The Complete Guide to Selling a Business: Marketing Materials

Selling a business is a long and complex process. You may be ready to sell this year or just curious into what it will take to sell – this series will help. The business sale process can be broken down into core stages – from who you need to hire, to what questions you should be prepared to answer, to how to hand off your company once you’ve signed on the dotted line

Step 7: Marketing Materials Presentation

Businesses spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year developing marketing collateral and programs to promote their products and services. But when they decide to sell their most important asset – the company itself –  they completely skimp on building professional and comprehensive marketing materials. This can be the most penny-wise but pound-foolish thinking you can make as a business owner.

The benefits of having a professionally prepared Confidential Business Profile (CBP) outweigh the costs associated with having them prepared. Just as you would not put together professional marketing materials for your business without the help of a marketing professional, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can prepare a high-quality CBP for your company without some sort of help. Sunbelt Business Brokers employs marketing professionals to produce high-quality CBPs and 1-page marketing packages to provide to interested and qualified buyers.

Having a set of professionally produced marketing materials will have a substantial impact on the success of the M&A process in three areas:

  1. The speed of the process
  2. The efficiency of the process
  3. Overall buyer perception

Speed

The more questions you answer in your marketing materials, the fewer questions you must answer piecemeal to get the buyers familiar with your business, its dynamics, position, etc. During a sales process, you goal is to get potential acquirers to make a decision quickly and providing the information they need helps speed up the process. The longer your business is on the market, the easier it is to lose momentum.

Efficiency

The more information you provide to buyers, the more quickly they can “Self-select” to determine their true level of interest in the opportunity. No business owner wants to waste time educating a potential buyer on their business only for the buyer to indicate they weren’t interested. Use the marketing material to help you decide which buyers to spend time with; ignore the tire kickers.

Overall buyer perception

We are heavily influenced by the appearance of things. If you go to a trade show and there are lots of service providers there, the booth with outstanding marketing brochures and demo stations will always outperform the booth with the better product that is poorly marketed.

The Pitch Book

Investment-related marketing materials are referred to by Sunbelt Business Brokers as “Confidential Business Profiles.”

Once a buyer signs a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Sunbelt, they are given access to a CBP. The CBP’s purpose is to help a buyer understand the strategic investment opportunity presented by your business.

Sunbelt’s CBP’s tend to have the following information:

  • Company summary and history
  • Management or owner structure
  • Operations of the business
  • Overview of products offered by business
  • Demographics of the company’s market area
  • Growth opportunities
  • Industry overview, future opportunities and trends
  • Financial overview
  • Broker profile

Not every CBP will have all these components, but this is a basic outline of what to expect. By providing this information up front, any discussions with a buyer are streamlined and your deal will progress more efficiently.

Why have a CBP?

Once a buyer has reviewed your CBP, they can quickly determine if they want to move to the next stage in the deal process, typically a conference call or meeting with you and the broker. The materials will reduce the number of meetings you will have, but they won’t eliminate them entirely.

First, since many buyers will pass on your company after reviewing the CBP, you and your advisor will be able to focus on meetings with interested buyers. Second, a meeting with a buyer after they have reviewed your CBP is typically more an in-depth conversation covering topics like your personal goals, valuation and desired deal structure – not basic questions about your company.

But the CBP will only take your company so far in the deal process. In addition, buyers will want to meet with you in person or by phone, visit your company, meet your team, etc., to get a picture of your business. But a CBP can and should set the tone for all discussions and set expectations in a transaction. Sharing a CBP with qualified buyers is the most productive and efficient way to determine a buyer’s level of interest.

Some information in this blog post came from Axial Forum 

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