Assignment Prompt:
This week you will develop an Exit or Harvesting Plan for the company you built a business model for in Week 6. There are many scenarios where a business owner would want (or need) to exit or downsize segments or product lines in his or her business, or possibly exit the entire business. Retirements, deaths, competitive changes, consumer needs, economic downturns, and loss of interest are only a few of the possible reasons for having an “exit or harvesting” plan roughed out and ready to implement. Before getting started on the exit plan portion of your model, make sure you review the resources in the Reading & Resources section of week eight’s lesson.
Assignment Instructions:
For this project, you will be creating a 15 to 20 slide PowerPoint program you will submit by this Sunday midnight. In your presentation, you will develop an exit strategy for your business model utilizing five different scenarios:
Scenario 1: A Major downturn in the economy that has caused cash flow to go negative and is expected to last for 2 to 3 years. As the entrepreneur, you have enough cash saved in the business to last 6 months at your current employment, inventory, and fixed overhead cost levels. What is your exit strategy
Scenario 2: There is a devastating natural disaster (hurricane or earthquake) that has ruined your facilities and completely interrupted your business. It will be months before insurance can be collected to rebuild your facilities, rolling-stock, and inventory. What is your exit strategy?
Scenario 3: A major operation has moved into your market area and the competitive pressure has caused you to reduce prices on one product line to the point that you are barely making a profit. This scenario is different, here you are asked to think and communicate what options are worth trying before “harvesting” that product line. Second, what steps are needed to harvest the struggling product line if your strategies don’t work.
Scenario 4:You have lost your financial backing from the institute you have been using for the past three years. As in scenario 3, what refinancing options are worth trying, how long do you give yourself to evaluate and investigate these options, and, finally, if nothing works, what is your exit strategy.
Scenario 5: You are approaching retirement age, have no heirs who which to run the business. You would like to sell the business and use the proceeds for your retirement. There are no “options” for this scenario, you are wanting to sell the business. Your job is to do some research about how to sell a small business, then put together a workable plan to sell the business looking at all of the options to sell that are possibly open to you.
A possible organization for your presentation is given below. However, you are free to add your own “touches” to this presentation so long as all of the bases (see below) are covered. You are also free to choose a business template you feel best supports your PowerPoint presentation. If you need to brush up on your skills with Microsoft PowerPoint, here is an excellent (no charge) resource to watch some very short videos on using Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 (365) GCFLearnFree.Org/Powerpoint16
1 Presentation “Title slide” with your name, company name, and a Title for your presentation
1 Slide with a short description of the Business
1 Slide with your definition of an Exit/Harvesting Strategy
1 Slide with all 5 Scenarios listed
5 Sub-Title slides that separate the presentation into each of the five
1 to 2 slides under each of the 5 sub-title slides defining your exit strategy for the scenario. Make sure you include a short paraphrase of the scenario as the title for each of the 1 or 2 pages .
1 Slide for References (minimum 3)
Include speaker notes on all slides that further enhance your bullet points on the slides
