In his New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers Bag the Elephant! and Be the Elephant, Steve Kaplan showed business owners how to win the big customer and maintain growth. In Sell Your Business for the Max!, Kaplan covers another and even more necessary skill: selling the business for maximum payoff. The need for this book is enormous—according to a recent study by Mass Mutual Financial Group, 40 percent of CEOs of family businesses will consider retiring in the next few years. In a survey conducted by the author, 95 percent of owners said they think about selling their business at least once a week, and 94 percent said they have no one to turn to for advice. Now they have Steve Kaplan, who has owned 35 businesses and sold 30 of them.

Selling a business requires a completely different skill set than running a business. In addition, it's often entangled in highly emotional issues. Are you really ready to retire? Should you pass the business on to your children or sell outside the family? And how do you quantify the blood, sweat, and years of hard work you devoted to make your company thrive? In this step-by-step workbook, packed with indispensable advice and real-life examples, Kaplan breaks down the process into three easily navigable stages: preparing for the sale (including how to value your business); negotiating the sale; and, like follow-through in a golf swing, optimizing the outcome. In addition, he explains the Five Killer Mistakes to Avoid (here's one: Don't share the news too early!).

Included with the planner, and greatly enhancing it, is a suite of downloadable business-building tools, online templates, charts, and interactive calculators—making this not just the book for every small and large business owner, but a complete practical kit.