HOW TO BEAT THE STATISTICS WHEN SELLING YOUR BUSINESS

Chris Mitchell, Divest Merge Acquire Synergy looks at the disturbing numbers surrounding business aquisitions and HOW to escape these horrible statistics when selling your business:

? Only 20 per cent of all of the businesses listed for sale ever sell.

? 90 per cent of all of the people who begin the search to buy a business never complete a transaction.

These US small business sales benchmarks would apply equally to the Australian small business market, and to a slightly lesser extent, to larger businesses.

The reasons for these atrocious statistics are many, but include the industry’s over reliance on passive web-based marketing and the under-utilisation of targeted B2B marketing.

It is for these reasons that we have invested heavily over 24 years and over $5 million in our M&A database, so we can actively target strategic buyers for each business.

This allows us to achieve for our clients the best possible success rates, well above industry averages and substantially better than 80 per cent of all clients taken to market.

The key difference between passive web based or internet marketing and targeted B2B marketing is immense. Passive internet marketing is akin to “fishing” – you place your internet advertisement on multiple websites, however, you are simply waiting for active buyers to look, search and find it.

In contrast, with a targeted B2B marketing campaign you can go directly to the right potential buyers.

Even if they are not currently looking, if you present a good opportunity to a CEO, GM, large company or Private Equity, they are compelled to consider it.

In fact, we won’t take on the responsibility of selling a client’s business unless we can identify and target substantial numbers of strategic buyers for that business.

Without the right tools, M&A can be a massively wasteful process for everyone involved. Yet even with the perfect process, the product you are selling (the business itself) is imperfect and things can be wrong, or go wrong.

No matter how good the M&A Advisor and processes are, if the client’s business performance goes down, everyone goes down with the ship!

A large part of the solution is engaging a professional M&A firm with proven systems, processes, documentation, training and resources who can properly market opportunities to target the right buyers.

Contact Chris Mitchell, CA - [email protected]

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