The first value driver we've discovered is the easiest to understand, but it's actually the most difficult to deliver.
It's your financial performance.
The obvious bit are the numbers we all focus on: what's your top line revenue and your bottom-line profit?
Going a level deeper, you have your financial analysis ratios.
For example, things like your gross profit margin, your contribution margin, the value add of production staff and the value add of the management team.
But there's also a hidden element.
It's not just what those numbers are. It's also the quality of the reporting of those numbers.
So, to drive up your value builder score, not only do you need to focus on your top line revenue, your bottom-line profit and those key ratios, you need to make sure your book-keeping and record-keeping are in good order.
And you should also consider investing in an audit or find some way to make sure those numbers are as defendable as possible.
Because a buyer's going to come in and say "Hey, great, you've got these numbers" but they'll have a healthy dose of scepticism as well, and they’ll be asking themselves "how much do I trust those numbers?"
One way of giving them confidence is to be able to say that a qualified third party scrutinised the numbers and gave them a clean bill of health.
So, investing in an audit is one simple way of improving your score on the financial performance driver.