Is your business even saleable?

It’s normal for most business owners to see their company as their pension pot and security for the future. However the reality is that only 80% of businesses put on the market ever actually sell. This can be a bitter pill to swallow for many owners who leave it far too late to plan ahead and often leads to the business slowly declining over a few years becoming less attractive and they end up walking away or shutting the doors.

I have seen this first hand a number of times in my quest to acquire companies in the past, having made what I believe to be reasonable offers to owners get rebuffed, only to see them close down a couple of years later when they could have enabled the business to continue to another generation. Its really sad that someone’s life work and achievements can just disappear. Don’t let this be you !

We are currently going through a shift in wealth transfer from the baby boomer generation who have run traditional businesses and the focus of a younger generation, that have a different attitude in relation to work life balance and less appetite for risk in business. Although its quite ironic they all want to work on a start up company that only has a very slim chance of being successful.

In almost all my discussions with business owner who are thinking of selling their companies I ask if they have offered their existing team members the chance to buy into the company and the answer is always that whilst they are committed members of the team who love their job, they don’t have any desire to run the business or take on any financial responsibility.