Is It A Bad Idea to Sell Your Company After A Drop in Performance?

Unfortunately, mistakes made in selling your online business can haunt you throughout the duration of the sale. One major mistake could be trying to sell a company on your own and not retaining the services of an experienced website broker.

Some people might be uncomfortable with the idea of a broker helping them with the sale of a company they have such a personal connection with. But a broker is also more familiar with the market and probably has a network of interested buyers at the ready. This means that a broker can help you navigate this process much more effectively and avoid mistakes.

Is A Dip in Performance the Right Time to Sell?

If you notice a decrease in your company’s performance or revenue, you might be thinking that this is the perfect time to sell. However, choosing to list your online business for sale on the back of a big drop in performance is a very poor strategy and one that is unlikely to draw in ideal buyers. This is because buyers are always going to do their research and be interested in exploring what happened in the due diligence process.

A major drop in your company’s success could lead to problems with risk and uncertainty in the eyes of someone who might have otherwise bought it. For a business that has been slowly dropping over the course of many years but otherwise appears stable, this could be a great opportunity to pursue a sale. Things might be unlikely to improve under your ownership if these conditions are true.

This means that the company has been consistently successful with slow and steady declines. Investors will still be able to point out this stable trend and adjust valuations in accordance with the diminishing returns. A poor time to choose to list your online company for sale, with or without the help of a business broker however, is if your company experiences a sharp decline over a short period of time and then is promptly listed for sale online.

Investors won’t be able to look at the long term picture or adjust their valuations logically because there will be too many layers of uncertainty. This means that the investor will then have answered questions and have to devalue your company in a big way to account for the increased problems with risk, and the potential challenges they might face. It can be difficult for an investor to see the reasons why a company might have decreased in value so suddenly, and you won’t really have an opportunity to position your company the right way if this has happened to you.

An online listing should be as compelling as possible and only put up after you’ve done some careful consideration about whether this is the right time. If you find yourself in the situation of trying to figure out how to navigate an unexpected decline in your company’s performance, it’s far better to consider holding off on listing your company for sale so you can stabilize that performance and identify what might have caused the decline. There are several different things you can do to help avoid the challenges of putting a company up for sale include:

• Putting together an exit plan so you are completely prepared to sell and implementing steps in that plan.
• Identifying the root cause of the decline instead of trying to offload the company immediately.
• Allow for some time for the company to stabilize after any major drops in performance.
• Avoid making any major changes to the company within six months of planning to sell it.

Schedule a consultation with the experienced online business brokers at Website Closers.