Preparing Your Company For Sale
Whether you are considering selling your business now or sometime in the future, the most important thing you can do to ensure a successful and profitable sale is to take steps to properly prepare your business for the sale. There are hundreds of reasons why a company is difficult to sell or offers are not as expected, most of which can be attributed to a lack of planning.
Selling a business is like selling a house. The better and more salable you make it look, the faster it sells and at a more favorable price. Whatever your reason for selling, I strongly suggest that you start preparing your business two years before your desired time of sale. All too often, owners come to us wanting to sell their business “yesterday,” yet they have done nothing to position themselves or the company for a sale. Recently, a company failed to sell because the lease had less than one year remaining and the building’s owner would not renew the lease. The buyer would have incurred several hundred thousand dollars to move the operation, which made the sale unattractive. There was also an owner who made every decision himself and did not want to remain with the company one day after the sale. A new owner would be lost for months without assistance from a key employee or secondary manager.
Pre-sale planning
The goal of pre-sale positioning is to deal with any negative aspects that might hinder or prevent a sale, (more…)
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