Pricing Your Business for Sale

The single hardest task in selling your business is setting the right price. No two businesses are the same, and although there are lots of published "rules of thumb" using them is just as likely to over value or under value your company as it is to give you any useful information.

When we help you determine the price, we take everything into account that can possibly be considered, and come up with a fair and accurate price for the current market. Then, we go through our value adding exercises to see what we can build into the business in a short time to further increase the value we can reasonably expect a buyer to pay.

To the extent that the seller is willing to work with us to get these things done in the shortest reasonable amount of time, we can then list the business and expect a quntity of qualified buyers to come forward with offers, from which we can then select the best overall buyer. Here are just some of the things that will help to increase the perceived value of a business:

  • Good records with verifiable income
  • Tax records that match the accounting records
  • History of sales growth
  • History of steady or increasing profit margins
  • Business not dependent on owner's personal skills or relationships
  • Growing or stable industry
  • Long term employees willing to stay
  • Capacity for growth using current assets/equipment
  • Favorable lease with plenty of years left
  • Well recognized business name/reputation
  • Being near the top in share of market
  • Having a well diversifed customer base
  • Well tracked lead generation system in place
  • Ready potential for expansion of sales
  • Owner willing to carry a portion of the sales price as a note

This list covers things that are already part of the business for the most part. In addition, here is what we can do to help build more value into the business quickly and easily prior to the sale.

Adding these two elements together gives you the highest and best chance for getting the most value out of your business at the time of the sale.

If you are interested in having us represent us in your business sale, give us a call and let's see if we can work together to make it happen.