The sequence of moves that took Phones 4u and its sister companies to a £1.46 billion sale.
John Caudwell's framework, from Love, Pain & Money, pp. 219 to 229.
Keep your own counsel
Decide to sell privately and review what you have before anyone knows.
Find the crown jewels
Pick the one irresistible business, here Phones 4u, to put in the shop window.
Go to the front line
Visit the shops yourself, ask questions and see what staff really do.
Remove the waste
Ban group emails, send a nightly bulletin and give every manager a sales target.
Sell as one
Sell the whole group to a single buyer to avoid tax problems from splitting.
Test the buyers
Watch small signals, throw out a doubtful bidder and bring in new ones.
Close and protect
Complete the deal, split the cash across banks and reward long serving staff.
From chapter: Chapter 26_MY WAY – A BUSINESS LESSON (PART II), pp. 219–229
Caudwell rejects the idea that he is lucky and calls his empire a house of cards he had to run to hold up. After the Singlepoint sale he plans to sell everything, starting with making Phones 4u his crown jewel. A surprise bike visit to a Birmingham shop reveals a manager who sells nothing and spends four hours on emails, so he bans company email, sets sales targets for every manager and watches profit rise by £100 million in a year. He expects a recession, so he insists on one buyer for the whole group, throws Bain out of the process on instinct, and signs Providence and Doughty Hanson for £1.46 billion on 26 September 2006. He spreads his money across five banks, and at a party for 1,000 former staff hands out £3.5 million in envelopes, which is when he cries.
