Selling your business as quickly as possible isn’t as easy as it may seem. There are so many factors that you need to take into consideration before making this big decision. Taking your time with this is key here, and a lot of the groundwork has done way. Before you even secure a buyer. Whatever reasons you may have for wanting to sell your business, whether it may be due to financial losses. If you are wanting to move onto other projects.There needs to be prior strategic planning otherwise you will find yourself in deep trouble. With huge losses concurred and no one willing to buy your business. In order to avoid these mishaps (which is quite common for people who are new to this and are doing this for the first time). We are going to help guide you through the entire process of what to do and what not to do to make sure. The entire process of selling your business from beginning to end goes smoothly and with ease.
Another thing that you need to keep in mind before diving into this is the fact. Smaller businesses (valued under $1 million dollars) are much quicker to sell than say, a larger business. This is because the owner has complete control over his business operations and there is a lot less money to lose.
So if you want to ensure that your business is able to thrive even after sold to a suitable buyer. Stick around because we’re going to share some valuable information to help make sure you’re on the right track. Don’t make any wrong decisions along the way.
Make Your Business Summary
Make sure you’ve crafted out a Business Summary (consisting of 20-30 pages) that you’ll be presenting to them. The Business Summary will entail your financial status, your assets, your revenue and your current customers. It will basically address all of the key aspects of your business. The Business Summary will give the buyer the idea about your business, what it stands for and it would also save the buyer. A lot of time as all of their questions would already answered regarding the business in the form of a Business summary. Perhaps you could also consider hiring a Professional Broker or getting a online store. A professional broker could write the Business Summary for you and recommended that you hire a Professional Broker for this because they will be able to see your business from an objective point of view and will be better able to present it without any bias. And since experienced professionals, they can offer you good solid advice that maybe you wouldn’t have known on your own.
Market Your Business For Sale As Much As You Can
Hiring a broker to do the job for you isn’t going to cut it. The most he can do is put up your business for sale on their website and the other websites they are affiliated with and wait for someone to reach out to them. But that’s not enough. If you really want to get your name out there and seek out potential buyers, then you’re going to have to put a lot more effort into marketing your business for sale. And by that we mean you have to go ALL IN. You might have financial concerns about the marketing costs but you need to remember that the more you market your business and put it out there, the higher the chances that your business is going to end up selling really fast. There are several ways you can go about it. You can list your business for sale on several popular business-for-sale websites by yourself. It will give your business the exposure that it needs and could lead you to the next potential buyer. You can also advertise your business in magazines and trade publications that are related to your brand’s industry. You can also approach the buyer’s directly through email, fax or phone. However, do this only once or twice. If the buyer is interested in your business, they will contact you themselves, so there’s no need to constantly be contacting them. Even any time you can Sell Your Business You don’t want to come off as desperate. Another tip we have for you is to have a well thought out plan and strategy in place and market your business in such a way so that the buyer is convinced. Your business has a rock solid foundation and will continue to survive even when you leave.
Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with your Buyer
While you’re in the process of choosing the best potential buyer for you, It is important to sign an NDA with the buyer before taking things one step further. It is very important to sign an NDA because it will filter out all of the potential buyers who are not interested in your brand and will keep around those who are actually taking this entire process seriously. Keep your NDA simple and specific. You don’t want to make the potential buyer sign heaps and heaps of documents and sign lengthy forms before they even get to know about your business. It might put them off and your aim is to convince them to buy the business, not run away from it. Save yourself and the buyer time and only focus on the questions that really matter. Make sure you ask the buyer about the amount of liquid cash they currently have and what’s the overall net worth of their business. These are the crucial components. If the buyer doesn’t have that much experience in the Industry, ask him that as well.
Start Preparing For The Shift
Once you’ve screened all the potential buyers, it’s time to start deciding who you’re going to close the deal with. And once you have decided that after careful evaluation to sell your business, you can start contacting them to close the deal. However there are prerequisites that the buyer needs to fall under as well. You will need to ensure that they provide details of their financial viability. You should ask them to submit proof of funds so you have the assurance that your business is in safe hands. Once that’s sorted, you can keep other documents ready to prove the value of your company to the prospective buyer.
This includes keeping the financial documents, inventory, the balance sheets, revenue reports, tax returns and the list of clients. The Legal Work should up and ready to go as soon as the buyer gets secured. This should be done before the process of finding the buyer even starts. Otherwise a lot of time would be wasted and you don’t want to spend too much time on this entire process. The deal should be closed as soon as you have secured the buyer. Keep your Letter of Intent, Business Sale Agreement and your Non Disclosure Agreement at the ready.
Analyse Your Customers
Your customers are an important part of this journey. Any potential buyer would want to know the relationship you have with your customers. They would want to know whether the customers are loyal to you, have been around for a long while. If you can present these findings and show the potential buyer that you are innovative. Some have the ability to retain your customers, then they’ll be more enticed and will likely buy your business. The buyers want the surety that a large part of the customer base will stay with the business even if the previous owner has left. That will give them a huge burst of motivation to buy your business as they know you have retained your customers and customer loyalty comes above everything else.
That being said, you still need to be cautious. You need to be careful when dealing with information regarding your customers. Don’t put the information of your customers out there readily available for anyone to read. Keep it as anonymous as you can because the buyers could potentially use that information and start their own company with those customers. So that is dangerous territory and you don’t want them to steal. Your customers and can not buy your company at the same time. So even when you’re dealing to sell Your Business with the buyers, you need to handle this entire situation very delicately.
Complete the Due Diligence Process
Due Diligence should be an essential part in this entire process. Due diligence is an investigation process to target any kind of risks. This process occurs before acquiring a business or company. The purpose is to have knowledge of the risks involved in acquiring a business prior to it’s purchase. This is also important because at some point, the buyer will have the power over your business. If any mishaps were to occur, the buyer could easily use that against you. Therefore before selling the business, make sure you have a due diligence checklist at the ready. You can get a Professional Broker to review it for you as well. This will help your business prepare for due diligence during the time that negotiations and offers are taking place.
Sealing the Deal
Keep all of the necessary paperwork which includes company documents as well as all of the legal formalities. Make sure all of these are good and ready to go before you have even secured a buyer. These documents should be ready to sent out the second someone has agreed to buy your business. This will ensure that not a lot of time wasted. Preparation is key before anything else. Everything should go smoothly during the acquisition and you be sure. Your business is in safe hands and will continue to thrive even after you’ve left.
CONCLUSION IF YOU SELL YOUR BUSINESS
So here are the steps that you need to take if you want your business to sell out fast. Hopefully this gave you an idea of exactly what you need to do. Selling a business takes a lot of prior strategic planning and should not taken lightly. Once you properly apply all of these steps, it won’t take long before a buyer reaches out to you.