Are You Prepared to Sell Your Business
Like the firemen who back the truck in order to be ready, you, as a business owner, need to be prepared when you get the call from someone who solicits to buy your business. Â According to the latest Sellability Tracker report, the proportion of business owners who received an offer to buy their company in the quarter ending March 31, 2014 was up considerably from Q4 2013. Roughly 12% of business owners using The Sellability Score last quarter had recently received an offer to buy their business.
Companies are being  acquired more  because buyers have access to more cash than they know what to do with and interest rates are still very low.
This increase in activity among buyers has important implications for you as a business owner. Â Chief among them is that you need to have a sellable asset when opportunity strikes.
Statistically speaking, the two most common reasons you are likely to sell your business are:
- A health scare; or retirement
- An unsolicited offer to buy your business.
As unsolicited offers increase, so too does the need for you to be ready if an opportunity comes your way. Unlike when the owner is in control of when he/she decides to list a property, the hallmark of an unsolicited offer is the fact that the owner doesn’t’ know when it is going happen; which means you need to operate your business as if an offer were always around the corner.
Companies that are sloppily put together with shoddy bookkeeping or too much customer concentration, or that are run by a Hub & Spoke manager, will end up being passed over for turnkey operations.
The time is now for you to get your company ready to showcase when opportunity comes knocking.
