Finance Roll

Selling your business is a serious decision and one which may create the largest swing of wealth in your life. It can give you the opportunity to relax and reap the benefit of your hard work.

It also takes away your career and part of you so you need to be ready for it! All to often people sell a business then are not sure of the next step.

Here are some basic thoughts for you to consider:

1) Have a plan pre sale and post sale; Why am I selling the company? What is it worth? What can I walk away from this company for? Am I willing to dissect every piece of information in my business to give to a buyer? Post sale - What do I do next?

2) Have you taken into account you will have to play a major roll in financing the deal?

Most sellers who have not sold a business believes they will get cash for a company. That does not happen to often and you may have to finance 20 to 80% of the deal. Most transactions require this.

3) Have you taken the time to make a deal book. What is a deal book? It is a full description and discloser of everything in your business. You need to review everything to maximize your deal.

A deal book can be thousands of pages long, in a handful of binders. You can not under estimate the power of this knowledge, it shows a buyer your serious and you have nothing to hide.

4) Have you put yourself in the buyers shoes? Redo the cash flow with bank loans, can a buyer afford to buy the business based on actual cash flow?

This again is under played, you will have to care post sale, you will be owed money and if a buyer can't pay you the deal will never reach its completion.

These are a few key notes.