Buying & Selling a Business In Tucson Blog

Making the Decision to Sell Your Business

By Larry Orenstein

When is the right time to sell your business?  Actually, there is no definitive answer to that question.  The reality is that most small business owners wait too long and have unrealistic expectations of how easy it will be to sell or how long it should take. If you are considering the sale of your business, our advice and that of most experts is don’t wait to the last minute. Why do we say that?

Because you don’t want to wait until you have to sell for economic, health, age, or emotional reasons. Anxiety will almost always force you into accepting a deal that is not good for you, causing emotional reactions that will prevent a sale from happening at all. Developing an “EXIT STRATEGY” involves much more than simply the decision to sell. It requires preparation, engaging the right recourses to advertise, finding qualified buyers, negotiating terms of sale, preparing contracts of sale, structuring and securing financing and executing documents to protect your interests after closing, getting yourself, your business, and assets all properly prepared to expedite a sale.

Even if you already set an initial price for your business it is an important subject to review. Determining a selling price range for a business is part of the buy-sell process, but it is often the part most likely to create vast differences of opinion. Buyers and sellers usually do not share the same perspective. Each has their own motives, rationale, and their own way of seeing the facts and figures, colored by their emotional attachment to the business or to their money.

Typically, the buyer probably wants to pay less, the seller want to get more. That is usual and understandable. For a sale to happen both buyer and seller must be satisfied with the price and be able too understand how it was determined.

At Allen & Young Business Brokerage our business pricing analysis will simplify the rather complex process of establishing an asking price for a business. Suffice it to say, there are many factors, variables, and assumptions that are involved in that process.  By working with Allen & Young for your business pricing analysis, we can help identify all these variables as they applly to your business, and demystify the process of determining what the market is likely to be willing to pay for it. 

Ready to get started developing your exit strategy, or to move forward with a pricing analysis?

Contact Larry Orenstein at Allen & Young Business Brokerage, at 520-820-1706.

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