[View Point] One of the most difficult decisions you'll ever make

Deciding whether or not to sell a family business is one of the most difficult decisions a PCO can face. Victor Hammel knows the feeling, as chronicled in this month’s cover story about Rentokil’s surprising purchase of J.C. Ehrlich earlier this year (“The British Are Coming,” pg. 32). Yet, as he has done all of his life, Hammel approached this most emotionally taxing of all business decisions with a detached professionalism that has served him and his company well throughout his distinguished career. “If a decision wasn’t difficult to make, it wouldn’t be called a decision,” Hammel says somewhat philosophically. “I think in the early stages of our discussions (with Rentokil) I had the emotions associated with deciding whether or not to sell a 78-year-old business that has been in our family for three generations. I asked myself, ‘Do I have a right to take it out of the family? How will this impact our co-workers?’”
It proved to be a decision rife with a roller-coaster ride of emotions, one which wasn’t made hastily. After being contacted by an investment banking firm representing Rentokil in March of 2005, Hammel and his brother began to seriously consider the possibility of selling the third-generation business, but not before he talked to a number of professional and personal advisers. What was their recommendation? “I would say fairly unanimously that my advisers felt it was the right thing to do,” he says. “Even though intellectually I felt pretty good about the decision to sell, emotionally I was still agonizing over it throughout the summer, even though I couldn’t find any adviser to give me advice the other way. I remember taking a course for entrepreneurs at the Harvard Business School and the professor saying, ‘Don’t fall in love with your business.’ At the time, I thought that was bad advice. I have always believed that the only way to grow a business was to have a passion for it. But I now realize that sometimes you have to step away from the business to make the right decision for your co-workers and yourself, and not let your personal emotions cloud the decision-making process. So I talked to my brother and we made the difficult but appropriate decision to sell.”
Even then, it took several additional months before Hammel began to feel totally comfortable with the decision. “It’s a process,” he says. “After I made the business and intellectual decision to move forward with the sale, it was still a 60/40 decision in my mind, but over time I’ve become very comfortable with the decision. It’s still not 100/zero at this point, but it’s close.” Fortunately for Hammel, he had seen a close friend go through a similar decision-making process 18 months before when the Sameth family sold Western Pest Services and its affiliates to Orkin Pest Control for more than $100 million. Although lifelong competitors, Hammel was close to Bob Sameth, president of Western Pest Services. “Over a quarter of a century, Bob and I met together more than a hundred times, including many dinners with Bob’s wife Sue and my wife Dena. Our situations — both family and business — were so similar that our discussions were unique and on a level that could not be achieved with too many others. Because we had signed a confidentiality agreement I did not talk to Bob about our specific plans,” Hammel says, but he did gain some insights from his longtime friend and colleague, insights that proved helpful in making one of the most difficult decisions of his career.

The author is Publisher of PCT magazine.