How to Sell Your Business Quickly and for The Best Price

When it is time to sell your business, you’ll want to sell it for the highest price and get through the process quickly. Sunbelt Brokers will help you to reach your goals for the transition of your business.

Whether you sell your business with or without a business broker, implementing the best listing methods will allow you to sell your business at your pace for the best price.

Why Use a Business Broker?
The predominant role a business broker plays in the sales process is an expert facilitator. Oftentimes, the owner or seller is inundated with the daily operations of the business and is unable to clearly see what is in the best interest of the business. Pouring over past financial statements, qualifying potential buyers, developing attractive marketing packages, financials, data, and other required tasks can be overwhelming for any owner and it doesn’t have to be.

Business brokers can help by allowing the business owner or seller to remove themselves emotionally from the transaction. By serving as the facilitator, a business broker can provide guidance and support to ensure that the seller receives the maximum value for their business they dedicated so much of their time towards.

Benefits of Using a Business Broker
Along with serving as the expert facilitator, a business broker benefits the sale of your business in the following ways:

• Preparing business evaluations: compiling and researching financial data (e.g., profit history, current cash flow).
• Packaging and marketing the business: preparing business profile, listing business with recognized business sale services, putting business in front of the “right” or approved buyers.
• Buyer qualifications: financially pre-qualifying and screening potential buyers to eliminate “lookers”.
• Confidentiality of sale: managing the confidentiality of the sale to keep from employees, vendors, and other interested parties to continue business as usual.
• Legal document preparation and review: provide documents and other correspondences already reviewed by legal and financial advisors to eliminate unnecessary professional costs and to expedite the sale.
• Negotiations: facilitate ongoing negotiations from a third-party perspective to avoid emotional decisions such as poor buyer financing or flawed lease agreements and quickly access professional resources to resolve potential roadblocks.

Selling Your Business to a Competitor
When selling a business, owners often believe that selling to a competitor will maximize their sales price, but unless you are a very large business, a competitor is usually not the best buyer for your business.

Competitors are extremely interested in how new dynamics and financial growth will increase their own businesses value, and won’t necessarily need your key employees, facilities, or intellectual property. A buyer, or non-competitor, who does not have access to the aforementioned resources will often pay more to acquire them and a Sunbelt Business Broker can help in this process to evaluate the best sales option.

Selling Your Business Online
If a business owner decides to sell their company online, they will lose the confidentiality barrier and the valuation process completely, thus forcing the business owner to come up with their own confidentiality agreements.

Business owners and sellers may not understand the true value of the business without a proper valuation from a professional broker thus, the following can develop:

• Business owner may risk leaving money on the table.
• Unrealistic expectations based on not being adept to providing valuable marketing materials specifically for the sale of the business.
• The business owner dealing with all of the buyer inquiries themselves and they may not be able to properly discern qualified buyers.
• The deal may never reach the closing table. The more buyers interested in a business, the more likely to get the “right” buyer who will pay the highest price and the best terms.

When you sell your business, turn to the experts at Sunbelt Business Brokers and they will guide you through the necessary steps to sell your business quickly and for the best price.

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John Davies

After obtaining his MBA, John began his career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the international accounting and consulting firm, and subsequently joined Progressive Corporation, a large U.S. based insurance company. John was a Division President at Progressive and subsequently became the CEO of a New York based private equity investment company. In 2001, he founded MMI as a platform investment company and MMI has subsequently acquired 15 additional companies.