Planning a successful exit strategy with Dental Elite

Enacting an exit strategy can be one of the most complicated tasks you will face as a practice principal. However, with efficient planning and time management, you can eliminate a lot of the hassle and stress and ensure both you and your team benefit.

In an ideal world, you should start thinking about your exit strategy at least five years before you intend to leave. This will ensure you have sufficient time to get all your accounts in order and to showcase the best possible profits for your practice. You should also look at staffing situations, income levels and the ways in which your associates are remunerated in order to produce the most accurate and useful overview of your practice’s performance and potential.

One of the most common pitfalls principals fall into during this process, is that they start to slow down by taking on fewer patients and working fewer hours. While this is completely understandable, it can actually have a detrimental impact on the sale of the business – income will reduce but costs will remain the same, therefore profits decrease rapidly. From the bank’s perspective, a business with falling profits is a business in decline, despite the reasons for this being easily reversible. It is therefore essential to not only maintain income of the practice, but to grow it as much as possible in order to create the most appealing deal for a buyer. Reassigning work to associates and building a strong practice management team will go a long way to helping you do this without putting all the hours in yourself. Ensuring an efficient team is in place will also make the practice less contingent on you as you prepare to leave, strengthening the business as a whole.

With regards to non-financial factors, it is vital to ensure that associate dentists have entered into an official associate agreement so as to protect the goodwill of the practice. This demonstrates that your clinical team plan to remain with the business for the foreseeable future, ensuring the stability and long-term success of your practice. Protecting the goodwill in this way not only puts you in a stronger position to sell with the practice seeming more attractive to potential buyers, but it further encourages a smoother sale procedure.

The team at Dental Elite, with over a century of combined experience in the sector, have made a reputation for themselves for giving pragmatic and practical advice to dental professionals. They are in the perfect position to help ensure that planning your exit strategy will not be the complicated and stressful process it has the potential to be.

For more information and to find out how Dental Elite can value
and assist your practice sale visit www.dentalelite.co.uk, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 01788 545 900