I'm not ready to sell my business yet. And you may or may not be at that point, but one of the things I have learned is it helps to learn new things to prep yourself for what's coming next. If you're an avid listener of my podcast and reader of this blog, you know that I spend a lot of time listening to Blinkist. I've even added Masterclass over the last year and have listened to audiobooks, podcasts, you name it. One of the things I like to do is listen to stuff when I walk my dog, which is three times a day for about a half-hour.
I'm always using my downtime, the time where I'm kind of getting away from my business, to continue to improve myself both physically, by walking, and mentally, by listening.
If you have heard my Bacon & Coffees, you know those are LinkedIn Lives and they're also broadcasted on Facebook and YouTube every Saturday morning at 10:00 AM Central. If you want to check them out, you can go to li4sales.com and you'll find all the replays. There's a lot of great guests. One of the skills that I've learned to master over the years is doing expert interviews as I do for my podcast.
I use that LinkedIn Live to bring people on who I want to learn from. This past week I had a guest, Brad Mart, and we were talking about some of the biggest mistakes that people make prepping their business for sale.
One of the core concepts that we discussed was obviously marketing. That's my niche. What I want to give you today are three core things that I think are going to help you get yourself prepped if you want to sell your business.
There are also great concepts even if you don't want to sell your business because the goal is to increase your valuation. Guess what? You can make more money. If you're making more money in business when you go to sell it, you can sell it for more money. I think the concept is pretty solid.
There are three key concepts I want to discuss today. Number one is unifying your marketing message. Next, find a way to hire better talent. Finally, find a way to find new clients. I think you would all agree those are things that could help your business and increase your valuation.
Manage Your Messaging
Let's start with unifying your message. One of the key things that Brad was talking about is that a lot of the companies, especially in the manufacturing arena, don't spend a lot of time embracing online marketing.
Their websites tend to be old. They could be all the way from the '90s. They haven't updated it in a long time. It really doesn't offer the kind of image that the business needs to get across in today's online, searchable Google economy, right?
You want to make sure that your website has been updated to speak to your current customers. It reflects the kind of things that you're doing now. What has changed over the last three years? That's one of the reasons I recommend everybody update their website once every three years. Things change pretty quickly.
The other thing is you have to be able to embrace social media. There are people out there that are going to spend time looking for you on those platforms, especially in the B2B space. I recommend LinkedIn because that's where B2B business plays. If you're doing consumer stuff, Facebook is great. You want to make sure that you're embracing social media and using it in order to get your messages out there. You need to be consistent with it so people will pay attention.
Finally, if you're not doing email, you should be. Email your current and past customers and try to attain new names and get them on your email list. Do that regularly. As I said, update your website once every three years. Post to social media at least two to three times a week, if not more. And then finally try to craft and send out some kind of email message that's informative that leads people back to your website at least once a week, if not twice a week.
Attracting Talent
The next concept is that you need to hire better talent. Many businesses have a challenge nowadays finding good quality talent. Well, here are three tips that I think might help you attract some better people. Number one, if you're celebrating your employees, talking about their work anniversaries, and their personal and professional accomplishments, it shows that you care about the people that work for you. You want to create and share success stories on a regular basis.
Don't do the typical, “We'd like to congratulate so-and-so on their work anniversary.” No, you want to tell stories about them. You want to show that you personally understand their work and personal lives. Celebrate them.
Finally, talk about your culture. What is it that you do that's unique, that helps people balance their work and their personal lives? Could it be sabbaticals? Working from home? Off-site meetings? Whatever you do that is different than just coming in and sitting in a cubicle, celebrate that. Let people know what makes your business fun and enjoyable. Give them a reason why they may want to come work for you instead of the competition.
New Clients Find YOU!
The final piece of this pie is to find new clients. One of the best things that you can do is use social media to help your staff maintain their current business relationships. Not every company can do this, but if you can post on your staff's behalf and talk about what your business does, it makes it easier on them. They don't have to think about posting to social media.
One of the core concepts that work for my clients is that we create great information. It's that's infotainment, it's educational, it's informational, and it's entertaining. Then, we post it to their salespeople's LinkedIn accounts. And all they have to do is monitor if somebody messages them or if somebody engages with it and comment back. Here's the big secret behind this. You're sending out a unified message to a bunch of staff. You get to control what's hot and what's not, and you don't leave it up to them.
Plus it saves them time. They don't have to go and find it, copy it, paste it, post it, format it, and learn how to do all that. You can do it for them, making it easier. You're supporting the relationships your sales and customer service people have with your current and past customers. As a side benefit, it enhances your image to the world. People that might be interested in looking at your company are going to see that you and your people post a lot. It says that you're communicative, that you're trying to inform them, and that you care about your customers.
Final Thoughts
Imagine what these three steps can do for your brand in general and to increase your valuation. It raises awareness and creates top-of-mind activities that will guide people back to your website, back to your people, and increase your sales. Even if you're not thinking about selling a business, you could start thinking about how you can unify and increase your marketing to help you increase your valuation.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about these steps to increase your valuation.
To learn more about this and other topics on Internet Marketing, visit our podcast website at
