Many business sellers get their business sale off to a bad start by not doing proper succession planning.
They then further compound their problems by not defining their quantitative and qualitative goals and objectives prior to commencing an offering.
If you think that you can conduct a successful offering by answering the following two questions you are sadly mistaken.
Would you like to sell your company? Yes
How much would you like for your company? 12,000,000
If you have a broker that says that is all they need to know to get started you picked the wrong broker for sure.
As a firm we request that our new clients do an extensive amount of deep thinking and that they provide us with ten objectives for their sale. We further ask them to rank them from 1 to 10 in order of priority.
We sit down with them and have a two-dimensional discussion about each objective that they have listed. We want to fully understand both why it is an objective and why it was ranked where it is in level of importance.
Once we have this comprehensive overview we have a clear charter for their offering.
How could a broker effectively take a company to market without a charter? It happens every day and failures and dissatisfaction occur every day.
We also have a very candid discussion with them about the sales and negotiation process. We explain to them that the final outcome is a negotiated outcome and that the buyers have a list of objectives as well.
We share that the list of 10 objectives provides clarity but that it is not a wish list where all will occur. That is the reason for the ranking to ensure that the very most important ones do occur.
This process sets two very important tones for the offering.
The seller is very focus and committed to the offering process.
The advisor is a very good listener and focused on their clients’ objectives.
Tremendously good things happen when the seller and the advisor are interlocked from day one through closing.