When your small business is ready for sale, you can be forgiven if your excitement gets the best of you. You want to sell quickly!
Slow down. Buyers sense impatience and naïveté a mile away. If you are hasty or unprepared, you will likely sell your business for much less than it is worth on the market. Let’s take a look at why hiring a broker will likely earn you more money in the final sale.
It’s a buyer’s job to poke holes in your business to lower the valuation. In the open market, perception is reality: If the buyer has a good enough reason to lower the price and you can’t counter, you could end up accepting less money for your small business than you should.
A broker serves as a middleman (biased in your favor) to keep you from losing money just because you may lose an argument. Your broker won’t be talked down as easily, because (s)he isn’t as emotional about the business.
They say never time the market. What they mean is YOU should never try to time the market for a buy or a sell. This includes selling your business. There are better seasons for it, and macroeconomic conditions matter as well. However, you really don’t need to worry about these things if your head has been in your business for years. Buyers will try to use this focus against you.
A broker will help you find the best time to sell, and you don’t have to become an expert market timer to get it done. (That takes years, by the way. Unless you have a few years runway to sell your small business, just let your broker handle it.)
Buyers will try all kinds of psychological tactics to throw you off your game. They may lowball you or freeze you out to test your financial stability over time. They might place bids with your competitors to see if they can get you to lower your price for a quick sell.
It is always better to let a broker keep an eye on these things for you. Because you are emotionally tied to your business, you are prone to making decisions that are not based in logic. Emotional decisions almost always cost you money.
When you are ready to sell your small business, the experts at Murphy Business are ready to help you make the best deal possible. With decades of experience in the exit process, we are the brokers that will get you the best price and make sure your business ends up in good hands.
Give us a call at (727) 725-7090 or by email directly on our website. Do not let buyers take advantage of you and minimize all of your hard work at the finish line — let us handle the deal while you handle the business!