How to Kill a Deal
When You Don’t Disclose Everything There’s No Deal Our client had a sleepy multi-generation business. Making money, not really growing, doing things the way they’ve…
Sell Your Business & Exit with Style, Grace, and More Money!™
Whether exiting in six months or six years, we can help. We create large exits for small businesses™ by doing the right preparation, finding and selling to the right buyer, and allowing our clients to preserve their legacy, let their employees thrive, and be fairly compensated for what they’ve built.
Download our selling process overview by clicking here: Nokomis Advisory Services – Selling a business process
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For Business Sellers
We change lives through business transitions!
Exiting your business can be an emotional time. There are family dynamics, trusted employees to take care of, financial planning concerns, and the question of what will you do if you sell your business?
We help our clients choose an exit strategy. This includes planning, preparation, and exploration of options. It means not only preparing the business but also preparing the owner. A transition to family members, a management buy-out, an ESOP, and absentee ownership are options. Selling to outside parties, however, is often the top choice, and often the most lucrative. Of course, whom do you sell to, and for how much, is a key issue.
Different buyer types have different needs and want. Understanding what each type of buyer wants is a key element of any exit plan and related company preparation.
Deal structure, due diligence (on the buyer), negotiations, educating the buyer, closing the deal and escrow supervision are skills we’ve refined over the years of working on numerous deals!
The key to selling a business for top dollar and with less stress is to follow an Action Plan to Sell a Business.™
- Arrange all the affairs of the company.
- Coach and counsel the company. Its people, process, and systems must all be running efficiently.
- Transmit and teach all the good “things” about your firm to the buyer. Those “things” are:
- Intricacies that make your company special.
- Operations and management systems that are in place and will make a transition smooth.
- Numbers, all the financials in understandable form, straightforward with no “tricks.”
We specialize in a systematic, organized approach to the selling process.
Planning starts with the valuation and the identification of where we can make improvements (given the time parameters for the situation). Then we identify likely buyer types, do market research and answer the question, “Why are you selling?” Preparation is doing the little things that make the business more attractive to a buyer. Every business has risks. By documenting how the risks are overcome you make it much more appealing.
Selling & Exiting A Business
There are three areas that must be addressed in any exit plan and company preparation. They are:
Presentation Can Be a Key Issue
In many situations when there wasn’t time to plan or prepare, a dynamic presentation has saved the day. Emphasizing the business’ strengths and acknowledging the weaknesses (and how you have neutralized them) in an attractive and professional package can sway a buyer. An Action Plan saves time and anguish because we now know:
What were the weaknesses, and how they were fixed so the value is increased.
What exactly you are selling and what it’s worth?
When do you need to sell (timing can be everything)?
Who your potential buyers are (individual, family, equity group, employees or corporate)?
Where your buyer will come from (local, regional, national)?
Why you are selling (how you explain it can make or break a deal)?
How you are going to market the company (by yourself or with an intermediary)?
Where the name comes from:
For almost 60 years, our family had a cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin on North Nokomis Lake. Having a seasonal cabin meant there are a lot of things that had to be done, done right (it gets really cold in the winter), and, above all, enjoy your time when there.
We take the same approach to our client work. We do all the things needed to be done, we do them right, and this allows our clients to move on and enjoy their next great adventure in life.
Note that the scenic pictures on this website are from North Nokomis Lake.