Business Ready For Sale

Why Prepare Your Business Ready For Sale

• John Denton • Season 2 • Episode 1

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These short episodes are my education series where I explain various elements of getting a business ready for sale and the sale process itself.

This first episode is where I give 3 reasons why you need to be getting your business ready for sale all the time, 3 tips on the things to start working on NOW and all of this in just 3 minutes. 

Remember, a business that's ready for sale is well worth keeping.

Thanks for listening, keep podcasting and subscribe to get new episodes!

Speaker 1:

John Denton here. And in this short podcast, I'm going to give you three reasons why you should be getting your business ready for sale all the time. I'm going to give you three tips on how to get started on that process right now. And I'm going to do this all in three minutes.

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Some years ago, I had a leadership management training business and at the seven year point, I decided it was time to think about exiting. I merged my business with another business of similar type and size and together with the owner, we became business partners with the joint goal of exit with equity in three years. Towards the end of the three years, we ourselves came up with a value for the business. We put it on the market and having come from sales backgrounds, we tried to sell the business ourselves. After a six month emotional rollercoaster, which was not very pleasant at all, we failed to sell the business. Then we went out and sought some good advice and we were told selling a business is a process and you need to be ready, need to get the price, right? And by the way, you've priced your business too cheaply. So we ended up putting the price up 25% on good advice and went through the process and we sold it and got the full value. Three reasons why you need to have your business ready for sale. Number one, know that your business is saleable. You don't want to get to point where you have to sell, or someone comes along, want to buy and find out that it's not saleable. So be working on it all the time. Two, you need to know how businesses are valued and what yours is roughly worth all the time so that you can work on increasing the value, but also so that you don't try to sell it too, cheaply. Number three, a business that's ready for sale is well worth keeping. So if you've got your business saleable, have it such that you can keep it forever or sell it tomorrow. Three tips on things you can do. One, get your financials up to date. They need to be clean. They need to be structured to show you the business owner what's happening in the business and to show a buyer what's happening in the business. And they need to be to date, ready to go. When you're selling the business, you need to get the business owner out of the business as much as possible. And this is based around systems. You need to know, do you have a business or do you have a practice? That business is built around systems. A practice is built on an expert. A business is more easily sold than a practice. And number of three. You need to track and document everything. You need to know the numbers in your business, not just the financials, but everything that's happening in the business, track everything. And over time you'll find out which are the most important things, but then you can show a potential buyer how the business works. What I recommend now is that you sign up for a free business review and you can do that at johndenton. com.au where, I'll look at all these points in your business for you. And we can have a discussion about how saleable and what your business is likely worth. And, or you can just schedule a call with me. So John denton. com.au, And you can listen to more of these podcasts there as well. And I look forward to speaking to you soon and helping you get your business ready for sale.