What is needed when selling a business - (2022) - Tips and advice

• Date
  20 October 2022
• Category
  Guides & Helpful Hints
• Author
  Signature Acquisitions

Selling your business can be a daunting experience especially if you’ve spent years building it up to where you are now and have never sold a business yourself. But we are here to help and make the process as easy as possible. For us to be able to do that there are certain things that need to be prepared beforehand to make the process as smooth as possible. This article will go into what you need to sell your business.

Accounts

A potential buyer will want to be able to see a minimum of at least 3 years of accounts for the business. If you can provide more that always helps but the minimum we suggest is 3 years of full accounts. If your business accounts have more than one of your businesses profits/turnover/expenses in them then these need to be split out. Our suggestion would be to talk to your accountant about doing this in the best way. After all, these are one of the most important parts of your business you need to have available straightaway as its where you’ll get the company value from. People want to see where your figure has come from and having good and clear accounts will enable them to see that and predict more accurately where the company could go to once they purchase it.

Images and videos

In this day and age people love visuals and having good quality images and videos makes such a difference when it comes to being able to market the business successfully and showing potential clients the full opportunity of purchasing your business would be for them. If you are selling in the retail space a walk through of the space from the outside is always ideal as it gives people perspective of what the business looks like. Having good quality videos and pictures also goes a long way for advertising and the potential reach of the posts. People like a “pretty picture” so to speak and by having up to date good quality content you are able to portray your business in the best light.

Websites

A website is really the fist place people will go to look at your business when they see you are for sale. They want to step into the place of a potential client of yours and see what the experience is like. Having a good quality and up to date website is essential to putting across to a potential buyer where your business is at. This is now easily done yourself via a number of online platforms or by contacting a web designer. Even a simple but effective website is better than an outdated one or even more so not having one at all.

Socials

Any type of social media presence that you have also needs to be up to date and being used regularly. It’s no use having one if it hasn’t been used for years. These are all possible ways in which people will see your business and as such one of the things which will increase or decrease the value for a potential client if they have low engagement and or need updating from their end. A good social media presence can increase sales and traffic to your business. How many people do you think go onto the likes or Instagram and Facebook each day? Around 2.76 billion each day! That’s a huge potential reach that if you aren’t using decreases your businesses competitiveness. A potential buyer will be able to see this. Having a good presence online can make or break a company especially if there is a lot of competition in the market.

Business Valuation

You will want your business to be valued before you put it on the market. This can normally be done by your accountant so as long as the financial accounts are all up to date it should be easy for your accountant to put together an evaluation. Its best to have an explanation of how they came to this figure to go along with the valuation as this is a frequently asked question from potential buyers.

Lawyers/Advocates

Having already decided on which lawyer you are going to use for your business sale will save time in the long run as once a sale has been agreed there is less hold up. Contact lawyer and have set out draft of what any sale contract would ideally look like for you. This can then be sent over to the buyer once a sale has been agreed.

Hand over process

Have you decided on what type of hand over process you are wanting? Is it a clean cut once the business has been sold and you no longer want anything to do with the business? Or are you happy to stay on for a few months in a paid advisory role to help the new owners keep everything running along smoothly? These are things you’ll need to have decided and have written into a contract for the sale of your business so nothing is left undecided and everyone is clear on what to expect. Having an idea what way out want to go before putting your business up for sale will mean you are able to answer these questions easily when its asked and even put that forward in the initial sale document so people are clear on what to expect from you after the sale. This is again something your lawyer can have written into the sale contract.

Conclusion

You would like your business to be presented at its best when you decide to put it up for sale in order to achieve the highest sale price you can. These are all the first things people will look at before deciding if they’d like to ask you for more information and further questions. You want to capture their interest at first glance. The idea is to give the best first impression possible to entice people in to ask for more. We are here to help you in the progress of your business sale from start to finish. The idea is to do the work before you put the business up for sale so when people ask for these things you already have them saving time on your side and that of the potential buyers. If you’d like to know more about how Signature Acquisitions works and what we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us for a confidential chat.