Selling your business for the first time. Good project planning a must!

Businesses Buying & Selling
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Selling a business yourself is not for the faint of heart. Having been involved in helping business owners sell their business interest and watching owners either seek out a competent business broker (agent) or decide to sell it themselves requires a lot of preparation work before you put your business on the market.

Some key tips:

  • Define the objective. (sell my accomodation business by x date)
  • Create a project plan.
  • Get your professional team together(eg, lawyer, valuer, marketer, agent and others) share the plan.
  • Seek professional valuations. (property and business)
  • Sort your lease out.
  • Break down the tasks into bite size chunks.
  • Allow double the time you will think to achieve your objective.

Can others in our community share and contribute? Perhaps direct experience, such as when is it a good time to buy and sell?

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I sold a business and found it very daunting particularly since it was only small and the brokers were not interested in the sale.

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Welcome Totara to our real estate community. Thanks for the insights.

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Hi Totara. How did you find your business buyer?

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In the end it was through a Trade Me listing. However I had a friend help me and he did considerable prospecting which helped lift my knowledge and confidence when it came to dealing with the final buyer.

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Hi Totara. How long did it take to sell your business?

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What sort of prospecting did your friend do?

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About 4 months. I was also lucky because we were in relatively boom times as opposed to how things are now.

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He cold called related businesses to see if they would be interested in adding my brand into their existing offering.

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When you advertise your business, say on Trademe. Be very careful what you state in your advertisement. All measurements should be followed by the words more or less.

Here’s an example:
I am selling my 100 m2 (more or less) shop and business in Otago, New Zealand.

This provides a little protection.

Note if you want to be absolutely correct get your property surveyed by a land surveyor.

Also, do not rely on any old document as proof.

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