Selling your business can be both a hugely exciting and stressful time in one’s life. With the prospect of new and exciting ventures on the horizon, selling your business quickly is a priority, however there are many important things to consider to ensure a profitable sale.
Here are the top things you should think about before selling your business:
How Can You Best Show Its Potential?
Illustrating how much potential your business has is essential when selling up. Can you demonstrate its sustainability and viability? No one is going to even consider taking over a business that can’t demonstrate its worth and potential. Be prepared to answer any difficult questions regarding its financial peaks and troughs. Make sure you have the hard evidence to back up your claims of its potential and can confidently predict a future for your business as this is one of the main things a potential buyer is looking for.
Buyers are Interested in the Present
Whist it is all well and good being able to present your figures and accounts from the last 10 years, all a buyer is really interested in is how easy it will be to build a future for the business. A buyer doesn’t want to have to fix or recover your business, just simply be able to see a clear and a profitable path ahead. Show them the relevant facts and figures that matter from the previous year or couple of years, pointing out key periods of growth and expansion that could be developed on.
The Legalities
The legal aspects of selling on your business are when it gets quite stressful. Using a company like Withers Worldwide, who have experience of handling lots of different types of business sales over the years can make this much easier. Things like whether you should draw up a non-disclosure agreement with a potential buyer or what you’re going to do about the tax provisions all need to be thought about and planned out in advance.
The Time Involved
No matter how quickly you want to sell your business, you have to be aware of the lengthy timeline of selling a business and understand that it won’t happen instantly. There are so many crucial things to consider when selling your business that it pays to plan far in advance so that when the time does come to sell you can find a buyer and get the process completed easily and without any hiccups.