How We Work
The process of selling your business is rather like courtship – the buyer has to trust what you have said about your business is reliable and you have to trust them to make a success of the acquisition so they have the resource to pay the earn out. It is important that this trust building process is taken at the right speed.
Typical stages
Identifying the buyer
The key to any business sale is finding a buyer who is going to add value. For example you might sell to a complimentary organisation that can upsell to your client base, to a larger competitor who can absorb your client base without any increase in overheads or a venture capitalist who can utilise borrowed funds to increase the return on capital. That is where our expertise shows because we have the skill to identify the best buyer for you.
Drafting the sales material
Selling a business is like selling anything, you have to build trust. Part of this trust building process is producing high quality information that answers your prospective buyers’ questions at the right time in a professional manner.
Finding the prospective buyers
Having identified the type of buyer, the next challenge is to identify the best way to alert the interest of, typically, 200 potential buyers. This might be using advertising, by social media (LinkedIn) or from our network of prospective buyers.
Attend seller meeting and negotiations
Of the 200 or so people we contact, 50 are likely to ask for the full sales pack of which 10-20 will be serious buyers who want to attend a meeting and typically 4-10 will make an offer. We help you chose the best offer for your business, get buyers competing against each other and deal with both the price negotiation and heads of agreement.
Seeing the deal over the line
One of the most dangerous times for any business sale is the due diligence process. The key to success is to make sure there are no nasty surprises – the more you disclose the better. Occasionally, however, the buyer’s advisers can overreact to minutiae at which point our expertise comes to the fore to bring a sense of perspective and overcome such obstacles.