I have never met a business buyer whose goal was to keep the business at its current level (of sales, profitability and efficiencies). They all want to grow it and some of the best ideas often come from the employees (who maybe have been stifled by an owner whom knows they are on the way out).

Contrast getting ideas from the employees with what recently happened to a good friend of mine (who’s in sales). The wife of the company owner decided she wanted to be active in the business and she started with an overhaul of the computer systems (she is not a technology expert).

It didn’t take too long before they had a new server, a new email system and more. It also didn’t take to long before nobody was getting emails, which was followed by my friend coming to work one day to find 20,000 emails in his inbox!

His comment was that there were things that needed improvement but the computer system wasn’t one of them. Besides, he went on, why not ask the employees what issues they’re having, what they thought was working well and not working well.

A wise word to owners and buyers is, “don’t fix what’s not broken” and before even thinking of fixing anything ask those “in the trenches” for their input. It’s helped countless business owners improve sales, profits and morale.

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” Ludwig Wittgenstein