Why You Don’t Hire a Real Estate Agent to Sell a Business

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Why You Don't Hire a Real Estate Agent to Sell a BusinessWhile at first there may seem to be some logic behind the idea of hiring a real estate agent, it’s probably the worst thing you can do if you’re seriously interested in either selling your business or getting the price you want for it. This doesn’t mean real estate agents and Realtors® you know are bad people. They are just not the people to hire to sell a business.

Pros?

But before we get to the bad news, let’s examine some of the reasons you might consider a real estate agent in the first place:

  1. Price! The real estate agent has told you that he/she will take a lower commission than a business broker would. That would be a pro, if the real estate agent could get you the same price that a business broker could. Otherwise, it’s very much penny-wise, pound-foolish.
  2. Real estate. Some sellers might think that because real estate is an asset that is involved in the sale, that they need to hire a real estate agent to handle the business sale. This isn’t necessarily the case.

Cons

Good vs. BadAlas, that’s the end of the good news. Now to the realities of hiring a real estate agent to sell a business.

  • Many business brokers have real estate licenses themselves or have solid relationships with brokers who do, so there is no need to hire a real estate agent just because real estate is involved in the sale of your business.
  • A real estate agent will list your business on MLS, where no one in the history of buying businesses has thought of looking to buy a business.
  • Real estate agents are not familiar with confidential sales.
  • A real estate agent does not have any of the certifications that are standard in business brokering.  Whether it’s a CBI, CM&AP, or M&AMI, they don’t have them. They know the value of certifications because they often have them themselves… but not for selling businesses.
  • A real estate agent knows about selling homes and commercial property, not businesses.
    • Due diligence, financing, purchase and sale agreements are all done differently
    • Pricing of a business is very different from pricing real estate
    • Marketing a business is entirely different from marketing a home
      • Part of this is nurturing a trusted set of potential buyers who have the financial wherewithal to do more than kick tires (if you want more insight into marketing a business, check out our day in the life of a broker)
  • A real estate agent is used to dealing with clients who are not looking to acquire and build a business. They’re used to dealing with someone who is looking to buy a home. They may occasionally deal with those interested in real estate investing, but in those cases either someone is looking to buy and flip (a short term investment) or buy and rent (usually something that will be delegated to a property manager, not wrapped into the daily life of the buyer).

An Important Choice

An Important ChoiceMore often than not, the sale of a business will be the most significant financial event of your life. This isn’t something that you want to price shop on, or delegate to someone just because he/she is a dear friend. This is something that you want a seasoned expert to handle, so they can guide you through the process, get you serious and qualified offers, and shepherd you to closing successfully. Many brokers have real estate licenses, but we don’t sell houses or investment properties. We know our expertise!

We’ve got real estate licenses galore in our offices here at Apex.  If you’ve got real estate in your business sale, we’ve got you covered.

The 8 Components of the Sellability Score

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Eight ComponentsWe’ve reviewed John Warrilow’s book Built to Sell in our book club series and many of our case studies are taken from accounts shared on his Built to Sell podcast. In many of those interviews John goes over the same ground with business owners as they share their stories of building, growing, and exiting. Over time, John has developed a “sellability score” that we think captures some key metrics all potential sellers should take note of.

Financial performance

This metric is about your history of producing revenue and profit as well as how consistently and professionally your books have been prepared. In a certain sense, every business transaction starts here and it’s something we can never say enough about: pay your taxes and keep accurate financial records.

Growth Potential

If someone were to come into your business as a new owner, what rate of growth could he/she expect with regular effort? With nights + weekends effort? This can be gleaned not just from the trends your financials show, but products/services you have not yet implemented for various reasons. Could the business expand geographically? Could new customers be created from unused capacity?

Switzerland Structure

For Switzerland to have been neutral for centuries, it has had to learn to be very self-sufficient. Neutrality may keep you out of conflicts but sometimes it isolates you as well. So too with your business and dependence on a single customer. A general rule is that no more than 15% of your company’s revenue should come from a single customer. The more diversified your revenues are, the more attractive your business is to buyers.

Value Teeter-Totter

Can your business finance its growth from its own cash flow or does it need to rely on outside capital? A buyer will pay more for a company that has less need for outside financing, and will pay less for a company that has more need for it (hence the “teeter-totter”). Two quick ways to make adjustments here would be to reduce your collection times from your customers and increase your payment times to your vendors.  

Recurring Revenue

Do you have recurring revenue? Is it in the term of subscriptions or long-term contracts? What is your churn/cancel rate? The clearer your answers to these questions, the more a buyer can be assured of some “guaranteed” revenue.

Monopoly Control

How well are you differentiated from your competitors? The greater your competitive advantage, the likelier you are playing in a blue ocean, in which you define the rules your competitors play by. The more differentiated a business is, the more valuable it is to an acquirer.

Customer Satisfaction

In a previous article we discussed Fred Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score and how it could help you better understand how happy your customers are. In a certain sense, customer “satisfaction” is simply a baseline. You want them not just to be happy with what you’ve delivered, but happy enough to share your company with others.

Hub and Spoke

What does your management team look like? If you were incapacitated or unable to work for a period of weeks or months, how would your company perform? Employees that can be counted on are a major driver of confidence (and value) for potential buyers.

These factors are not a definitive list of key things a business owner should look at before considering a sale, but they are a very good list. And one that, if seriously attended to, will make a business incalculably better. Even if selling is not on the immediate horizon.  

Unhappy about how any of these components in your business at the moment? Give us a call so we can help you improve and get on the path to a possible exit.

2020, Elections, and Capital Gains Taxes

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PoliticsThe new year is upon us, and it happens to be an election year. While the ups and downs of politics may seem to be, at first glance, unrelated to the buying and selling of businesses, the 2020 election promises two different visions for the country in relation to taxes and wealth. That said, it’s always smart to think ahead when it comes to tax consequences for selling a business, so let’s take a moment to examine a few ideas.

Capital Gains Tax

The capital gains tax is assessed on the increase in value between the cost basis of an asset and its eventual sale price. Long-term and short-term capital gains carry different tax rates and are classified based on whether an asset has been held for more or less than one year. The federal long-term rates are currently 0%, 15%, or 20%, depending on your tax bracket.

Taxes in an Exit

TaxesThose who have not sold a business before are frequently under the impression that almost all of the proceeds from the sale will be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, but that’s not necessarily true. Many business owners are surprised by “depreciation recapture” that is taxed at ordinary income rates. The allocation of the purchase price between hard assets, goodwill, and other asset categories will be part of negotiations between buyer and seller and will have tax implications for both parties. An entity’s legal structure may also impact taxes. What’s good for the seller tax-wise is often bad for the buyer (and vice versa) so these points are often traded during negotiations.  

Time to Sell?

Whatever your political principles or betting tendencies for the 2020 election, it’s important to note that capital gains, like any tax policy, is a frequently targeted item. In 2003, President George W. Bush reduced capital gains to 15%. In 2013, President Obama raised capital gains to 20% for those making more than $400k annually. It was expected that President Trump might push for some capital gains cuts, but no progress on that so far.

We certainly did see a surge in sellers in 2012 as they anticipated an upcoming increase in the capital gains rate. And if you think there might be a change in presidency, many of the opposing candidates are on the record supporting an increase in taxes across the board, including in capital gains. While the election is at the end of 2020, and any legislation will need time and a willing congress to pass, it’s important to think about the tax impact of a sale sooner rather than later, in advance rather than in a panic. The exit is the most important financial decision you will make in building your business, so it’s important to work closely with an accounting professional to consider and plan your tax strategy and how you will structure that into the transaction.

Not sure what your tax consequences will be from a sale?  We can put you in touch with specialists who can help you decipher that.  Give us a call today.

“Call Me When You Have a Buyer”

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Call Me When You Have a BuyerAs part of our job as business brokers, we cultivate long-term relationships with buyers and sellers. We do so with the latter because sometimes we plant the seed of possibly selling a company years and years before it may happen. With the former, it’s a question of earning trust by consistently bringing solid opportunities.

Sometimes on these calls or emails, we will get into a conversation with a seller who has tried to be his own broker in the past. And as such has (predictably) had bad experiences with looky-loos and tire kickers. “I’m only interested in serious buyers,” the seller will grimly state. “Call or email me when you get one.”

If only it were that easy.

The reality is that buyers are reasonably savvy about the acquisition process. They are going to want a fair amount of information about the business upfront. Furthermore, we as brokers want to exclude tire kickers from bothering our clients, so we ensure that they have the financial ability to close a transaction of the size they pursue. We aren’t interested in finding one serious buyer, but rather half a dozen or more.

Confidential Business Review

The process begins with a Confidential Business Review (CBR) that details business operations and historical financial information. This briefing allows buyers to quickly see whether a particular business suits their needs and if their transaction goals are in line with what the seller is offering.  

Once a very simplified form of the CBR (brief description of the business, approximate revenues, net owner benefit, and asking price) has circulated among our internal buyers and the confidential marketing channels we use, we will get a number of interested parties who submit Non-Disclosure Agreements along with proof of financial fitness. For the sake of argument, let’s say that a given broker may reach out to 500 and get 50-75 interested parties for this first step.

NDA and Balance Sheets

Once we get their NDAs and balance sheets, we will then get them the CBR. From that step perhaps a dozen of the original 50-75 decide they want to go further and have a phone or in-person conversation with the seller. Of the dozen, perhaps half decide to visit the business in person and of those, perhaps three make bonafide offers.  

See the difference? At each step of the way, we have continued to qualify the buyer both in terms of financial ability and knowledge of the business. And at the end, instead of “one buyer” we may have several, and these people have come to this step with serious knowledge about the business opportunity.  

Save yourself from the tire kickers and leave the work (only a fraction of which is detailed above) to us. That leaves you free to run your business and keep it growing and profitable until you’re ready to pass it on to the buyer whose offer you ultimately accept — after a screening process that ensures it’ll be a serious offer.

Common Characteristics of Businesses That Sell Quickly

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Moving QuicklyWhile every business sells for different reasons, the businesses that sell quickly here in our offices — and by quickly we mean within 24-72 hours — all have a few traits in common. These traits happen to work well in the case of selling a business, but they are always present at the heart of the most successful businesses. By keeping an eye on these fundamentals, business owners are actually ensuring that should they want to sell, they will get several full price offers, and in a very short time horizon as well.

Clean Books and Taxes

You’ve heard us discuss this in past articles: have clean books, or face the possibility of not being able to sell. But successful business owners aren’t interested in having clean books just in case they want to sell. They know that current financial statements are essentially an up-to-the-minute health snapshot of their business. By regularly perusing clean and current financials they are able to see trends and make adjustments or trim spending in underperforming divisions. Clean books and current tax payments are simply by-products of a successful business. They also happen to be essential to a business sale and are an immediate shine on any new business listing.

Stable and Up-trending Revenues

Successful business owners look at financial statements to see if they are growing revenues and profits month-to-month and year-to-year. This helps them properly forecast and hire. Buyers love to see the same. An off year with context will be explainable: we had a lot of businesses that sold in past years that either had slow growth, flat-lined, or even contracted a bit in the 2008-2010 time period because of the financial crisis. But because buyers saw stability in the numbers before and after that time period of crisis they were confident that they too could weather a storm if it came.

Consistent Cash Flow

Savvy business owners aim for consistent cash flows. This doesn’t mean that there’s no seasonality in the business, but that the seasonality is clearly pinpointed and planned for. This makes financing easier, should it be required. Again, as with clean books and taxes, consistent cash flows are the by-product of a successful business, not something that someone has to quickly put together in order to sell one.

Delegations

If business owners haven’t read books like Built to Sell or The E-Myth they have usually built their businesses around the concepts discussed in those books just by doing their homework.

  • Have systems in place so that the business can run without you
  • Have clear job descriptions for all the key members of your team and have solid people in those positions
  • Make sure it’s clear whether a potential buyer is buying a job or buying a business.

Reasonable Price

A business is only worth what someone will pay for it, but more importantly, a business is, outside of a strategic acquisition, only worth around what a professional valuation rates it. An owner who builds a company to sell may have a number in his/her mind, and that’s certainly a point around which to build a conversation, but unless the business provides evidence to get to that number, such a number is a fantasy.  

Remember that only 20% of businesses are ever successfully sold. Here at Apex, we have a much better track record, and part of that success is getting to the right price for both buyers and sellers. Successful business owners have been setting prices for their clients for years and letting the market, not their ego, tell them what products/services are worth. The sale of the business is only the last decision in a number of previous sensible pricing decisions.

If you only have three of these characteristics in your business, we should have a conversation about what you’d like to do in the future. If you have all five, you should be having a conversation with us about why and when you should sell.  

Seller’s Remorse

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Seller's RemorseGiven the thousands of transactions we’ve been part of over the years, we’ve seen it all. One thing that we see more often than some might expect is seller’s remorse. This is totally normal, and can occur in a pronounced way even before the sale closes… sometimes derailing a transaction.

In this article we’ll examine some things to consider to mitigate seller’s remorse at any phase in a transaction.

Why does it occur?

A large part of the owner’s identity, perhaps even the largest part, is the role he/she plays at work. It governs social interactions (who you are having lunches with, who you spend the majority of your day with) as well as roles in the community (an owner may, because of his/her business, sit on various boards or play a role in the Chamber of Commerce).

If an owner doesn’t have other identities (perhaps a passionate hobby or a side business), seller remorse in the guise of “What do I do now?” can hit hard.

Before the sale closes.

Part of getting to know our clients here at Apex is asking in the very first meetings what the seller would do after a sale. We are interested in knowing motivations and know that strong motivations lead to cooperative and engaged sellers.

If we start to get calls and emails from the seller asking to slow things down or asking if this is truly the right thing to do, this is sometimes due to seller remorse. One of the first things we’ll go back to is that first conversation to remind him/her of what’s next. Then we’ll remind the seller of why.

Often there’s a health situation, or burnout, or simply the desire to do something else. By discussing the why (the past and present) and what’s next (the future) we can often make sure that sellers stay on track and engaged, which is key to a successful transaction.

After the sale closes.

A broker’s job is never done. Not only do clients come back to list new businesses with us, sometimes they go on to turn buyer after having sold.

We also get phone calls from clients suffering from seller’s remorse. We listen to the regret: “Why did I sell?” or “What should I do now?”  These sellers stayed focused throughout the transaction and the remorse hit later.

Just as we do with sellers struggling before the transaction closes, we ask some key questions:

  • Have you given yourself and your family some time? People can often be restless, dying to get “back into action,” but it’s important to take some time, not just to celebrate, but to also let your mind relax. Crops grow better when they are rotated in fields, so too even the best business owners need time to enjoy a liquidity event.
  • Have you considered going back into the same industry? Sometimes people rediscover a passion once the burden is no longer on their shoulders, or they see a new opportunity in a particular segment of the industry. If non-competes aren’t a barrier, why not leverage what you know and continue to succeed in an identity you have no wish to discard? Sometimes sellers get hubristic, imagining themselves to have the Midas touch. Building and selling a company in one industry does not endow you with the ability to do it in a completely different one. Just because it was your “old” identity doesn’t mean it can’t be part of the new one.

We are always looking for a few good brokers to join our team, and a business owner with a fresh sale under his/her belt is a great candidate.
If that describes you… give us a call today.

The Value of Goodwill

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The Value of GoodwillGoodwill is part of many transactions we do here at Apex. The best businesses have it in spades, and they are able to incorporate it into their valuation and their final deals. But like company culture, it is created in many different, not easily traceable ways. In this article, we will talk about some of the more obvious paths to goodwill in your business.

Reputation and Name Recognition

Many new business owners dream of the day when someone they don’t know will say, “I’ve heard of your business” when they speak to a stranger. It means that the business is a reference point in the community. It’s a barrier that competitors have to deal with and one that you control.

Good location

Location isn’t the most important thing for every business, but no one ever says, “I wish I had a worse location.” Visibility matters.

Custom-built factory/tooling/designs

Another barrier for your competitors to surmount is designs and tooling that cannot be easily or quickly duplicated. It gives you an edge with clients who don’t just want a generic looking product and it can allow you to command a premium price.

Loyal Customers and a Mailing List

When we say mailing list, we mean both postal and email. They have come back and become valuable as our society has shifted in the way it communicates for business and personal motives. The lists are not just valuable for the people you reach, but a mailing list can tell you where your customers live (and where you don’t have any customers) so that you can think more critically about your marketing and product offering.

As for loyal customers, there’s really nothing like them. They often are just as attached to the brand as to the owner, and as long as the new owner continues the best practices the old owner put in place, they will continue to spread your name around town.

Contracts

Recurring revenue is a good thing… having a contract for it is even better. Contracts are trust personified. It shows you are someone that people feel comfortable doing business with.

Great Staff and a Supplier List

Customers will often be loyal because you have a great team who deliver a good experience. Great staff who are doing work they enjoy will often very happily stay on and work for a new owner. A good supplier list is helpful as well. Often, business owners learn the hard way and have to remove bad vendors over time. A new owner has the comfort of knowing the list is vetted.

Trademarks, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets

This could be a great web address, a smart slogan, or the special herbs and spices that make what you have something that people have to have. Very often they are just best practices that an owner insisted on until it occurs to him/her just what a differentiator they were in the marketplace. In an ever more service-based economy, intellectual property (and legally securing it) really matters.

Curious about the goodwill in your business and how it can relate to a valuation of what your company is worth?  Give us a call today so we can chat about it!

Why Do Sales Fail?

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sales failIn a previous article, we discussed how long it takes to sell a business and how and why an accepted offer is only a phase in a multi-phase process.  

Many things can intervene throughout the process to prevent a sale from closing.  

In this article, we want to explore just a few of the various ways a sale can fail and what you can do to avoid them.

Seller Side

  • Failure to disclose.  Whether it’s to us as brokers or to the buyer, sometimes a seller simply fails to disclose something that has a major impact on the deal.  This can never entirely be prevented, but buyers have to follow our lead as brokers and never make assumptions: ask the questions necessary in your due diligence and keep lines of communication flowing and open.
  • Failure of motivation.  The seller may not have had a good reason to sell or was pushed into it against his/her will, and so during the due diligence process may simply slow down or quit entirely because of no requisite motivation to close the deal. Sometimes, reminding the seller why we’re here is critical to keeping the deal going.
  • Failure to investigate.  The seller may have failed to consult his legal and accounting team about tax consequences and wants to change deal points too late into the process.  This can sometimes initiate a breakup of the sale entirely due to suspicion of bad faith on the buyer’s part. Make sure that whatever side of the deal you are on, you are completely briefed on the financial and tax consequences of the transaction early in the process.

Buyer Side

  • Failure to leap.  Especially for first-time business buyers or owners, there is a critical stage that is a mirror for the seller’s decision to sell: the decision to sign on the dotted line and become a business owner.  We’ve seen it before.
  • Inability to secure financing.  While people may be creditworthy sometimes circumstances arise that prevent them from getting financing which is part of their overall offer, and without that bridge, the deal falls through.  As a seller you need to properly scrutinize the various buyers who are courting you and examine their fiscal health as part of your decision matrix.
  • Undue influence of others.  Again, for first-time business buyers or owners (or even for veterans) there will be the naysayers in their lives who tell them not to do a deal, and remarkably, sometimes they listen, contrary to everyone else’s advice.

Both/Neither Sides

  • Foreseen or Unforeseen Legislation or Natural or Unnatural Events.  We sometimes think we “know” that legislation will pass, and it doesn’t, and other times, it takes us out of the blue.Same thing with natural events like a hurricane or unnatural events like 9/11. All of these things can adversely affect any number of businesses, either physical locations themselves, parts of a supply chain, or a customer base.They can sink a business deal with no warning, and it’s something to keep in mind, not because you can prepare for it, but to be resigned to the fact that there’s nothing to be done but to accept it as one of life’s possibilities.
  • Landlords/Accountants/Attorneys.  Yes, we’ve seen landlords, accountants, and attorneys sink perfectly good deals.  This isn’t to say we don’t like them. In fact, there are all three of those types on our team here at Apex!But what it means is to make sure from the beginning that all those people – on both sides of the deal – are aligned with the goals and vision of the outgoing seller and the incoming buyer.It’s a shame to let those peripheral to a deal sink it, but it can only happen because the buyer and seller don’t take charge, keep an even keel, and work hard to resolve challenges.

The best way to keep a sale from failing is to have a broker in your corner helping you navigate the waters of what will be one of the most important transactions of your life.  Give us a call today to see if we can help you.

The Profit Needs of Your Buyer

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profitPart of the process on the seller side of a transaction is deciding to sell and getting a valuation.

As buyers scrutinize the businesses they examine, there are three questions we encourage them to consider. All of them are centered, understandably, around profit.

Profit to Pay Salaries

Whatever goodwill you’ve generated over the years with your employees will not transfer to the new owner. You can’t sell it, not just because it’s not legally or practically possible, but because the odometer will reset with the new owner.

He/she will have to earn goodwill and trust, and if your employees (or yourself!) have been taking below-market salaries, the buyer will need to put together a financial plan that ensures that staffing issues will not be a problem.  

Happy employees are one of the cornerstones of any business. While money isn’t everything to your staff, passion for the work always works best side-by-side with a feeling of being properly valued.

On the other hand, let’s say a business is valued at $500,000 and the owner has been paying himself/herself over market value to run it, let’s say $200,000. 

If it could be reasonably run by a manager for half that (or if the buyer is willing to work for that amount), there’s an extra $100,000 of free cash flow which can be used for investment in the business or debt service.

Profit to Pay for Financing

Continuing on with our $500,000 example, let’s say that the bank requires the buyer to put 25% of his/her own money in the deal, which would be $125,000. Knowing that interest rates always vary, for purposes of this example, we will use a rate of 5% on the $375,000 that would need to be borrowed.

That would give us, on a ten-year term, a monthly payment of $3977.46, which we can round up to $4000 to keep the numbers simple.) In the example above, this number could be easily handled by the extra cash flow from the lower salary the owner is willing to take or delegate.

Conversely, if there’s no cash flow to support the debt service, there’s a problem – not just for the potential owner, but for the would-be financiers.  

Profit to Return an Investment

Ultimately buying a business is an investment, and a reasonable rate of return should be expected above and beyond salaries and debt service. Let’s go back to the $125,000 that our potential buyer invested in the business.

He or she could have put that money into stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, real estate, precious metals, etc.  To keep our numbers simple and conservative, let’s offer the same rate of return, 5%, on that money.

That payout would be equal to what the debt service is, and in our example, that need would be met, with even a bit of a cherry on top.

Final Thoughts

Now, let’s be clear, not every buyer comes in with such an agenda. Some are happy, after years of corporate life, to just “buy a job” where they don’t have to answer to anyone anymore. And, that works for many people.

But running a business is transformational. If all you bring is a job mentality, you’ll never be successful. If you scrutinize the numbers and stay grounded first and dream later, you’re on the right road to business ownership: calculated risk, colored with a bit of hope, and powered by a lot of elbow grease.  

When you meet our sellers, they might tell you that at the beginning of their journey they would’ve been happy for a 5% return on their years of hard work. But they often smile when they realize it’s many times more, and it’s because they brought the right attitude and they knew their numbers.  

Regardless of your vision for business ownership, you should know yours too.

How Long Does It Really Take to Sell a Business?

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how long does it takeOne of the very first questions we get from prospective sellers is “How long will this take?”  

The truth is that we’ve seen anything from 2 days to 2 months to 2 years…but the average will be 6 to 9 months.  

And that doesn’t include the “pre-listing” process – your actual decision to sell, which will include discussions with us, a professional valuation, and then prepping the documents and paperwork that buyers will want to see immediately.  

Once you’ve completed all of that, we’re looking at 6-9 months.

Why does it take so long?

Well, it’s not actually “so long.”

Perhaps in the internet age of “everything now” six months may seem like a long time, but it’s just simply a reality given the amount of work that needs to happen.

Firstly, your business needs to be marketed. We need to get the word out to interested buyers about what you’ve got to offer. Some buyers may be romanced by your industry, while others may be interested in your cash flow. Some want both, plus significant growth potential.

Secondly, the price really matters. This is why we work hard with our clients to make sure the business is appropriately, and attractively, priced. A valuation helps get us to the right price, but so does disabusing sellers of fantasies about “what my business is worth” that have no basis in financial reality.  

A business is worth what the market is willing to pay. A solid valuation goes a long way to identifying that number with some precision.

Closing

If taking your business to market is the “dating” phase of selling your business, closing is the “marriage.”  

You could spend 1-3 months taking meetings with serious buyers. You need to realize that selling a business is a new part-time job you’ve added to your life.  

You’ll need to be chasing down requests from your broker and potential buyers, and you’ll need to do so in a timely manner. You must do all of this while being patient and realizing that even though you may be ready to exit the business, it’s going to need you for just a bit longer to get through the transition.

Once you and a buyer have agreed on an offer to purchase, due diligence (or as someone else once put it, “trust, but verify”) begins.  

The buyer will need to examine your records and verify that the business is as advertised. He/she will also need to arrange for financing, a lease, and other variables like software licenses or other licenses required by the state or municipality.

Stay focused

We can share many stories of business transactions with you, but the “easiest” ones involve patient and focused buyers and sellers. These people know that a business transaction isn’t to be rushed through, but done thoughtfully and with professionalism.

If you prepare for a timeframe of 6-9 months, you can be pleasantly surprised if it happens faster (as it sometimes does) or more understanding if it takes a little longer (which it sometimes will).

Remember that the journey of selling a business starts with a conversation with one of the brokers on our team.  Let us know if we can help you with this next stage in your business journey.