Timing Is Everything: The Best Time For A dentist To Sell Their Practice

Have you ever wondered, when’s the best time to sell your dental practice?At Some point,

Start With Why: What’s Your Motivation For Selling Your Dental Practice

Some dentists will want to sell their dental practice for the highest value possible, and they don't really care, potentially, who buys their practice. For them, getting the most out of that practice sale is utmost important to them.

For other dentists, they've built this legacy, they've built their group of associates, they've built their team, so they want to make sure they hand off that team to someone who's going to continue in the same fashion that they have been practicing in for many, many years.

What Determines It’s Time To Sell

The best time to sell your practice, really, is dependent on you.

There is no“perfect”time to sell your practice, whether it's at the height of the market or the bottom of the market, ultimately you're going to be the deciding factor as to when you are ready to retire.

Setting You Up For Success

We hope to have enough time to do enough planning for you so that you can actually ease into your transition. Ideally, we recommend, as a rule of thumb, that you want to transition at a minimum two years before you want to be done practicing dentistry.

This gives you your best option in terms of being able to stay on and do a transition with the new owner if you'd like it, or ultimately work somewhere else on a part-time basis to fulfill your need to continue practicing dentistry.

Plan & Prepare For The Unexpected

Some personal factors that affect a lot of our clients are injury, injury's quite common, youknow, we've gotten to the point where either their backs or hands or eyes, many factors, those are what we call external factors.

Our body will tell us, sometimes, when we're ready to retire.

Control What You Can To Mitigate Your Risk

External factors that we can and can't control, as well, will be something like our landlord and our lease. Exit strategies depend on, sometimes, even the political environment, how it changes how we practice dentistry, what we charge for dentistry, and sometimes just the market demand will be very, very soft at a certain time so we may want to hold onto the practice in order to get the most value out of it.

“Ultimately, having enough time to plan your proper exit strategy is one of the most important things.”

Get The Numbers Right To Maximize Your Return

There are so many factors that play into the discussion around tax planning, making sure yourPC is pure enough, does it matter, am I going to be selling shares versus assets?

That’s a topic for another time, but ultimately, those decisions can factor in how long it's going to take to put that plan into place before you sell your practice.

Ideally, you want to have your accountant walking hand-in-hand with you, so you can implement that tax strategy. If it's complex and needs more time then you've got the time to be able to do it.

So anywhere between three and five years is“perfect”, and then you want to bring in your accountant and your broker so that you can determine what the value is for your practice and then determine what the tax implications are at that value point.

Other Considerations For Dentists Who Own Their Own Clinic(s)

Ask important questions to the professionals on your team such as:

-Do I need to do anything else to my practice to take it to either the next level? -Do I need to clean up any debts in the practice -Do I need to solve any contract issues?

At Some point, you may need to bring in a lawyer as well to deal with any associate contracts, any staff contracts, and then you want to make sure your lease is in good shape as well, so that you have renewal terms within your lease so that the buyer has the option to stay at that location.

Dot Your “i’s” And Cross Your “t’s”

To summarize, when planning to sell your dental practice you have lots of options and lots of different markets. We can go over the different ways that you can sell your dental practice, we can go over the different options in terms you have of buyers right now, and a lot of times, if you're in a seller's market, you can choose who your buyer might be at that time.

If you're interested in talking to us about what it takes to get your practice on the market, or get it ready to go to the market, please feel free to give us a call at 1-866-Go-Avail or visitCallWithAVAIL.com to schedule a no charge, no obligation consult with our team. We're also happy to meet with you for coffee, at the clinic, or at the office–depending on the confidentiality required in your situation.