Selling too high doesn’t happen often. But hey, if you can get it to happen without lying, cheating, defrauding and incurring financial or liberty liabilities, then why not?
Let’s be clear “selling too high” is not a seller problem. For the most part it is not a buyer problem either. Willing buyer – willing seller, and all that. Nobody buys a business the way one buys a house; you know, half an hour snoop, some estate agent pressure, a clumsy deed of sale, and the deal is done, save for the bond arrangements.
Selling businesses is an entirely different matter. Weeks and even months of investigating the business history and the likely future are condensed into a variety of different business plans and financial forecasts. Through that process, if any undue pressure is suggested by the seller, that bluff is called quite quickly, and usually with devastating consequences.
The best way of speeding the process up is to give the investor what he wants, and in an easily usable format. The investigation and due diligence process is a gruelling one. These guys are often tasked with other people’s money, which demands a return. If it goes wrong, then their round bits are on cubed things.
In a forest of poorly prepared businesses with high asking prices, a well prepared business and owner has a better chance at hitting the jackpot.
I was involved in the sale of a business about ten years ago where a plan came together quite beautifully. It all happened like this:
About a year before the sellers placing their business on the market, they had spoken to me. I’m a “call a spade a spade” kinda guy. They hadn’t liked the message I gave them. So they went off somewhere else for more comfortable sale story. It did not take long to get an offer. Sort of in mid reality check, a mutual friend suggested that they run it by us for another opinion before accepting.
That took some doing, but we all put our big girl panties on, and had a look. Frankly, the deal in offer was such a waste for the sellers. They were selling too low, on lousy terms. I told them as much. Well not exactly.
What happened after that, taught us all some valuable lessons in being prepaired for sale – the gentle art of identifying a bunch of potential future owners of a business, and pre pairing for future benefit to all.