What Stages Influence My Business Sale Price?

A successful business broker can help you navigate the process of selling your eCommerce, SaaS or other company successfully, but there are six things you must keep in mind if you’ve hoped to sell your company for more than you think it might initially be worth. The first aspect of selling your company for maximum profit, is to get the timing right. You need to have your exit strategy structured and planned from day one. All too often business owners wait until a serious or tragic event has happened in their business. This means that the company is already on a downward trajectory and is not making as much money as it was. The best time to sell a company is when the business is doing well.

The second stage step for selling your company for maximum profit is to get your books in order. Scouring through records helps you prepare for the due diligence process and also assist in the business valuation phase. Many business owners live out of their company to decrease their tax liability and so all kinds of nonrecurring expenses and personal expenses are being run through the business.

These personal and nonrecurring expenses have to be tracked back to the bottom line and evaluated overall. It is critical to know all of your numbers to be successful in selling your company, and this goes beyond balance sheets, tax returns, and profit and loss statements. You need to be able to track everything involving your marketing and your sales to determine how your efforts are paying off.

A third aspect of selling your company for maximum profit is branding. There are five key levels of branding, brand absence, brand awareness, brand preference, brand insistence and brand advocacy. At the brand advocacy level, your consumers are fans who are thrilled to recommend your services and products to others. Creating a solid customer experience and being involved in community service can help improve the awareness and perception of your brand. Recognizing what makes a business valuable can be overwhelming when you’re so involved in the day to day of operating it.

Buyers do not like businesses with only a few company with only a few customers, so multiple sources of income should be a top priority when establishing your business. This includes having a solid management team in place, multiple sources of income, and healthy customer base. Look at what you are best at in addition to your brand loyalty and ensure that you have hired people on your team to assist with the areas that you are not so successful with. That shows an awareness of your potential successes and weaknesses and equips you with the ability to become very appealing to buyers on the market.

Ready to talk options? Our business brokers are here to tell you more about our experience with a broad range of companies. We know it can be an emotional decision to sell your company, but we rely on our extensive experience in guiding people through this process to help you feel solid about this choice.