by Glen Cooper, CBI, CBA, BVAL
Selling a business is always complicated. Considering what I am about to tell you will make it easier to understand.
I’ve been selling businesses full-time for nearly 30 years. I don’t believe I need to be modest.
I know how it GETS done. I know how you WANT it done. I know how it SHOULD BE done.
Understanding those three aspects of the process, and bringing them into alignment, is the key to making it all work.
In this series of five blogs/podcasts, I will be discussing all of the major issues involved in selling a business.
I have chosen to write it in five parts:
Ø Part 1. Today’s Market
Ø Part 2. Basic Steps of Selling A Business
Ø Part 3. Questions to Ask a Business Broker
Ø Part 4. Surprises You Might Expect
Ø Part 5. After the Sale
Today’s blog/podcast will be my comments on the market today. Although my comments could be thought to be relevant only to the U.S. market and unique to Maine, I don’t really think that our market is all that different from many others, even in other countries.
Today’s Market:
Time to Get Going!
I am a student of historical trends and I believe today is the most interesting time in all of human history. Because of a unique alignment of causal effects, it is obviously a great time to buy or start a business.
But, I also think it happens, oddly, to be a good time to sell as well. In both cases, it is time to get going.
I never thought that buying and selling could both be favored at the same time, but I believe that is exactly what is true right now.
Uncertainty creates opportunity. Times like these create tomorrow’s business legends. We are right in the midst of the changes that will be tomorrow’s “best thing that ever happened to us.”
It is unlike any previous time because:
1) Generational shifts are changing the way businesses work,
2) Recession is causing a worldwide power structure re-mix, and
3) Scientific breakthroughs are revolutionizing life as we know it.
How does this play itself out?
A business owner in Maine, (we’ll call him John) sells his business because he has a unique opportunity to move and start a whole new life that he didn’t expect.
His business is bought by a young couple who have been traveling overseas for several years.
The whole thing is financed without a bank or SBA guaranty, by a group of third party investors, with a strong down payment from the buyer, and with the help of seller financing that will actually save John taxes.
John’s oldest daughter, with two young children, is a successful executive in a biogenetics firm, is now a millionaire, and is buying mom and dad a separate home near her beachfront coastal home. John is relieved. He will now be free of worry about workers or computers he no longer understands.
The young couple buying John’s business is moving back to Maine for safety and family reasons. They know just how to take John’s business to a completely different level by creating a new, interactive, multi-lingual website for selling John’s product and service worldwide to a niche market.
These buyers have found financing through one of their former employers, now involved in a venture capital fund that organizes small investors on the Internet into larger pools of investment capital to buy businesses.
All of this is what I mean by generational shifts and new opportunities fueled by technology. It’s truly a whole new business buying and selling market.
Buyers have always been younger than business sellers, but today, it makes a bigger difference. Generation Xers are now changing how business is done because they have new tools: new analytic tools, new communications tools and new collaborative tools. Playing computer games all those years, it turns out, had the potential of making you an excellent global resource manager. Who knew?
Recession is causing a dip in the prices of some businesses. But, surprise of surprises, even that old, sleepy, stable business in Maine that reliably serves a steady, safe and friendly local community, can look pretty good when compared to the lower investment returns of previously good investments and the new uncertainties of previously chosen lifestyles.
Banks are expected to be back in the business of small business lending soon, but in the meantime, the market is filling the vacuum in most creative ways. Private funds are coming out for the right deals.
Some of those “right deals” are brand new businesses founded on new technologies. But, just as many, are older businesses given new life with new technology. Targeting niche markets has never been easier. If there are as few as just 1,000 people worldwide that want something, that small number of people can be a great business market for someone who sees their unique need. Technology is also creating unique needs.
As the temperature warms and we head into summer, I remember why people buy businesses in Maine: if they do, they get to live here!
Maine is still a great place to buy a business. Maine is as physically, socially, politically and economically safe as anywhere else on earth!
Other places may be shaky, but things still work here. We also have a great lifestyle.
Who wouldn’t want what we have?
Next Blog/Podcast: The Six Steps of Selling A Business
Tags: business for sale, Business selling market today, for sale maine business, good time to sell a business, how to sell a business, maine business brokers, maine businesses for sale, new business buyers, sell a business, sell a franchise, sell a restaurant, Selling a Business
