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Standard Operating Procedures | Workflows a Buyer Can Run | Co. Buy Sell

EXIT OPTIMIZATION • OPERATIONS

Standard Operating Procedures

Write the work
so it is no longer you.

Buyers do not pay for what you know. They pay for what the company can do without you. We document the critical workflows, tighten the ones that fail, and test them with someone who did not write them.

PICK

Critical workflows

WRITE

Steps and exceptions

TEST

Someone else runs it

Confidential. No obligation. The workflows a buyer will ask for, not a binder of everything.

1

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2

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Critical workflows only

Tested by someone else

Exceptions named

WHY A BUYER OPENS THE BINDER

A procedure nobody can run is a story.

Owner involvement in daily operations is one of the reasons lower-middle-market deals stall. An SOP is the opposite evidence: the step exists without you. Buyers use it to judge transition risk. A short handoff is a different deal from a year of you staying to explain the work.

We do not document every task. We document the workflows that produce revenue, deliver it, collect it, and recover when they break. Then someone who did not write the page runs it. That test is the product.

USEFUL

Trigger, steps, owner, tool, exception, and the last date someone else ran it. Short enough to follow on a job.

IGNORED

A 40-page manual written the week of the teaser. No owner. No exception path. The team still texts you.

We will not quote a multiple from a set of procedures. The discount they address is the one buyers apply when the work lives in your head. The proof is a run, not a file.

THE SET

Six workflows. Not a company encyclopedia.

How work comes in

Lead, call, or order. Who qualifies it, what the price rule is, and when it is allowed to sit. If only you can say yes, the SOP names the limit and the backup.

How work is delivered

Schedule, prep, the job itself, and the quality check. The steps a new lead can follow on a Tuesday without a call to you.

How cash moves

Invoice, collect, deposit, and the weekly close. Who can spend, up to what amount. A buyer reads this page to see if the books are a process or a habit.

Vendors and supply

Who orders, from whom, at what point, and who can change a price. Handshake terms get written or flagged. This is the operating version of the vendor file.

People and handoff

How a role is opened, trained, and closed. Passwords, keys, and the customer list do not leave in someone’s pocket because nobody wrote the exit step.

When it breaks

The complaint, the missed window, the job that loses money. Who decides, what they can spend, and when it escalates. An SOP without an exception path still ends with you.

How a workflow gets perfected

Write what is true. Then make someone else run it.

01

Name the critical path

The few workflows that stop the company if they stop. Everything else waits.

02

Write the real step

Owner, tool, timing, and the exception. Not the version you wish the team followed.

03

Run it without you

A person who did not write it completes the workflow. What they cannot do gets fixed or named as a remaining dependency.

What we will not produce

A manual of every task. Buyers do not read it. The team will not either.

Procedures that describe a process the company does not use. The test fails, and so does the credibility.

A claim that paper alone moves the multiple. The run is the evidence.

Questions owners ask first

Which SOPs matter before a sale?

The ones a buyer will ask a new manager to run: how work comes in, how it is delivered, how cash is collected, how vendors are managed, and what happens when something breaks. A binder of every task is not the goal.

Is a written SOP enough?

No. The test is whether someone who did not write it can run the workflow without calling you. A document nobody uses is not an operating procedure.

Do SOPs raise the multiple?

They reduce the reason buyers discount owner-run companies: the work lives in one person’s head. We do not quote a multiple from a set of procedures. The proof is a workflow someone else has already run.

How is this different from automation?

Automation removes a manual step to cut overhead. An SOP writes the step so another person can run it. Some workflows should be automated. All critical ones should be written.