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How To Get Your Business Ready To Sell

Here are some of the obvious, and not so obvious, steps you can take as you get ready to sell your business:

  • Clean the premises
  • Organize the books and records
  • Deal with any customer/vendor/employee issues prior to the sale
  • Try to increase revenues without sacrificing margin (increasing revenue is important to the buyer as they analyze trends)
  • Diversify the customer base (customer concentration is a risky issue for buyers and their lenders)
  • De-emphasize owner’s personal role in the business by not being the only decision maker
  • Get other employees involved in customer and vendor contact
  • Develop a management team or a right hand person
  • Build infrastructure to further reduce dependence on the owner
  • Reduce the # of family members working in the business, especially if they will be leaving
  • Reduce the amount of owner’s perks that are paid for by the business
  • Don’t live out of the business checkbook
  • Sell or remove unnecessary or personal assets
  • Adjust inventory to a normal level
  • Other smaller items include: update website, renew leases, eliminate unproductive employees, collect past due accounts receivable