Mistake #5 – Leaving it too late to sell your business
Blog > 5 of 5 Mistakes Owners Make Selling Their Business
Did you wait too long to sell your business?
One of our friends recently told the story of how he wished he had sold his mining shares back in 2013. His delay cost him many hundreds of thousand dollars. Leaving it too late to sell your business could cost you a lot more.
For some owners it may be best to never sell. Maybe profits will continue to rapidly grow, risks remain minimal and management succession is guaranteed. For most business owners it is not so simple.
If you sell your business at the right time it should be attractive to buyers, be an easy low risk transaction for you, and should attain top value.
Successful business sales usually occur when the business owners plan the sale and sell for a variety of non-pressing personal and business/ financial reasons. They make sure that their business is “Sale Ready” and then pick the opportune time, of their choice, to sell.
If you wait until your energy and passion are diminished, growth has stalled, and risks abound it could cost you a lot.
It may be that your business is exposed to risks that either you do not have the energy to tackle or ones that unlikely to be perceived by potential purchasers, if so you may need to consider a sale sooner rather than later.
Hopefully you will never be in the position where ill health, other family reasons or deteriorating business performance make you a forced seller.
Many business owners realise they have spent most of their lives building a great business, but that there has been a cost along the way. Typically, those long interruption free overseas holidays, extended time with family and improving the golf swing have been pleasures deferred.
One business owner recently said to us “I don’t want to stop working, but I can’t have so much of our family money tied up in this business, I need to sell and be involved with smaller investments”. He was lucky, he had made sure that his business was “Sale Ready” and was selling at a time of his choosing.
We often come across business owners who just “know” that it is time to sell. It is often for a combination of the reasons above and it can be a very emotional decision with ramifications to their whole way of life.
The lesson learned from our experience is to sell when it is right for you but to always make sure you make sure your business is “Sale Ready” so that when you do decide to sell you can receive full value.
For a discussion on selling your business, please call either Tony Holley on 0417313136 anytime – we at Hamilton Rich understand these conversations can be difficult to have during business hours.
Blog > 5 of 5 Mistakes Owners Make Selling Their Business
Download the “Five Mistakes Business Owners Make When Selling SME Businesses” PDF
