Succession Planning

Succession planning, also known as “replacement planning,” ensures that businesses continue to run smoothly after a company’s most important people move on to new opportunities, retire, or pass away. 

 What Can Lions Financial Do for You? 

During the Succession planning process, Lions Financial helps clients create the strategy for passing on leadership of a company. Then we advise our clients on what they can do for each step to get the best result in detail. To best assist, we applied Four-step SIRE process to create value for you. 

• Survey: We will begin process with a questionnaire to have a general understanding of your business and identify the unique composition for specific business succession. We clarify your business objectives and gain understanding of the unique current issues that need to be addressed.
• Insight: To have a deep insight of your specific business succession, we will incorporate industry research, determine product offerings available from many sources, create an assessment for reasonable factors to take into consideration for specific business evaluation.
• Recommendation: We will come up with solutions for Due Diligence that is tailored to the Risks associated for your company completing upcoming transition.
• Execution: We help implement the strategy with your company during the business succession. We help your company execute during this business transition and achieve a better result with our professional experience, integration of technology, understanding of your industry, and staying attuned to the compliance and regulatory requirements.

The Key Items to Consider in Succession Planning

Every succession planning should be unique, but the general steps to design it include:

Step 1: Identification of key leadership positions 

• Evaluate the impact position for achieving strategic goals and objectives 
• Review of the positions at the division level and above to determine which positions are key 
• Evaluate the strategic goals and objectives, and the vacancy risk and marketability of the incumbent of each position 
• Create a rank order of positions by assigning a numerical value to the High, Medium and Low assessment for succession planning 
• Assessment of “Position Impact” should be based on a prioritized list of the department’s mission, goals, objectives and strategic plan 
• Assessment of “Vacancy Risk” should be based on factors such as the incumbent’s retirement eligibility, marketability, etc. 
• Position Impact / Risk Assessment Attrition Factor: 

Identify your current and projected human capital attrition factoring of each position by using workforce data reports and other turnover data 

 Step 2: Identify competency, skills and success factors of the company 

The next step is to document the education, experiences, key competencies, and other factors necessary for success for each key leadership position 

 Step 3: Assess Current Business Value 

• Financial Evaluation 
• Balance Sheet 
• Operating Expenses 
• Cost of Sales Analysis 
• Current Valuation 
• Revenue 
• Due Diligence 
• Market Valuation and Market Share 
• Brand Value and Product Segmentation 
• What is the line of business? 
• Industry Growth Trends and Customer Demographics 
• Operational Efficiency 
• How many accounts does the company have? 

Step 4: Design Exit Strategies 

• Key Areas When Accumulating and Protecting Capital 
• Asset Protection and Income Taxes 
• Retirement Income and Capital Asset Risk 
• Income Protection 
• Estate Planning 
• Installment Sale for Business Succession 

Let a business owner sell a business interest without expensive financing to a friendly buyer while deferring taxes on the overall sale 

• The length of time payments, the frequency of payments, and the yearly interest rate will be made 
• Interest paid is deductible to the buyer and is taxed as ordinary income to the seller 
• The seller pays taxes on smaller annual installment payments instead of paying tax on one large purchase price 

 Step 5: Facilitate Implement and Executing on Design Plan
Factors That Determine Value

• External Factors 
• National economic conditions 
• Government laws 
• Internal Factors 
• Relationship between owner and employees 
• What is the profitability of the services or products? 
• Does the business have a lot of money? 
• Synergy 
• How synergistic is the company’s service or product to prospective buyers within or even outside its industry? 
• How well does the company culture fit with other companies? 
• Does the company have a niche that other companies might find attractive? 

 What’s Next? 

Contact Lions Financial to find a better strategy and holistic plan for your company. Lions Financial helps executives and businesses, together with their tax and legal advisors, to develop the optimal financial solutions for success. Contact us for in an initial consultation to determine how we can help your current business need.