If both you and your business are ready for sale it should take between 3-8 months to sell your business.
The key sentence is, “If both you and your business are ready for sale”. There are two distinct parts to selling a business, “sales readiness” and the “sale process”. The sale process entails putting your business on the market and is the part that should take between 3-8 months. The “sales readiness” part may take the longest and is best determined through a structured exit planning process. A good exit plan will consider whether you and your business are ready for sale and, if not, it would set out an action plan, with timelines, for closing the gap.
A lot of business owners go to market when they aren’t ready resulting in the business either not selling, or the business selling at lower than market value. It can take time to get a business ready for sale and what you don’t want is to be forced to go to market when your business is not sale ready.
How can you shorten the time to sell your business? The solution is to put an exit plan in place.
A good exit plan will consider whether you are ready for sale by looking at your “cash out” requirements versus what you can reasonably expect to receive if you sell. You can then either come to terms with the gap, outside of a pressurised sale process, or work on closing the gap before going into the sales process.
A good exit plan will also look at your business to see if it is ready for sale. It would consider matters such as are key contracts in place, quality of the management team and succession plans in place, are taxes in order as well as numerous other matters that may be a pitfall in selling your business.
The exit plan will leave you with an action plan to optimise your sale price and an estimate of time to close the gap.
Should you be interested in a short no obligation consultation please feel free to contact us or alternatively visit our website.
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