So…you’re ready to sell your business? Great! Maybe you’re looking to retire, or perhaps you’re just looking to get into a new opportunity. Regardless of the reason for wanting to sell your business, one thing remains true: You want to sell your business for a decent profit. In this video, Nathan Goldstein, owner and CEO of Vested Business Brokers discusses a step-by-step plan for preparing to sell your business.
At Vested Business Brokers we helped people buy, grow, and sell profitable, privately owned businesses since 2001 and we’ve closed more than 1000 transaction…so we know what it takes to sell your business.
1) You’re going to give us your financial information. This will be YOUR representation of the financial details of your business.
2) We’re going to place your business listing within our system which will expose your business to more than 100,000 people in our database who are looking to buy a profitable business. The buyers will be notified by email that your business in now in our system.
Now, it’s important for you to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes for a moment. These folks have work hard to acquire the capital to invest in a profitable business and they’re only going to buy a business that “makes sense”.
In order to determine if a deal makes sense buyers will use the services of lawyers and accountants to review all of your business financial information.
I hope this helps to underscore the importance of being honest. You will NOT sell your business if you artificially inflate your numbers, or if you offer your business for an amount of money that is unrealistic considering your annual net profits.
At Vested we will help you put your business on the market for the right price. The goal is to achieve a “win-win” situation where both parties leave the closing table feeling very good about the transaction.
Call us at (877) 735-5224 to get your business sold.
One of the easiest ways to increase the value of your business is to upgrade your collateral material. In this video, owner and CEO of Vested Business Brokers, Nathan Goldstein discusses this important yet often overlooked part of any company…
Is Your Collateral Material Up to Date? If Not, You Are Seriously Limiting the Value of Your Business…
This is Nathan Goldstein and I am the CEO of Vested Business Brokers. We help people buy and sell privately held businesses. Somebody came to me today and they asked, “What is the single biggest mistake that you see in small business today?”
Without a doubt, hands down, it is collateral material.
The sad truth is that most small businesses have very weak collateral material. This is an unfortunate mistake because a business’ collateral material is what a business uses to tell the world what they do for a living.
Many times I will go into a listing, I will sit down with the owner and he’ll tel me about his business then he will turn around and tell me that his sales are in a decline. When I hear this the very first thing I ask him is, “Could you please show me your collateral material?”
Typically, the business owner will then go to the top of the file cabinet and he’ll blow dust off an old brochure that was created by his Uncle Harvey in 1963. Then I’ll learn that this is the only collateral material this business has.
Really? Are you kidding me? I mean, we are looking to build enterprise value. If you are going to work every single day, you might as well go to work. My very dear friend Robert says, “Either go big or go home.” I live under that presence and I can tell you that if you don’t have the right collateral material, then you are NOT “going big” at all.
So get your collateral material right, there are a lot of great websites out there that can help you with that. In fact, there is one called 99Designs.com where artists compete on your project and create your collateral material.
The goal here is for you to build enterprise value in your organization so that when you come to us and ask us to sell it we don’t have to say, “Can we see the collateral material?” Because we know that the collateral material that you are using for your business is very powerful.
Don’t make the mistake that other entrepreneurs have, keep a keen eye on your collateral material and you will be very successful.
As always, we here at Vested Business Brokers are very interested in helping you increase the value of your business. Please let us know how we can help you. Call us at (877) 735-5224 to speak with an experienced business broker.
What is the most important aspect of selling a business? Clearly, there’s nothing more important in the transaction than confidentiality. In this video, Vested Business Brokers owner and CEO, Nathan Goldstein, discusses the importance of confidentiality and how to protect it with a strong confidentiality agreement…
Whether selling your business on your own, or with the assistance of a business broker (as we strongly suggest) you must make sure that you have a strong confidentiality agreement in place.
Why? Because you never know who you’re speaking to. You want to make sure that whoever you are showing your business to can’t turn around, steal your business secrets, and use your business processes and procedures against you. This would be akin to telling the thief the combination of the safe…and you never want to put yourself in that position.
At Vested Business Brokers, we have procedures that every single buyer must follow for confidentiality reasons. We handle it in a very, very professional way. We qualify the buyer, and we make sure that the buyer signs the confidentiality agreement before anything else.
If you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re looking to sell your business, you should definitely be scared or concerned about talking to people without the appropriate confidentiality agreements. And many times on deals that I’ve represented in the past, if the client wants more information about the processes and procedures that are broader than our regular confidentiality agreement, we might ask them to sign a specific confidentiality agreement to get more information relating to that business.
So, here’s the “take home” lesson… Protect your confidentiality with a strong confidentiality agreement.
Give us a call if you need any help – (877) 735-5224.
So, you want to buy a business valued at around $1,000,000 but you only have about half that. How do you get the deal done? The answer is with seller financing. But why would a seller in effect lend you money to buy his or her business? This question is answered by Vested Business Brokers owner and CEO, Nathan Goldstein in the video below…
Buying a business with seller financing is not uncommon when referring to the sale of “small” business (those valued at around $1,000,000 or less).
Folks, listen to what I’m saying. The owner of the business, who doesn’t know you, but you have the down payment to buy his business, is going to lend you the money so you can complete the transaction. This is a great thing, because he also wants to get paid, right? It’s like having a build-in consultant in your deal. If you get jammed up, you don’t understand the vendor, you can’t collect with a client, you can always pick up the phone. He has a vested interest, and that’s not a pun, in helping you be successful.
Many times, you’ve seen on my videos that we have a buyer who bought a business and he talked so highly of this seller who helped him grow his business. It’s a great thing. If the representations of the seller are not right, you can always adjust the price. We’re in a fluid market, which means it’s what the buyer wants to pay for that underlying opportunity, and it’s an open market.
Don’t hesitate to throw bids out there that are a little bit below the upper market to get the deals done. You never know the situation of the seller. He might have already checked out, he might have bought the house in Florida, he wants to go play golf but he’s stuck going to work every single day, and you, you’re stuck at home and you want to get out there and go to work. This guy has location, a staff, a great lease, a great company. He just doesn’t want to be there anymore. That’s the perfect business.
We’re going to help you find that business. Our guys and gals are on the street every single day handing out thousands of pieces of literature to tell people we have the clients that are looking for that business, and we do. If you want to be one of those clients, don’t hesitate to call us today. We’re here to help you. Call us at (877) 735-5224 to speak with one of our experienced business brokers.
If you want to sell your business quickly and for a decent profit then you absolutely need to avoid these 7 critical mistakes many business owners make when trying to sell their business…
Want to Sell Your Business? Call Vested Business Brokers at (877) 735-5224
Hi, my name is Nathan Goldstein with Vested Business Brokers. We help people buy and sell profitable privately held businesses. We’ve closed over a thousand of them. We probably do this business better than anybody else in the world. Today we’re going to discuss the seven mistakes that sellers make when they put their business up for sale.
Mistake #1: Not having the Proper Confidentiality Agreements in Place
It is crucial that you have the proper confidentiality agreement in place before you speak to a potential buyer about your business. Literally, 99.9% of the sellers who go out to sell their business on their own make this critical, very dangerous mistake of talking to people. You don’t know who you’re speaking to. It can be a competitor or the competitor’s brother. Now you’re excited, you have a buyer, and you’re now sharing the private information, your private business model with this person, and it’s like giving them the code to the safe. Please, do not try to sell your business without the proper confidentiality agreements in place.
Mistake #2: Putting the Name of Your Business in Your “For Sale” Ads
The second mistake that we’ve seen, and we see it all the time, is that the seller puts the name of their business in their ad. Now, folks, you don’t want to do that. It’s very bad because if you were a client of your business, and you knew that the business was up for sale, would you continue to do business with that client? So everybody gets nervous. So first of all, your business customer gets nervous, and then if somebody comes in and says, “Oh, I heard that your business was for sale”, and says it to one of your employees, now your employees start to get nervous. So you’re creating your own earthquake within your business, and walls start rattling and you start to get nervous, and it’s out there. And once it’s out there, you can’t take it back. So do not put the name of your business in your ads.
Mistake #3: Not Having a Process to Properly Value Your Business
Often business owners think they know what the business is worth, but they don’t properly value the business based on what’s called “owner’s discretionary cash flow”, the benefit to the owner, and what multiple that business should be sold at. So there are many different aspects to that, like if there’s a license, or the business has a specialized asset like a website that has value. It might demand a larger multiple, but if you don’t get all the multiples correct, you might improperly price your business. Very important to make sure that all your assets are priced correctly to the peer group.
Mistake #4: Giving Out Too Much Information Before You Have a Letter of Intent From the Potential Buyer
A letter of intent is a written agreement signed by a potential buyer which formally states the buyer’s intention to purchase a particular business.
Many times we see a seller give all of the information to a potential buyer and then they’ll never hear from that buyer again. The buyer has not had a formal process to buy the business. Do not give the buyer all the information until you have a letter of intent in place and you know what his intentions are.
Mistake #5: Not Believing That Your Business CAN Be Sold
Listen…if you have a PROFITABLE, privately held business, the it is a business that CAN be sold. Said another way…if your business is in profit, then there will almost certainly be a buyer who wants to buy it.
Mistake #6: Thinking That Your Business is Worth More Than It Actually Is
Pricing the business above the peer group without the proper terms and conditions could really dramatically affect your sale. In fact, you might not sell your business. Now eighty percent of the businesses that come to market, come to market with the wrong price and the wrong terms and they don’t get sold. So it is critically important to price your business correctly.
What is the “moving market”?
Many times, I’m asked, what is the moving market. Well, you know, a company in New York might sell at a higher multiple than a company in Louisiana. So it depends on where you are, the location, how long the lease is, and what the market is, what the market bears, the local market bears for the multiple for your category. If you have a competent broker, he should be able to tell you where the moving market is at any given time. Here at Vested, we keep that data in every single category that we sell.
Mistake #7: Trying to Sell Without the Help of a Business Broker
A competent broker like the professionals at Vested Business Brokers will have a process to sell the business. The first process is you fill out a listing agreement. A valid listing agreement can be exclusive to the firm or non-exclusive to the firm. The second process is that we register and profile every single buyer. We get confidentiality agreements signed so the buyer can get the information on your listing. It’s very difficult for a seller to ask a potential buyer for a confidentiality agreement before they speak. They critically make that mistake all the time.
We’ll go over the processes with you, and we’ve sold over a thousand transactions. We know how to get the deals done. We’ll help you get the best price with the right terms, the right conditions, meeting them at the moving market and getting you the price that you’re looking for, for your business. Now it has to be fair and equitable for a buyer. If you price the business too high, you’re never going to sell it. If you price the business with no terms, it makes for a much more difficult deal than pricing with the proper terms and conditions. That’s where the broker will come in and help you. I wish you luck.
