There are many reasons why people decide to sell their businesses, and with selling a business for the first time often being incredibly daunting, we are here to provide advice for selling a business, with the ultimate aim of allowing first time business sellers to sell their businesses as easily as possibly with minimal hurdles.
 
If you are currently considering selling a business for the first time, be sure to read our systematic guide!
 
Taking the Decision to Sell
 
There are many reasons why people consider selling their businesses, but before you put your business up for sale, be sure that you know your reasons. Some of the popular reasons why people choose to sell their businesses include capitalisation, ill health, limited potential, new projects, no longer finding enjoyment, personal debt and to seek better work/life balances.
 
Determine Your Selling Points
 
Once you have decided to sell your business you need to determine what the best-selling points are for your business so that you can highlight these selling points to potential buyers. Some great selling points that many buyers look out for include customer base, existing interest, growth market, location and trading history.
 
Assemble Your Partners
 
When selling a business for the first time you will need to ensure that you have a full team behind you to assist you throughout the entire process. There are a number of professionals that you may want to consider hiring at this stage but the following team members should be considered essential: accountant, financer, business sale agent, solicitor and tax advisor.
 
Value Your Business
 
Before you put your business for sale you need to value your business. Being realistic and asking for advice from your accountant, banker and business sales agent. There are a number of factors that you have to consider when valuing your business including your business assets, liquidity of assets, profitability and revenue.
 
Prepare for the Business Sale
 
Preparing for a business sale is hard work involving many different factors. These factors vary from business sale to business sale, so it is important that you speak to your team about how you should prepare. However, preparation that is generally involved includes accounts, asset disposal, accounts archive, assets schedule, banking, commercial agreements, employee information, insurance policies, intellectual property rights, license information, limited company information, property documentation and reasons for sale. You should ensure that you have all of these things plus anything else that your financial advisor suggests ready before selling your businesses to avoid having to leave potential buyers waiting.
 
Marketing Your Business Sale
 
Once you have completed all of the preparation for selling your business, it is time to start marketing it, putting it right in front of the most relevant people. You need to identify potential buyers, determining the type of buyers that your business will appeal to and utilise targeted advertising.  Targeted advertising is essential as it allows yours to choose a specific audience based on location, industrial sector and more. At this stage, you may want to employ a professional with contacts to popular business buyers to speed up the sale of your business.
 
Qualifying Potential Buyers
 
It is important that you qualify all potential buyers at your earliest possible convenience so that you don’t end up wasting time on those that aren’t in the position to buy your business. Upon speaking to interested parties, you should ensure that you confirm timescales, ask about their previous related experience, ask about their reasons for buying and verify their available finance. This will help you to quickly determine how serious each potential buyer may be and highlight who you should spend your time talking to.
 
Negotiating Terms
 
Once you have found a buyer that you are happy to sell your business to it is time to negotiate the terms of your business sale whilst carefully considering financing, whether your terms are legally binding and sale price.
 
This guide covers the basic steps involved in selling a business and has hopefully helped you gain a good understanding of the different processes involved. If after reading this you still feel confident that you want to sell your business we advise that you go ahead, after all, the earlier you get started the earlier your sale will be finalised. Good luck!