As we prepare the business for an exit using the Step by Step Exit model, we struggle to find time to track the transfer of key customer and vendor relationships away from the owner. How do we use our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ to systematically monitor this relationship transfer?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When preparing your business for a transfer of ownership using the Step by Step Exit model, your goal is to eliminate owner dependency. A major risk for any buyer is the owner's personal relationships with key clients and vendors. To de-risk the business and maximize its value, you must use your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ to systematically transition these relationships to other seats on the Accountability Chart.

To do this without creating a separate, exhausting project, integrate exit-readiness directly into your weekly meeting pulse. Start by adding key relationship transfer metrics to your weekly Scorecard. For example, you can track the number of customer accounts transitioned to account managers or the percentage of vendor communications handled without owner involvement.

When a relationship transfer milestone is missed, or when a client insists on speaking directly with the owner, this must immediately be dropped onto the Issues List. During the IDS® portion of the meeting, the team must treat this relationship dependency as a structural threat to the business.

The team must then solve the issue by creating weekly To-Dos that document the relationship history or introduce the new point of contact to the client. By embedding these exit-readiness tasks into your standard weekly cadence, you build a self-sustaining, transferable company that runs independently of the owner long before the actual transaction occurs.