The Waiting Game Can Be the End Game

My teammates used to joke that when I played high school football, I was the starting “drawback.”

Despite an obvious lack of talent, the coach decided that at 150 lbs. I was suited to play outside linebacker and surmised I was able to take on 200-pound plus offensive lineman as they led running backs on sweeps and draw plays.

I begged to differ but at least he was playing me.

One game late in my senior season, we were ahead by five points when the opposing team marched some 80 yards down to our five-yard line with less than 30 seconds to play. Instead of covering the halfback circling out of the backfield, I hesitated thinking the quarterback would attempt to run and before I knew it, the back had gathered in a soft pass for the winning score.

I expected an old-fashioned ass-reaming but instead the coach calmly pointed out that indecision or as he termed it, “paralysis by analysis” rarely leads to a happy ending. But he stressed that even a bad decision is sometimes better than no decision at all.

Fast forward far too many years than I want to reveal here, and I see the CPA succession version of that play time and again.

At least a half-dozen times a year, CPA firms in dire need of a succession plan cannot seem to pull that elusive trigger and enter in a merger. No matter that potential successor firms basically hand them terms that are not only fair, but in many cases beyond what both myself and my colleagues could have ever expected.

Still, they resist signing on the proverbial dotted line. And as I’ve stated many times in this space and during my live presentations, nothing kills a deal more effectively than too much time elapsing. Time kills all deals – no exceptions.

Case in point, I am working with a two-partner firm with the owners comfortably within the age of playing pickleball and bridge in Florida, yet despite multiple meetings with potential merger partners, they continually found something wrong with each practice – no matter how trivial.

After this occurred for the fifth or sixth time, I sat them down and imparted a “come to Jesus” moment. I told them point blank, they had no succession plan, no one on their “bench” to assume the leadership reins and coupled with an aging client base. The longer they procrastinated, the worse their bargaining power would be.

Alas, they decided to wait another year no matter how much evidence I presented to the contrary.

Like others, they’ll find out the hard way that the cavalry doesn’t charge over the hill anymore just in time to save those in need.