Most business owners think their business is worth more than it actually is. Only 14% of business sold achieve more than their basic asset value. Key mistakes regularly made when selling a business include:
- Misunderstanding what is actually valuable to a potential purchaser
- Not presenting the company in the best light
- Only getting one (or no) potential purchaser interested
- Underestimating the time it will take to sell
- Being too reliant on the owner for generating and retaining clients
- Not having an effective management team who can operate the business in the absence of the owner
Fundamentally a business is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
This is why good preparation and planning can dramatically improve the value the owners receive when they sell their business.
Key factors in successfully selling a business include:
- Preparing and presenting the financials of the business in the best possible light
- Making sure agreements tie in key assets (clients, resources etc) to increase value
- Building the business to have a pipeline of work, contracts or forecast that show the business is growing
- Getting multiple potential buyers interested, which will drive up the price
Our expert team has many years of successfully selling small and medium sized businesses and getting much higher returns for the owners that would normally be achieved, based on the above.
