How Can PE-Backed Businesses Maximise Value at Exit?

Exit readiness in go-to-market means a business can show, with data rather than anecdote, how it finds, wins, keeps and grows its customers, and how its commercial engine will deliver the growth in its plan. In this Coppett Hill webinar, MD and CCO Harry von Behr and Principal Tim Roach set out how private equity-backed businesses can maximise value at exit. They cover what to change now, how to evidence the growth plan, and how to capture upside in the equity story. The findings come from Coppett Hill’s last 20 go-to-market due diligences, all on businesses that went on to transact to private equity. Each business was scored on 12 go-to-market dimensions, against what it would need to deliver its plan. Businesses are often good at finding, winning and keeping customers. Where they fall down is proving how and why. Lead generation, enablement tools, and cadence and KPIs score lowest. A commercial engine that relies on a handful of people (key sellers, a CEO connecting the dots, agencies setting the direction) is a dependency that buyers spot and price in. What the webinar covers: The four pillars of go-to-market maturity: strategy, activities, capabilities and platform Why ideal customer profiles (ICPs) are often understood but not documented, validated or operationalised Building repeatable lead generation that doesn’t depend on individual relationships, illustrated by public sector procurement frameworks Finding funnel conversion leaks before increasing marketing spend, and why you should mystery shop yourself before a buyer does The “gravitational pull” of account management towards high-value rather than high-potential accounts Moving churn management from reactive to systematic, using leading indicators of churn risk Key person risk, reporting cadence and leadership behaviour Organisation structure, revenue operations gaps and over-reliance on agencies Designing sales targets and incentives that reward cash profit, avoid unintended consequences and match the equity story Why CRM, data capture and data hygiene underpin the ability to evidence the growth story Setting up cross-divisional go-to-market forums and full-funnel reporting Adding pricing governance and guardrails while keeping practitioner ownership Aligning branding, the website and sales materials with the information memorandum The questions investors and management teams should ask 12 to 18 months before an exit process Chapters: 0:00 Welcome and today’s topic: maximising value on exit 1:10 About Coppett Hill and the team 2:56 How go-to-market due diligence informs the findings 7:09 The four pillars: strategy, activities, capabilities and platform 8:10 Scoring 12 go-to-market dimensions across 20 due diligences 10:45 Defining the ideal customer profile (ICP) 12:17 Lead generation 14:28 Sales conversion and funnel leaks 16:54 Account growth: cross-sell and upsell 19:24 Churn management 21:18 Team leadership and competencies 23:26 Organisation structure and agency reliance 25:47 Targets and incentives 29:41 Enablement tools, CRM and data capture 32:34 Cadence and KPIs 35:41 Pricing governance 38:46 Branding and marketing 40:54 Positioning a business for exit 42:56 Questions to ask before going to market 45:00 Q&A About Coppett Hill Coppett Hill is a technology-enabled advisor to investor-backed businesses, helping them to understand and transform their Go-to-market performance, delivering superior growth and returns. We combine our senior team’s experience as both operators and investors with proprietary technology to help our clients make strategic decisions. We are privileged to work with some of the UK’s most exciting and impressive companies across a range of B2B and B2C industry sectors. If you’d like to understand how ready your go-to-market is for an exit process, get in touch. You can find more articles at: www.coppetthill.com/ideas