Using Your Strengths When Selling Your Business

The term “independent business owner” doesn’t just refer to your life as an entrepreneur. It also denotes the mindset that life as a business owner demands. You’re confident, independent, and maybe a bit stubborn. These vital traits have helped your business thrive, but can work against you when you’re ready to sell.

Why is that? After all, you’re already an expert in sales. You market products or services every day. You make deals, scope out competitors, manage suppliers, and interact with customers. So you might think the tried-and-true tactics you use to run your business every day will work when you sell that business. But selling your business is a completely different undertaking.

Smart business sellers understand the challenges of selling a business, and rely on an intermediary. The professional guidance an intermediary offers prevents sellers from getting in their own way. An intermediary builds upon your strengths to help you get the most out of the sale.

Want to know more about a successful sale? Check out these selling points, each of which can help you chart the course to selling your business.

Competitively Price Your Business

Every business owner wants the best price for the business they’ve built. Realistic pricing is key to successfully selling your business. You must understand the marketplace and the competitive landscape.

Pricing a business is more complicated than pricing services or goods. Industry-tested valuation techniques that incorporate intangibles can ensure your business is neither under- nor over-priced. A range of factors, chief among them the buyer’s interest, will go into setting the price for your business.

Know Your Buyer

You might be an expert on customers and vendors. Knowing potential buyers is a bit more challenging. Some buyers are perennial window shoppers, talking like they’re interested but never taking the plunge. Then there are buyers who would be willing to invest if only they knew how. Locating buyers, then narrowing your options down to those who meet your qualifications, is a vital step. It’s also a key role for M&A Advisors. These experts use professional associations, data mining, and international and national networks to ensure a business sells for top price.

An M&A Advisor can also determine the right buyer for your business, by focusing on buyers who are both genuinely interested and fully financially qualified.

M&A Advisors also assess the need for seller financing, and find ways for the buyer to successfully run the business, thereby taking the fear factor out of purchasing a business. This indispensable work by the advisor can help you find the best buyers, while freeing you to concentrate on your own role in the sales process.

Get Ready to Sell Your Business

Just like a home for sale, your business should appear well-tended and clean. A number of steps can prepare you to market your business. Ultimately, your business will sell based on the numbers. An M&A Advisor will help you create a clear financial picture in a timely fashion, then work with you to prepare statements to present your business to potential buyers. Buyers are often thrilled to buy potential, but they don’t want to pay extra for it. To capitalize on this tendency, you must be honest about all components of the business. Otherwise, when the facts come out, the sale may be destroyed.

Paperwork is a part of life as a business owner, but few owners are familiar with the specialized contracts and forms the sales process demands. As an expert in business transactions, the M&A Advisor protects against problems, delays, and premature or inappropriate disclosures that can harm the sale.

Keep Running Your Business

Staying on top of the daily demands of running your business is vital to selling it. With a business intermediary prepared to focus on marketing your business, sellers are freed to focus on daily operations.

Protecting Confidentiality

Release details of a sale too early and you could jeopardize the daily operations of your business. You’ll also clue in your competition. An M&A Advisor uses generic descriptions, confidentiality agreements, and careful vetting to ensure details don’t leak before you’re ready.

To optimize the sale of your business, you must ensure that your strengths work for you, not against you. These key selling points, when combined with the expertise of an experienced M&A Advisor, can help you achieve a speedy and successful sale.