In early 2020, we all faced corona and its accompanying measures. A period with a lot of impact on entrepreneurs and their businesses. In almost all sectors, entrepreneurs have had to adapt or innovate their business processes.
As a result, entrepreneurs have gained different insights into their businesses. Some entrepreneurs are now faced with a choice: continue, accelerate or quit? If one chooses to quit, a logical next step is to sell the business.
How do I find a buyer?
Finding a buyer sometimes seems harder than it is. Especially your network as an entrepreneur can help. Think of suppliers, customers or competitors. These can all be good acquisition candidates.
Making a good preselection of these parties leaves a shortlist that can be approached. Initially, we advise you to do this low-profile and preferably anonymously. A sales process is sometimes a precarious process that does not need to be known to the entire environment (internal & external).
The preparation
Before looking for a buyer, you will first need to determine the price of your business. The selling price should be market-based and is influenced by several factors. When sell a business, the sale is not only determined by the selling price of the business. Other factors that come into play are will the business be relocated, will the buyer take good care of the staff, etc....
It is advisable that if you are going to sell a business, first have it vetted by an outside company. They can help value your business and determine together if this is the right time. It is also good to think about whether you want to be involved after the acquisition.
How involved do you still want to be?
You've made the decision: you're going to sell your business. Now that the decision has been made, you need to ask yourself one important question: 'To what extent do I still want to be involved in the business?' The degree of involvement after the transfer often depends on the motivation to sell.
Someone who sells a business due to lack of knowledge, skills and/or motivation to grow the business may still want to remain a partial shareholder and work with the buyer to achieve the goals. It is different if you are an entrepreneur who wants to enjoy retirement or freedom after entrepreneurship.
The search for a buyer
Now that you know why you want to sell a business, what role you still want to play in it and what it is worth, you can start looking for a buyer. It is important to make sure there are multiple potential buyers. Multiple buyers may bid against each other, but that also gives you insights. However, it should also not be too many potential buyers. If too many people are familiar with the sales plans, it may be bad for the sale.
The advice is to prepare a sales brochure of the business. This includes the number of FTEs, active sector, market, overview of business activities and financial data.
Since it is not desirable for all data to become public, it is advisable to use a platform to support sales. Brookz is an excellent platform for this. An anonymous profile can be placed on this. To guarantee confidentiality of the company with respect to potential buyers, it is advisable to use an external adviser.
Should you, as a seller, want to remain involved in the business in the future, you should not look for just a buyer, but then look for a partner. Therefore, conduct extensive interviews to see if there is actually a match, not only on a business level but also on a personal level.
