For many business owners, selling their business is a once in a lifetime experience. With no prior knowledge to draw on and significant amounts of money at stake, you’ll need to lean on your team for support and professional advisors to get it right. In this, the final article in our sale-ready business series, we highlight important considerations when taking the step from sale-ready to implementing your FOR SALE strategy.
When you’re satisfied you have completed all the tasks necessary for making your business sale-ready, your next step is to consider your business sale strategy. As you would expect, there’s a lot more to this stage than simply putting your business on the market.
While deciding who will take responsibility for introducing you to prospective purchasers is an important step, first you’ll need to understand the pros and cons of each business sale method and the costs involved.
For smaller and more straightforward businesses, business owners may decide to coordinate the sale themselves. This may involve listing the business for sale using an online business sales platform or engaging a business broker to advertise on your behalf.
For larger enterprises, engaging appropriately experienced and qualified professionals will provide access to advice relating to complexities affecting the business and for deciding on the most suitable method of sale. These options include for sale by tender; sale by direct approach; or a merger and acquisition strategy.
You and your advice team will also need to determine suitable terms of sale.
Typically, these will be for a buyout or merger and any specific contract details such as vendor finance or earn-out terms.
As accountants and business advisors who have assisted numerous business owners to sell and buy businesses, we are well placed to provide qualified advice and pragmatic support.
We’re adept at explaining your options, talking through any compromises and providing the advice you’ll need for holding your ground.
Whether you call it head-butting or argy-bargy, there will be some level of debate involved. Our approach is to keep the lines of communication open throughout so negotiations don’t stall. We’ll bring insight and process for overcoming the inevitable issues that arise so the sale can progress to completion.
If you’ve been following our sale-ready series of articles, you’ll be aware that during the early sale-ready stages we focused on helping you to maximise the value of the business. During the sale negotiation stage our focus moves to helping you achieve the best possible sale price. Of equal importance, negotiating suitable terms of sale as these directly influence how the sale is finalised and a number of post-sale matters.
We’ll also formulate strategies for minimising tax, meeting CGT obligations and enacting any discounts or small business CGT concessions. Superannuation and deciding on other structures for tax effectively holding capital will also need to be considered. Then when the sale is complete, you’ll very likely need help with the hand-over to the new business owners.
We’ll work with you to:
– Understand your options and decide on the best method of sale for your business
– Present options and help with decision making regarding the terms of sale
– Coordinate with other professionals in your advice team to make the process as seamless as possible
– Assist with negotiations, provide support and clarity regarding your options and next steps
– Advice and clarify tax strategy
– Provide hand-over support
Your next step…
If you’ve found our sale-ready business series thought provoking and you’d like to know more about how we can help you prepare your business for sale, please contact us for an initial discussion on 07 5438 8088 or email mail@corebusiness.com.au
Further Reading
#1 Is your Business Sale-Ready?
#2 Selling your Business? Put your feet in your buyer’s shoes
#3 Achieving a Sale-Ready Business
#4 From Sale-Ready to FOR SALE
At Core we specialise in business advice and SMSF strategies for growing and mature family-owned businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
