Whether you’re passing your funeral home to the next generation, or selling, it’s important to have a plan of succession in place. This helps to ensure the business you’ve built continues to grow even when you’ve left.
Plan Early
While your options for exit might appear simple––either sell it or pass it down––protecting your legacy takes special care and consideration. After all, selling a funeral home is a bit more complex than selling a house.
Because of this, you’ll want to start planning as soon as possible. In fact, upon taking over a funeral home, you should begin planning your exit strategy. This is when you’ll ask yourself:
- Who will you sell your business to?
- Will you continue to work at your funeral home, and in what capacity?
Naturally, it’s difficult to plan exact time frames for your succession. Financial issues or health changes may cause you to exit earlier than expected; however, crafting a plan of action in advance will allow you to ensure that your transition follows your wishes. It will also prevent you from having to make hasty decisions.
Write Everything Down
In the event that an unexpected event forces you to exit your business quickly, you’ll want to be sure everything is written down. This is where you should clearly identify a successor, formalize your standard operating procedures, and even conduct a valuation of your business.
However, even if you write down this information, this document may not be enough to ensure your wishes are carried out. That’s where you’ll want to call on the help of an industry expert.
Utilize the Help of an Industry Expert
While a certain degree of succession planning can be performed on your own, only a person who understands the nuances of the death care profession can help you fine-tune your succession plan to be successfully carried out.
A death care business valuation expert, for example, will utilize accounting and expense management analyses to understand what your enterprise is worth as a whole, and a lawyer can help prepare the necessary documents for a transfer.
It’s important to remember that transferring your funeral business will likely involve some participation on your part. Whether you plan to pass the business down to a relative or sell it, you’ll have to negotiate the specifics of transferring your business, its facilities, and its employees.
In many cases, you’ll want to create an arrangement in which you help acclimate the new leader of your organization–a death care expert can help spearhead this process.
Protecting Your Legacy
As a funeral home owner, you’ve likely spent decades serving your community and building your business. To help ensure that your business continues to thrive, even when you’re no longer a part of it, it’s essential to partner with an expert in the funeral profession who can help shape your succession plan.
At Johnson Consulting Group, one of the nation’s largest funeral home and cemetery consulting firms, our team of death care consultants has extensive experience owning, operating, and selling businesses of all sizes. Our mergers and acquisitions team can conduct a valuation of your business, and help connect you to a national network of qualified buyers, helping to ensure that you get the best possible sale terms.
Whether you have a concrete idea of your succession plan, or you wish to jumpstart the process, the team at Johnson Consulting Group can help you optimize your succession strategy.