How to Sell Your Business
A Concise TUTORIAL Explaining How to Sell Your Business
How to SELL your business. Is it time to sell?
Selling your business is a major decision! You have devoted your time, money, and energy into building, running, and operating your business. It may well represent your life’s work. If you have already decided that now is the right time to sell, you want the very best professional guidance you can get.
This is when working in tandem with a professional business broker can make the difference between just getting rid of the business and selling it for the very best price and terms!
Following are some of the most common topics and questions frequently brought up by sellers. If you have any questions that we have not covered, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
For Business Sellers
If you’ve gone this far, then selling your business has aroused enough curiosity that you are taking the first step. You don’t have to make a commitment at this point; you are just getting informed about what is necessary to successfully sell your business.
This section should answer a lot of your questions and help you through the maze of the process itself.
Question 1
The first question almost every seller asks is: “What is my business worth?” Quite frankly, if we were selling our business, that is the first thing we would want to know. However, we’re going to put this very important issue off for a bit and cover some of the things you need to know before you get to that point.
Before you ask that question, you have to be ready to sell for what the market is willing to pay. If money is the only reason you want to sell, then you’re not really ready to sell.
*Insider Tip:
It doesn’t make any difference what you think your business is worth, or what you want for it. It also doesn’t make any difference what your accountant, banker, attorney, or best friend thinks your business is worth. Only the marketplace can decide what the value of your business is.
Question 2
The second question you have to consider is: “Do you really want to sell this business?” If you’re really serious and have a solid reason (or reasons) why you want to sell, it will most likely happen.
You can increase your chances of selling if you can answer yes to the second part of this question: “Do you have reasonable expectations?” A yes answer to these two questions means you are serious about selling.
The First Steps
Okay, let’s assume that you have decided to at least take the first few steps to actually selling your business. Before you even think about placing your business for sale, there are some things you should do first. The first thing you have to do is to gather information about the business.
Here’s a checklist of the items you should get together:
- Three years’ profit and loss statements
- Federal Income Tax returns for the business
- List of fixtures and equipment
- The lease and lease-related documents
- A list of the loans against the business (amounts and payment schedule)
- Copies of any equipment leases
- A copy of the franchise agreement, if applicable
- An approximate amount of the inventory on hand, if applicable
- The names of any outside advisors
How We Help
We offer several business advisory packages that leave you in control to do what you do best and outsource to the professionals what we do best. Our primary focus is on businesses with sales in the $500,000 to $10M range or earnings in the $100,000 to $2M range.
View our SERVICES above to see how we help with Advising, Selling, Buying, or Valuating your Business.