Finding Qualified Buyers for your Business Part 1
You’ve worked hard to grow your business into a successful venture. Now you want to sell it and reap the benefits of all those years of hard work. There are many questions involved with selling a business, but the most important is: How do you find qualified buyers?
Some people say the quantity of buyers that are interested in buying your business is most important. Others say the quality of buyers is most important, regardless of quantity. But the correct answer is both are very important. Here’s why:
If you have 50 buyers interested in your business, then you have plenty of quantity. But if you are selling a $1,000,000 manufacturing business and these buyers can only afford a business that costs less than $300,000, or if they all prefer a service business, then this “quantity” of buyers is a waste of time. You will spend hours talking to unqualified buyers about your business when they have no interest in actually buying it.
Conversely, say you only have 2 buyers interested in your business and they are looking to spend at least $1,000,000 on a manufacturing business. You have good buyer “quality” but not enough quantity. On average, you need at least 10 or more qualified buyers to look at your business before you can reasonably expect to sell it. And the more buyers you have looking at your business, the higher the sales price typically is.
In a nutshell, the more qualified buyers you have looking at your business, the faster you will sell your business and the more money you will make on the sale. But how do you get both quantity and quality of buyers interested in your business? The key is to employ several methods of effective advertising that don’t cost you a fortune.
Word of Mouth Advertising
This method of advertising is very spotty and should not be considered a core form of advertising. Due to its nature, your business is exposed to a very limited number of buyers that probably aren’t qualified. As a result, this method of advertising provides neither quantity nor quality, which makes it very ineffective at helping you sell your business.
