Selling a business involves harnessing the passion that allowed you to begin and then grow your business to the process of successfully selling it. This means being positive, motivated and active. You can sell your business. Thousands of businesses are bought and sold each year. Some acquisitions are of national importance involving eye-watering sums and occasionally make a headline on the evening news, especially if the owner has a beard and continually attempts hot air balloon trips around the world. Other deals receive zero publicity, except perhaps the noticeable appearance of a new face behind the Post Office counter, or an ‘under New management banner’ tied to the shop front.
Open your eyes and ears
You will uncover a great deal of evidence indicating that businesses are continually bought and sold. For someone to buy your business they first have to be aware of its existence. Not really an earth-shattering observation, but an important one. In the broadest terms there are two ways that people will know of your business. The first is that the prospective purchaser has some existing relationship with you, perhaps as a competitor, supplier, customer or employee. Depending on your business sector, these relationships can provide excellent opportunities for a profitable sale. I sold my business
to a much larger competitor after successfully winning a major customer from them. They wondered how a small business with a very short pedigree could steal a major account and became interested to find out more about us. The second way that people will become aware of your existence is by engaging in marketing activities, either undertaken by yourself directly, or perhaps using a marketing organization or business broker to act on your behalf.
Posted on June 16th, 2008 by kids
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Here are some tips to think about retraining:
#1 Decide right here, right now, if you are ready to change
#2 Take some time, alone, to reflect on where you are today
#3 Understand the enemy—what things throw you out of whack?
#4 What bad habits have you developed?
#5 Be clear about how you want your life to look and feel
#6 Old habits die hard—it takes time to change
#7 Develop your plan of attack and put it where you can see it
#8 Start every day on the right path
#9 Reward your self for staying on track
#10 Visit your doctor, healer or naturopath
#11 What are the things you have always wanted to do?
#12 Be prepared to invest in the process
Posted on March 5th, 2008 by kids
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Make a list of all of your competitors. Why would they be interested in buying your business? Write down all the reasons that occur to you. Keep this list and reflect on it as you progress through the rest of this book. Add to the list as further ideas emerge. Should you decide that selling your business to a competitor is a realistic prospect, you have two choices. The most direct involves calling them and asking ‘Do you want to buy me out?’ If this sounds like a slightly unlikely route to a successful sale, think again. Our serial entrepreneur did just that when he decided to sell his first business.
Posted on March 3rd, 2008 by kids
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Competitors may have many reasons for wishing to buy your business. For example, if you run a hairdressing salon a local competitor may be attracted to your business because:
- You have the prime location in town and the only way to take it is to buy your business as a going concern;
- You have an impressive customer base that they are having difficulty in taking from you by competitive means; buying your business would reduce competition and allow them to push up prices;
- Your staff are excellent, loyal and hard to poach;
- Others calculate that a quick return on investment is possible – believing that they could make more money from your business than you do;
- They want to grow quickly (many entrepreneurs seek rapid expansion, often at the expense of profitability, cash flow and common sense).
Of course the above is not unique to hairdressing businesses. Consider retailers. Many retailers buy competitors for one or more of the reasons noted above – even the major national chains. Your local Morrison’s supermarket may well have been a Safeway store just a few years ago. The fact that the Safeway acquisition was a large national deal makes no difference to the principles. All retailers compete on a local basis and buying competitors is one of the few ways that market share can be quickly increased and competition diminished. And it’s not just retailers. I know a very successful company that sells photocopiers and office equipment
Posted on March 1st, 2008 by kids
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If you say something enough times, people start to believe it without questioning the underlying logic. Bad statistics get thrown out in some publication and, after being repeated enough times, become unquestioned facts. One of the best examples is the idea that small businesses create almost all the new jobs in America.
Politicians have done more than their part to perpetuate this myth. Pull up any politician’s talking points on small business, and you’re bound to see the assertion that small business creates all or most of the new jobs in the United States. I recently at-tended a small business summit in Washington where in one single morning, various speakers told the audience that small business created “over half,” “70 percent,” “80 percent,” and “over 85 percent” of all new jobs in this country
Posted on February 28th, 2008 by kids
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