at a table. Everyone is focused in or around the nursery and landscape business, and everyone is just happy not to be standing up for a bit. Don’t miss a stellar opportunity.

Leverage your MANTS experience for marketing

Every day you compete against dozens of other lawn and landscape professionals. One way to differentiate your company is to show how much effort you put into keeping up with trends and finding the best products for your clients. Post pics or a quick Facebook live video from the floor of MANTS, post eye-grabbing products to Instagram, or even put together a quick little blog post summarizing what you’ve found. The clients who value working with the best will notice – and they’ll call. If you’re not on social media or not sure if you’re using it well, we can help manage your landscape company’s social media and online presence.

The folks behind MANTS put in a ton of work to prepare for this event every year. Having been on both sides of the booth I can say it runs stunningly well. Whether or not you’ve been before, you’ll have a great time.

I’ll be there all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday. If you want to say hi, tweet me at @daveinthedirt or shoot me an email!

I know a lot of landscape business owners have a goal of selling the business to help fund their retirement. Whether or not that’s possible all depends on your preparation NOW. Here’s business valuation expert Dan Doran’s excellent advice.

You worked really hard to create a business and you probably still work really hard in that business. However, we all have to retire some day. Your inevitable exit from the business is somewhere on the horizon whether you have allowed yourself the time to reflect on this or not. You may know how far off you’d ideally like that exit to be, but have you done the planning to be sure that date is realistic?

If you are like most small business owners, nearly 80% of your net worth is represented by your business. Further, most entrepreneurs anticipate that selling their business will be the largest single source of funds for their retirement. Knowing what your business is worth can give you a solid platform from which to make your financial decisions, like: How much can you expect to sell for? Is this enough to fund my retirement? And what do you need to do before selling? If the value today is enough to meet all of your retirement needs then you can proceed to the sale. If the value needs to grow before you sell then you can implement strategies now so that you will reach your projected exit/sale date.

Some really good food for thought before we dive into exit planning and determining what your business is worth: remember it’s a company, not a job. You’ve worked hard to create a company that ideally pays you a reasonable salary. But when it comes time to sell you don’t want to sell a job, you want to sell a company. You can’t do that if every activity in the company is somehow dependent on you.

So where do we begin?

The Problem: “I am the Business”

Here’s a scenario: you own and work in a landscaping company. You are responsible for all selling, client relationships, and scheduling. You pay the bills and negotiate with vendors and deal with insurance. You also spend a good amount of time out on job sites. And if you get hit by the proverbial bus it’s not going to be all that long before the business will literally cease to function.

Sound familiar? In that context how much is the company worth to a buyer? Not much. In most transactions the buyer wants to see you exit the business. But if the company essentially walks out the door when you do at night you’ve got a real problem.

We call this concept Personal Goodwill. Goodwill is the “blue sky” value attached to your company – the amount in excess of hard assets. Personal goodwill is the amount that’s attributable to you. While it’s good to feel important and valuable, personal goodwill is bad. This goodwill is non-transferable and ceases to exist when the individual(s) leave/sell the business. In the context of a sale it does not add value to a company- afterall, how could a buyer purchase it?

The Solution: Work Your Way Out of a Job

In order to enhance the value of your business you will want to make necessary changes to show that your business can exist, thrive, and grow without you. Two quick fixes for shifting the weight of this personal goodwill are to:

Create well-defined systems and processes. How do you run your business? Is it all in your head? Do you have a notepad or a personal laptop that only you have access to and only you can figure out the “filing system” for? The common word here is you and it is time to share this information. Take some time to thoroughly outline all of your business related processes from how you advertise and meet new clients, to how you recruit and train new employees. Every bit of this valuable information will be just that, valuable, when it comes to selling your business.

Hire someone to run the daily operations. Likely you have been out in front of your business since day 1 and now it is time to show yourself, your employees, and your customers that someone else can do the things that you do. Not only will this build confidence that the show can go on without you, it will free up your valuable time to focus on higher-level agenda items like strategies for growth and sustainment. Doing this now will allow you the maximum time required to impart your knowledge and experience.

These two actions will eliminate some of the you (personal goodwill) from your business and prepare the business to make a smooth transition of ownership with minimal disruption of productivity. Having clearly defined business procedures and someone other than you running the daily operations makes the business more appealing to a potential buyer and more valuable thus bringing you a higher sale price and more money to fund your retirement.

Dan Doran is the Founder and Principal of Quantive Business Valuations, a certified valuation practice serving privately held businesses nationwide. He consults on hundreds of valuations each year, ranging from cases of divorce litigation or SBA 7(a) lending requirements to buy-sell agreements or purchase and sale proceedings. Dan’s immersion in the valuation process and extensive work in Mergers & Acquisitions throughout the first decade of the new millenium provide him with a unique “behind-the-scenes” perspective on successful business transactions, growth strategies and the nuances of value drivers within emerging industries.

Dan is an avid blogger and writer on a variety of business issues, including valuation, start-ups, growth, exit planning and structuring transactions. He has recently been published by New Jersey Banker, Virginia Business Journal, YFS Magazine, CBO Magazine, and New England Banking. Learn more at quantivevaluations.com

Quantive Business Valuations is a pure-play business valuation firm. We focus solely on providing business appraisal, valuation, and transaction advisory services related to closely held organizations throughout the United States. We are highly specialized in our exclusive focus on valuation related matters. Without tax and audit related commitments, we remain uniquely independent and unbiased in our viewpoints. Quantive routinely works with small business owners for a variety of reasons to include exit planning.

7 tips for an awesome MANTS visit