Selling Your Company

Selling your company, especially if you are the founder, invariably involves a lot of emotion. Emotions often get in the way of making decisions based on logic. Under the circumstances, you will be generally better off if you employ a consultant to help you, someone who will point out where your interests are best served without the coloration of sentiment. You should contract with the consultant to pay for his time, not the value of the transaction. This will ensure that the consultant will not have a conflict of interest, if you choose to subordinate getting the best price to other considerations that are more important to you, such as continuing employment of your staff or keeping your facilities at their current location. 

Selling your company will be very time-consuming. Make sure that you have delegated as many of your more routine duties as feasible so as to have this time available as needed. If you intend to retire, ensure that you already have an effective successor in place that is ready to take over after you leave. Not many potential buyers will have much interest in taking over a small company if they must provide for managerial succession. 

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Only in certain situations does management itself directly make a purchasing decision, but its presence is felt in all the parts of a customer s organization. If we are to sell in depth, we must have the permission and cooperative support of the customer s management. This can best be achieved by good performance as a supplier, but it may also be necessary to explain and sell your company s philosophy and its advantages. 

Companies and academics use the Internet for promotion. This is where they tell their existing and potential customers what they are doing and where they are going. The Internet is a great means of monitoring the competition and getting ideas of how to position and sell your company (or university department). 

Having selected the right sponsor and identified key advocates, the next task is to sell them on the concept of PSM—and the need for an effective system within your company. The first step in any selling situation is to know your audience. It is up to you to do some informal research on the person or people you want to endorse PSM look for insights into their business priorities, their track records with comparable initiatives, and their professional backgrounds. This will help you ... 

Depending on your company s style, the executive summary may be the primary selling document, with the full proposal acting as backup or provided as an appendix. 

Then consider these selling benefits in the context of your company s business priorities, match them against the goals management has established for PSM, and then try to distill the comments into a few key points that summarize the long-term value of your plan to the company as a whole. 

Why is it necessary to sell PSM inside your company Because PSM improvement requires individual as well as corporate commitment. Effective process safety management relies on individual behavior on the job, and... 

So the issue is not that you are selling your research too cheaply. The issue is whether a company will pay whatever you charge compared with what, for example, Imperial College, Taiwan, or what a cooperative research and development agreement involving Los Alamos will charge. This is a common disconnect between the academic and the industrial communities on this issue, and we need to be aware of it. 

The need for such methods is extensive in commerce and in litigation. If your company is buying a raw material of a specified purity, you need to know that it meets the specifications. The company selling it to you needs to know what it is selling. If there is a difference in the analysis, and a third company is brought in to settle the argument, what method is to be used A sample that has been analyzed by an official method will settle most arguments, and will stand up in court. 

Break-Off Point. The question comes up in every company concerning the amount of work that should be done on any technical service or application research problem. The break-off point is sometimes difficult to determine in the field of intermediate chemicals. For here your product plays only a part in the production of something else. Though you are primarily concerned with selling your product, you are obviously not going to sell very much unless your customer can successfully sell the end product which your product helps to make. Conceivably then, situations can develop where a customer may begin to look to your technical service or application research staffs for answers that are more directly related to his product than to yours. 

Your marketing organization believes they can sell ethylene for 0.25/lb in 2000 dollars. Although they are less certain because it is a new product for your company, they also believe they can sell acetic acid for 0.19/lb in 2000 dollars. It would be a good idea to test the sensitivity of the optimum plant design and economics to uncertainty in the selling prices of both products. 

While no two female drivers (or any other two drivers, for that matter) are alike, there are some issues that are t3q)i-cally more important to female drivers. If your company excels in these areas, use them as selling points during your recruiting and interviewing process ... 

Concentrated product [10]. A company offers two types of varnish, one with 25 % water and another, substantially dryer, with 4 % water. The product with the higher moisture content (25 % water) sells for 10 per 100 kg if you buy it at the company. The dry product (4 % water) sells for 12.5 per 100 kg if you buy it at the company. If the transportation cost to your company is 0.80 per 100 kg, which of the two products will it be more cost-effective to buy ... 

B) You increase production to 200 kg Z/year by adding a night shift of three additional employees. The salary of the night-shift employees is 25% higher than the day-shift employees. Calculate the minimum selling price for chemical Z that will yield a ROI of 20% if your company produces 200 kg Z/year using two work shifts. 

Event marketing is a fanteistic way to generate leads, create lasting relationships, and engage with current customers for upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Events often take the form of webinars, conferences, tradeshows, or seminars and offer your company a chance to meet your leads face-to-face and form a lasting impression. This helps you cement relationships and top-of-mind when your lead is ready to make a purchase decision. 

Technology/melhodology How does your company deliver on the products or services What can a lead expect It s okay if your company doesn t sell technology. Instead, you can include your methodology or product development practices. Figure 15-8 shows an example of a technology slide. Notice how the examples have charts and graphs. Show your lead the how. 

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