There might come a time in your professional life when you want to sell your business. It happens to a lot of entrepreneurs – particularly with their first business endeavour. You may wish to move on to new ventures, which means offloading your business and pocketing a nice big paycheck.
Of course, selling a business isn’t as simple as listing it online and accepting offers. There are many things to consider before you sell – starting with the three points in this guide:
Understand The True Value Of Your Business
You shouldn’t sell your business without knowing what it’s worth. Avoid taking any offers from random investors – or rival businesses – until you’ve had a proper business valuation. It’s worth working with business advisors to help analyse your entire company and work out what it’s genuinely worth.
Getting a proper valuation stops you from being scammed or jumping the gun and taking the first available offer. You may be incredibly surprised by how much your small business is worth – but that’s why you need professional help to work all of this out before putting it on the market.
Think About The Impact On Staff
How will selling your business impact employees and staff members? In the perfect scenario, your business switches ownership without causing any internal problems. It all goes on behind the scenes while your employees continue to work and earn a living. Ideally, you want to avoid a situation where you’re forced to lay off all of your staff because you’re selling the business.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. You might be forced to sell your company and the new owners may not want to retain your staff. If this does happen, be sure to communicate openly with your employees during the transition process. Let them know way in advance so they can look for new jobs – and make sure to provide excellent references for them. It’s never a nice moment, but open communication helps you make the best out of a bad situation.
Consider When & Why You Should Sell
Think about why you’re selling your business – is it because you’re no longer making any money? Or have you simply fallen out of love with your business idea? If it’s the former, then don’t expect to get the best price for your company. It’s generally better to sell a profitable business that’s expanding rapidly. More people and companies will be interested in buying your small enterprise, so that’s something to think about before you prepare to sell.
With that in mind, you should try to position the sale so it happens at the ideal moment when your business is worth the most amount of money. Again – that’s not always possible – but think about simple things like the time of year. Will anyone buy a business in January? Probably not, but they’d be more open to the idea later in the year.
Don’t rush into selling your business, particularly when it looks like you can get more money by being a bit patient. Bide your time and keep all of the things we’ve spoken about in mind to make everything go as smoothly as possible!
