Selling a business may seem straightforward at first glance. You have a business, you want to sell it, and you find a buyer, right? The reality is, finding the best possible buyer can be a little more complicated than that. This is where the expertise of a broker can help. Hiring an expert to handle what is sometimes one of the largest and most important transactions you will ever engage in is the very best way to protect your interests and maximize the value of your business.
The difference between just listing a business on a website and waiting for people to call you vs. hiring an experienced broker who is going to actively use multiple methods to reach out to qualified buyers is one of the key elements. A Transworld broker is going to utilize a team to aggressively market the business. This might include multiple websites, email blasts, direct mail, and phone calls to buyer prospects. We have large pools of buyer prospects who have inquired on businesses already and have been pre-qualified. You want to reach these prime prospects.
Once we have prospects to talk to, you also want to make sure you present a professional marketing package (sometimes also called a CIM, Confidential Information Memorandum). This package should address all the common questions a buyer is interested in, history, trends, industry, employees, management, competition, financials, and valuation among others. This is the first impression a buyer has of your business. It really needs to be done professionally and a Transworld broker can do that for you.
Another important step is the pre-qualification and vetting of buyer prospects. There can be a lot of inquiries from a listing posted on a public site from people who will never buy a business and have no financial ability to do so. If you don’t use a broker to handle the time-consuming process of handling the NDA and pre-qualification, you could find yourself spending a lot of your valuable time away from running your business just weeding through time-wasting activities.
Once interested buyers are identified a broker can answer most buyer questions and be a filter between you and the buyer until it makes sense to get on a call or have a meeting between the buyer and the seller. This saves you time again and makes sure you are only talking to qualified buyers with real interest. A sale can then progress to offers, acceptance, due diligence, and contracts. These are all steps where it is wise to employ an expert to protect you and get you to the finish line. A good broker can also help you compile other team members to insure a successful sale such as banks, experienced business acquisition attorneys and tax experts.
Transworld brokers very often sell businesses for people who have tried it themselves and figured out it is not as easy as it looks! We urge you to save that time and frustration and let us help you find the very best possible exit possible.