If you didn’t know already, selling a business tends to be a complex and tightly regulated process that requires a lot of work in order to get things right. While it’s theoretically possible that anyone could sell their business, it usually necessitates close collaboration with a range of other parties to ensure that the sale is optimal and legally compliant. Let’s take a look at what it takes to sell a business.
Legal considerations
First off, there are a number of legal considerations to selling a business, that will often require the assistance of a solicitor to resolve. While these factors will differ from business to business, you’ll need to ensure that you have all the necessary licenses in order, along with all the required documentation to show that the business is legally yours to sell. It’s easy to overlook one of these details without legal help, and failure to disclose certain information can result in serious legal consequences.
Financial implications
When selling a business, you’ll also need to take care of a number of financial tasks. For example, before you can even list the business for sale, you need to accurately determine the value based on factors such as assets, market conditions, and future growth opportunities.
Your valuation should be based on concrete information, and it’s important to be as honest as possible. You may need to hire the assistance of a valuation expert to do this properly; the buyer will then check all of your claims during their due diligence, making it essential that all your paperwork is in order.
Finding a buyer
To sell anything, you need to find a buyer, and that can be a tricky process when you’re trying to sell a whole business. You need to develop a marketing strategy, and that will typically include advertising in papers, posting in online forums, and engaging business brokers such as Dexterity Partners.
You’ll want to make sure that you highlight the USPs of your business, shining it in the best light possible to potential buyers. Don’t do this all on the fly – make a well-thought-out marketing plan, and stick to it as much as possible.
Negotiation and finalization
Once you’ve found a potential buyer, you’ll need to negotiate the terms of the sale and then, once you’re both happy with them, finalize the sale and write up a contract. This process will almost always necessitate collaborating with a lawyer – it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to draw up the contract yourself, even if you were technically capable there would likely be conflicts of interest.
It should be pretty clear by now that while anyone can sell their business, you’ll need help with multiple parts of the process. From hiring accountants to help you go through your financials, to leveraging the expertise of a broker to help you get the best buyer possible, the help you can get will be absolutely invaluable. By ensuring that you do your absolute best to get each of these stages right, you can increase the probability that you achieve a successful sale, one that’s fully compliant from a legal perspective as well.
