What Happens When You Wait Too Long To Sell Your Business?
What Happens When You Wait Too Long To Sell Your Business?
It can be difficult to walk away from a business that’s turning a profit. But if you’re anywhere near your intended exit date, that may be exactly when you should be putting your company for sale!
Almost every business is destined to cycle through a growth, a maturity, and a decline stage. And the best time to sell is when your company is mature enough to be consistently profitable, and has a proven set of business systems in place.
Too many owners take their foot off the gas when their business reaches the maturity stage. They milk their profits for as long as possible, and then try to sell when revenues are declining.
Buyers, however, are looking for healthy, successful businesses where profits are not only reliable, but are ideally still on the rise. So, if you wait too long to sell your business, there’s a good chance you’ll be forced to choose between dredging up the energy and resources to revitalize its growth – or accepting a much-reduced price.
Working with a broker will help you better understand:
- where your business needs to be performance-wise to be sellable,
- what prospective buyers are typically looking for in a company, and
- the timeline that’s likely to be involved in selling your business
It may feel counterintuitive to sell while your business is still a going concern. But not only will your company be worth a great deal more during its peak earning years, some businesses literally become unsellable once they enter the stage of decline.
