Unlock the strategy that will work best for you and your situation.

You might be considering an immediate sale or thinking a long way into the future.

Regardless, my goal is to help you:

• See the full picture. Get insights into how to best position your business; how the market might view your business and current market conditions.
• Know your options.
• Be clear on the actions you need to take.
• Make sure everyone is on board (do all of the owners and other stakeholders want the same thing?).
• Know your true timeline.

Once you have unlocked your preferred strategy and your true timeline, the focus can shift to how you best use that time.

Usually, the more time you have to prepare a business for sale, the easier it is to achieve an excellent outcome.

Businesses that are “Thinking of selling” often are in the enviable position that they don’t need to sell immediately and have time to prepare the business for sale.

Some of the common factors to consider are:

• Financial considerations: really, what is the value or potential value of the business?
• Alignment of value expectations with business strategy.
• Potential importance and impact of continuity with shareholders and staff.
• Who are the potential purchasers; what would they be looking for and how to position the business over time.
• Timing and key milestones.
• Risk management. Understanding and managing risks, or perhaps more importantly perceptions others have about risks relating to your business. For example, key agreements and contracts and legal exposures.
• Linking business strategy to the sale process itself including marketing and how to best present the business.

In my opinion, the best position you can be in is to have a business that is ready to sell at any time.

While every business sale is different and a fixed formula is not available, business owners can take clear actions to prepare and run the business in a way that makes it is easier to sell and appealing to potential purchasers.

Once you have been through this process you are then in control and the ultimate decision to, and when to, sell (or not) is completely up to you.