‍The business of selling your business

If you think selling your house is stressful, try selling your business! Graham wades into the murky waters of how to prepare your business for market.  

I've heard it said from several sources that we are about to head into the biggest exchange of inter-generational wealth that the world has ever seen—this sounds exciting. We are about to be hit with a wave of business sales from Baby Boomers who are throwing in the towel on the businesses they’ve invested their lives into. Hopefully there will be buyers. 

What does this mean and what are the opportunities?

Well, firstly, if you are thinking of selling your business in the near future it needs to stand out form the crowd. It needs to be saleable or probably the correct phrase is “it needs to be buyable”. If we relate it to the housing market the same rules apply: identify what sets your business apart from the crowd and display it in a way that is attractive to buyers.

At Velocity, in partnership with IIF, we’ve been running seminars in the business owners’ space for some time and will continue to do so, particularly targeting the art of buying and selling businesses.

Over the next few months I’ll be posting our speakers’ key points.  But lets begin with a few to get the ball rolling:

1. Get your accounts tidy

If you’ve been mixing up personal with business income and expenditure it’s time to tidy this up. Get your accounts to actually reflect what is going on in your business.

2. Get some feedback

Get some helpful professionals to cast an eagle eye over your business and let them point out some things that you, after spending so long in the trenches, have become blind to. A few simple changes could bring about significant differences.

3. Start the sale folder

Start collecting, in one place, all the documents you need for sale: leases, job descriptions, contracts etc.

That's enough to start with. If you need an eagle eye cast over yours or someone else's business, give us a bell for helpful names.

Graham Goodisson is a Registered Financial Adviser with Velocity Financial. No investment decision should be taken based on the information in this blog alone. A disclosure statement is available free of charge upon request.