Is Your Company Saleable?
Over 90% of small businesses that are “For Sale” become a “No Sale“ because the owners did not build their entities to be sold. These businesses were established to make a profit, and planning to sell in the future was not an initial consideration.
When preparing to sell a business, owners need to gather a wide variety of information for potential buyers to review. Financial, legal, marketing, and operational records all need to be prepared for examination. Buyers will not only come to your place of business to see your operation, but they will ask to see every scrap of information you’ve ever (or never) collected about your business: cash flows, customer base, marketing spends, equipment purchases, management team background, litigation, tax returns, and a whole lot more. They want to be able to follow a “blueprint”. Even after all of these documents are provided be prepared for the potential buyer to make additional requests.
Besides keeping meticulous records here are some other things that you must consider:
- Standardized service – the everyday operation must be easily taught to new prospects and their employees so the you can step away from the operation.
- Stop doing everything yourself – hire personnel to do the simple everyday mundane operations of the business.
- Sales staff – the owner can not be the sales team. Others must do the selling to make it attractive to buyers, or the business cannot be sold.
- Satisfactory compensation for staff members – use bonuses to reward longevity and loyalty and not stock options which will present legal issues to the buyers.
Go Mini’s, a leader in the the portable moving and storage industry, has a few of its independently owned and operated dealership territories for sale. If you are considering a new business venture in the moving and storage industry, go to www.gominis.com under Become a Dealer, Available Territories to find more information.
Tags: available territories, Become a Dealer, Business for sale, dealership, dealership territories, Go Mini's, Moving and Storage
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Latest news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
