Selling a Business

Show strong financial performance.

Many business sales fall through due to the poor planning and presentation of the financial accounts. Planning well ahead ensures that your business has a financial record that attracts buyers. This will also help to make the business more salable, valuable, and will lead to a quicker and smoother sale.

The first step is to ensure that your finances are in good order. Although this should be the case at any time, planning to sell your business really makes you look very carefully at this . One major area is control of working capital, this can be done through reducing levels of stock and controlling creditors. You may also be able to cut costs, try to eliminate unnecessary perks. You may also consider selling underused equipment.

You will also want to present your accounts as attractively as possible. Buyers usually prefer businesses that show increasing profits year on year. If possible, your financial performance should be reasonably stable throughout the year. You may be able to bring forward or delay purchases and sales to help with this.

Good sales forecasts will help to increase prospective purchasers' confidence in your business - but make sure that they are realistic and can be supported .

To maximise short-term profits you can reduce longer-term investment. For example you might avoid expenses like advertising heavily or taking on new staff. But avoid excessive cost-cutting - you need to maintain spending in essential areas, otherwise the business suffers and so do the price buyers offer.

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