Taking the right steps now can pay off later
By Rich Lindblom, AVB Marketing
When you picture the long-term future of your business, what do you see?
If someone had asked me that question about my family business, I’d probably have said it would continue to be the same thriving business that sustained my family for 64 years long after my brother and I had sold it.
After taking several years to make it as profitable as it could possibly be — both for our benefit and for the new owners — in 2020 my brother and I sold the business our father started in 1956. Despite our work to set up the new owners for success (and then the people the new owners subsequently sold to), in just four short years Advanced Maytag closed its doors.

The whole experience reminded me how important it is to plan for the future, no matter how far off it seems or how big a project you perceive it to be.
Seek Professional Help
We learned a lot when we were preparing to sell, and we got professional help from a local business broker who knew a lot more than we did. Unless you have a buyer already lined up for your company, that’s the first piece of advice I have for any business owner who is thinking about a future sale: get some help.
Plan ahead because it can take three to five years to properly set up a business to sell and you don’t want to rush. That means have a functioning point-of-sale system (POS), so information about your business and inventory is available to more than just you. The more modern and more efficient your business is, the more valuable it will be to potential buyers. A typical buyer isn’t looking to purchase a company utilizing antiquated business methodologies like handwritten ledgers and receipts or simple spreadsheets for bookkeeping.
Also, make sure you have a will and an estate plan, and that someone other than you has access to accounts, passwords and other essential records. That’s also something to do right now, not when you’re thinking about selling. If tragedy strikes before you get this done, you’re bequeathing a nightmare to the people you leave behind.
Profiting From Profits
Part of working toward your goal is to make your company more profitable. That means cutting back on big expenditures. For example, don’t run out and a buy a new delivery truck. It also means thinking less about assets and more about profits.
Here’s something few people realize: In a sale, your assets are paid at 100%. In other words, if you have $10,000 in assets, you’ll get $10,000 for them. Profit, on the other hand, is worth two or three times as much. If you can show a profit of $10,000, you can expect $20,000 to $30,000 for it in a return, come sale time.
A lot of things can make that difference for you. For example, it’s very common for business owners to run personal expenses through their company to reduce their tax liability. The problem is it also reduces your profitability. If you’ve been running things like insurance, expenses or anything else through the business for the tax benefits, stop doing so at least three years before you want to sell. Because while it might be good for your pocketbook in the short term, it decreases the profitability of your business on paper, which will reduce its valuation two- to threefold in the long term.
In our case, we reduced expenses as much as possible (without impacting business operations, of course) and at the same time we ramped up our advertising and digital marketing. The result was that our sales and profits went up for three straight years.
Opportunity Knocks
Sadly, I’ve heard more than one business owner worry aloud that they won’t find a buyer for their business. After all, “Who wants to buy an appliance store?” Let me assure you, that’s not the case. If your company has supported you and your family for any length of time, there is a buyer out there who wants it. In fact, a large number of small business purchasers come out of corporate America, looking to ditch the rat race and become an entrepreneur.
And you could always tap into AVB’s Business Baton portal for BrandSource buyers and sellers.
The bottom line is that even if you could only squeeze one year’s worth of salary out of the sale of your business, wouldn’t it be worth it?
If you want to talk about this in more detail or have questions about how to get started, email me at rich.lindblom@avb.net or call me at (847) 751-0015.

Rich Lindblom is a past principal of Chicagoland’s Advanced Maytag Home Appliance Center and member of BrandSource’s Maytag Channel Council. After four decades of working at and eventually leading the 64-year-old family business, Rich and his brother sold the operation. He now shares his hard-won retail know-how with BrandSource dealers as a YSN columnist and member of the AVB Marketing product team.