The last four full weeks of the year are upon us. Only 33 days full working days left this year (or less depending on your holiday schedule). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you have not already started to set your business plans in place for 2016 you are behind the curve. Business growth comes through careful planning. The most successful companies in the industry plan years in advance how they will manage their growth and most, if not all, will have their 2016 budgets done before December 1.
Recently the large consolidators have put their growth plans into overdrive. These plans were made months and years in advance. But a deadline has a unique way of motivating all of us. The year-end floodgates appear to have opened after what appeared to be a relatively slow year for mergers and acquisitions in the collision industry when compared to 2014. In the past five weeks (since the beginning of October) Caliber, ABRA and Service King have all announced major acquisitions of leading regional MSOs, and Boyd / Gerber has announced the acquisition of 11 locations in nine separate transactions. To say the corporate development teams have been in busy would be an understatement.
