As president of Generational Equity, Ryan Binkley makes a living helping business owners prepare their organizations for sale. But with the economic challenges over the last couple of years, he’s seen business owners struggle to sell their organizations and potential buyers not be able to get loans necessary to make these transactions. During these tough times, he came to rely on his management and deal-making teams to stay in tune with clients’ needs and help them in the sale-preparation process.
“These are the professionals that work closely with our clients every single day on their exit plan,” he says
This approach by his 250 people helped the firm not only do well the past few years but also earned it a spot on the 2009 Inc. 500 list.
Smart Business spoke with Binkley about how to put together a strong team that can ensure success during tough times.
What’s the key to building a strong management team?
That’s a leadership challenge that’s there in every organization, whether it be private or public, and it’s important for the business owner to continue to have good leaders that can carry on the business in the same manner they do. What we try to do is always have good people that can run their departments at the same level that we could if we weren’t here. That’s the goal for every company, and people need to invest in that instead of solely relying on the business owner to be in a position to be prepared to hand off to someone else.
We built it over time and recruiting good people. We found some people in the industry who had a lot of experience in exit-planning and deal-making. It was a process of coming through and finding the right people that we felt were a cultural fit.
How do you make sure someone is both a professional and a good cultural fit?
It’s through not making a hasty decision and getting to know them a little bit. People are one or the other. A lot of people are one or the other, and it’s spending time with them during the interview process to make sure they share the same values as far as long-term business goals. We just want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the client long term and not just the short term and be professional and have the right expertise that’s really needed in the marketplace.
