Archive for category: Cautionary Tales

One important reason you hire a broker to help you sell your business is the addition of a person to the transaction who is not emotionally tied to the business. We are there as your representative – to make sure you get the best deal possible at the time you are listing your business. And sometimes that advice will be to walk away from a transaction if we don’t think everything lines up in your interests.

Sometimes, no deal is better than a bad deal.

Bad Deals

There are many reasons why a deal may be a bad one, but there are two in particular that we see often that we try to deal with as soon as we can.

Price: this is before an offer is made, of course, but we try to make sure that the price we market the business for is not just in line with the financials and tax records of the company and the growth trajectory, but also with what the market is currently paying for businesses in your industry. That’s why it’s always so important to get a true valuation for your business. It’s objective, unemotional, and has nothing to do with what you “think you deserve” for your blood, sweat, and tears over the years.

But apart from a marketable price that we are confident will sell in a reasonable time, there also has to be consideration for the seller’s financial situation. For example, will the sale, after taxes, clear all the business debts of the seller? If not, would it make more sense to operate the business for some more time in order to be free and clear at closing?

Terms: this is after an offer to purchase and will usually be part of a package of negotiable deal points.  Almost all successful transactions have a fairly balanced allocation of financial risk.

On the seller’s part, some financing may be in order, whether as part of SBA requirements or simply because of the buyer’s need. The buyer may also ask for some assets to be classified in such a way that will result in more taxation for the seller.

On the buyer’s part, some personal funds may be included as part of the purchase, and income statements scrutinized to make sure he/she is not overextending him/herself to buy the business.

As we’ve said often in these articles, successful transactions also usually leave both buyers and sellers feeling that they did sacrifice something they would have preferred.  That’s why it’s called negotiation.

No Deal

It’s important to note that just because there’s not a deal doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for it.

On more than one occasion we have seen exceptional growth in financials for the current fiscal year and have advised our clients either not to list or to de-list their business so that we can get one more corporate tax return and thus boost the valuation of the company. Sometimes no deal is a strategic retreat rather than giving up.

But sometimes no deal happens because we’re not dealing with a motivated seller, or because the client doesn’t trust what we are telling him/her.

In our experience no deal is often better than a bad deal, because you can always try for a new transaction, trading on the lessons learned in the previous attempt, whereas a bad deal leaves you stuck with the consequences.

If you’ve got questions about pricing your business to sell, give us a call!

This is a continuing series of stories we want to share with our clients so they don’t make the same very costly mistakes.

One of the many reasons you hire a business broker to help guide you through a sale is because we will tell you important truths without fear. We want a successful transaction and that can’t be done by hiding things or not being fully truthful. But that sometimes means that a client will want an answer you simply can’t give.

One of our clients had retired from a twenty year career in a field, and had decided to get into a food franchise. The first location that he picked was about thirty minutes from his home, so he had a general manager in place. The location wasn’t losing money, but it wasn’t making money at the rate he expected.

He also bought a second location of the franchise much closer to his house, which he had great expectations for. He wanted to get rid of the old location so he could focus all his energies on the second location. There was a problem, though. He didn’t have a sellable business.

There are many reasons to buy a franchise, but once you’ve committed and bought one, you simply have to put in the work.

Because the business wasn’t in a strong position, the sale price wouldn’t clear the debt that already existed. This meant that the deal couldn’t be financed. Worse, he still had an existing lease obligation that had some strings attached.

We told him the numbers had to be better so that we could help him sell his business. He disagreed.

Not only did he disagree, he went around asking for second and third opinions. Word kept coming back to us from friends and colleagues that he wanted someone to look at his business and give him the answer he wanted. We couldn’t give him that answer because it would have been a waste of everyone’s time.

Any business owner starts with dreams about possibilities. But once the business starts in earnest, those dreams meet with reality. Once you are ready for a sale, that reality has to pass the smell test of our team here at Apex before we will put it out on the market with our name behind it.

Sometimes, having a broker serves the purpose of telling you that you don’t have a business that’s ready to sell…yet. But if you take our advice about what to improve, you can have one sooner than you think. But that means you have to be willing to hear the answer you need, not the answer you want.

Want to avoid being part of a cautionary tale?  Give us a call so we can discuss implementing better systems in your business so you’ll be in a position to sell when you want.

This is the first in a series of stories we want to share with our clients so they don’t make the same very costly mistakes.

“Look, maybe it’s not time, let’s talk in another 4 months.” This is a quote we’ve heard many times before, and in itself, it’s totally neutral. But once you understand the context, you realize how strange it really is.

The call came from someone we had been speaking to for the last three years, who has a printing business in the Midwest. He’s in his early 80s, as is his wife. He has a daughter who is on the board of the business, who was only told about the idea of a sale in the last year. She has expressed a lack of certainty as to whether she would want to take over the business. But even if she did, there is no transition plan in place.

This is a failing that is common in family businesses, but in this particular case, we had been talking about a possible sale for three years already.

Because we’ve been doing this for many years, we can tell you the likely ending of this story.

We will get a call from a family member or from the client from a hospital bed, informing us that we need to sell the business quickly, or worse, that the client has already passed. Unfortunately, we will be working with a probate court to sell the business. It’s not our place to tell this client what to do with his life. If he thinks, in his early 80s, that with no transition plan, no clear family succession, and a wife who just had a second major surgery, that it’s “not time to sell,” then clearly it isn’t.

What we can do is use his story to caution our clients: have a plan or plan to fail, and don’t think you have guaranteed time. Every moment in this life is a gift. Take opportunities and options when they come your way.

Want to avoid being part of a cautionary tale?  Give us a call so we can discuss your transition plans.