4. The Institute of Business Appraisers offers several designations including Certified Business Appraiser (CBA) that require passing an exam, and varying degrees of BV education and experience. Their online member directory can be accessed at www.go-iba.org/directory.asp.

Just like types of professionals, no one BV credential is inherently better than others. Having a BV designation is not a guarantee of competency, but it does demonstrate that professional has met minimum requirements for that credential. Conversely, absence of one doesn’t prove incompetence. It does raise question of why professional does not have one. Many BV professionals have multiple designations. That’s great, but one BV credential is enough.

Searching member directories of these organizations is best way to find BV professionals near you. Business Valuations & Strategies maintains links to all four directories in one convenient location at www.bus-val-strat.com/Search BV Professional.htm.

Business Valuation Experience

The first question many business owners ask a BV professional is whether they ever valued a business like theirs. Although that is a good question, it misses point. Regular and recent BV experience is much more important than specific industry experience. BV procedures are generally same regardless of industry or type of valuation. BV professionals are good at research and have many excellent resources to learn ins and outs of most industries.

Ask to see samples of their business valuation reports. You may not understand some of real technical stuff, but you should be able to make sense of what was done and why. The valuation result or conclusion should also make sense to you. The best BV professionals in world are worthless if they can’t write a report that can be understood by non-financial people.

Final Selection

Hopefully you have found more than one qualified BV professional to choose from. Each professional should be personally interviewed and questioned about fees and turnaround time. After interview select most qualified professional that meets rest of your criteria. A checklist or scorecard that lists each important factor and rates each professional on every factor can help make process less confusing and more logical.

Looking for a qualified professional to do a business valuation is not easy. If you take some time, do some research and approach it systematically, you will find a qualified professional that is right for you.

Managing these high performers is an art, a test of your extremes. But outcome is many fold which makes it imperative to have these dickheads in your team as many as you can. They hate to loose. They want to win every day, every hour. They are high in energy, high in temper, high in ego. They are intolerable to mediocrity. For them anyone less than 100° is a sinner. They go to extreme to produce result and get angry to level of hell if someone does not get in done with their efficiency level. They may even break loose on you if you come in their way.

But those are ingredient of a successful. Winning team. You need to give them space, be patience, sit and watch. Your task is to keep them not breaking others boundaries and something in team’s benefit let them break it. It is a tight ship to manage but at end of day, it is your capabilities to direct their high energies and enthusiasm to produce required business results.

Take my words, your only job here would to direct these dickheads in a particular direction and your company success is on autopilot.

So go and find at least one. Big Dickhead, you hate keep in your team.

This research work for this report is done by Mr. Arvind Kumar, founder, www.Nuttymarketer.com You may reach him at arvind@nuttymarketer.com .