Knowledge transfer

Definition

The handover of what a departing owner knows and never wrote down.

Why It Matters

In an owner-run business most of the value lives in the owner's head, and the crews call the rest of it tribal knowledge: the undocumented habits the long-tenured staff carry and nobody has written down. The first hundred days are a race to move both into systems and people before the seller leaves. A buyer plans the transfer: shadowing, warm introductions, and written SOPs. Left to happen on its own, it does not happen.

In numbers: A buyer who spends the seller's 90-day transition documenting the 20 accounts behind 60% of revenue is protecting the number the whole valuation rests on.