Hello all,
I just closed on a home services business deal and one of the things I am facing is that the Seller is very knowledgeable and has a lot of experience in the industry. He gets called on by customers and employees for everything and he provides quick guidance using his experience which is valued by all. This makes me nervous as I do not possess remotely close technical knowledge as he does and we are in transition so he will not be continuing with the business. Now, I know that this is a very common situation for the majority of the searchfund acquisitions. So I am curious about how fellow searchers have handled this type of situation post-close. How do you ensure that the employees and customers come to you and how do you transition Seller's knowledge?
I appreciate your input here.
Thanks
You need to record everything. Pocket notebook always at hand. Write down words or phrases you don't recognize, get the definition, write them down. I have a "glossary" doc that is hundreds of rows long at this point. Take audio recordings of your 1:1 training /mentoring sessions with the seller, and re-listen to them.
Create a process map. Lots of placeholders to start, but eventually you'll be able to build a "How To" guide for every core process in your business. You want to have documented flows from Marketing to Sales, Sales to Operations, Operations to Billing, Billing to Collections, Interview to Onboarding to Training, etc.
VoIP is useful to get recordings and automated transcripts of all calls that come into the office. Start building the data you'll need to operate the business in a new way.
Every process in your company is like a little machine - you need to "cut a window into the side of it" so you can design it and fix it and monitor it, without needing to personally run it.
When my seller gets a call, he relies on what's in his head. When I get a call, I go to our project management system. This is a new way of working and you have to be very aggressive from the start at migrating everything you can into a structured format.
This is very difficult to do but the rewards are there in the long run for your team.