For Sale By Owner

Are You Ready to Sell a Business?

Selling your business doesn't have to be an exasperating, time consuming and expensive endeavour. Make things easier on yourself by using American Fortune’s expert assistance today!

• Take advantage of our affordable business assistance in selling your business.
• American Fortune Business For Sale By Owner (BFSBO) program provides you with all of the tools and resources to help you market and successfully sell your business.  By using our tools and following our process you will save yourself a lot of frustration and achieve a higher selling price.
• You will retain control of the process and you will control who you disclose information about your business. You will put yourself in the driver's seat when it comes to selling your business, after all ..."No one knows your business better than you."

Here Is How AMERICAN FORTUNE BFSBO Can Help

• One of our experienced Merger & Acquisition Experts will work with you one on one to assist you in preparing and selling your business.
• You control the amount of assistance by choosing tools and support that suits your individual needs.
• You will have the ability to tap into our wealth of experience, knowledge and expertise.   Our support and guidance will help you tackle problems and be more creative in deal structuring.

AMERICAN FORTUNE Support

Eliminate the guesswork on your potential buyers by making sure they are qualified to buy your business. Use our Banking partners to ensure that your time isn't wasted dealing with unqualified buyers, poor credit, and any other difficulties that may arise during the selling process of your business.

Key Points To Review

1. Keep Emotions Out Of The Sale: Many FSBO attempts fail because the seller is still too emotionally invested in their business to be objective about it.
2. Value Your Business: You need to know just how much your business is worth on the open market. You need to have a professionally prepared business valuation that is very defensible against the challenges by buyers. Remember, your business is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. You want to find the person that is willing to pay what your business is really worth.
3. Timing: Business Success is not the only key to a successful business sale. Obviously some business sales are forced forward due to circumstances that need immediate action for example a health issue, retirement or a divorce. But if you can choose when you go on the market then you are going to want to start the selling process when the demand for business acquisitions is higher. Such planning will assure you a better price of your business.
4. Preparing Your Business: Physical presentation of your business is helpful but nothing compares to a solid EBIDTA and clean financials.  Business buyers are attracted to businesses in healthy industries and with lots of potential for growth. You’ll also need to be sure you have the appropriate disclosure on all areas of your business. Remember, selling your business on your own does not mean you are not subject to all disclosure laws and you may be subject to legal action if you have not disclosed information properly.
5. Marketing Your Business For Sale: You can list your business for sale on various websites to provide you with Internet exposure. You also need to create a target list of potential buyers that might have an interest in acquiring your business. Let’s face it; selling your business would be almost impossible if no one knew that it was on the market. But not so fast, if the wrong people especially employees or competitors find out that you are selling your business it could have severe affects on your business. Be very careful how you advertise and market your business for sale. Provide just enough information to grab the interest of buyers. Provide information in a manner that would not allow buyers or even worse you employees, competitors, bank, suppliers and others to identify you and your business.
6. Roadmap To Successfully Sell Your Business: It is very critical that you have a good process to sell your business.  The more you know about the problems and issues that arise in a sale of a business the more likely you will be able to have an upper hand in negotiations and deal structure.  Being prepared will help you in not being taken advantage of by buyers.  Many buyers know how to play the game, their tactics will exasperate you and waste a lot of your time.
7. Who Is Your Buyer: Know who you are marketing to, take an honest assessment of your business and determine who is most likely to be your buyer. Is it an investor, first-time business owner, financial or strategic buyer? Once you have pinned down the buyer, market to that group of buyers heavily. Most buyers don't start out "looking to buy". Many buyers are simply “curies” or "just looking" but an excellent opportunity, price, or timing could make your business too attractive to pass up. Selling your business is also a numbers game, so the more people see your ads the better chance that you will receive inquiries from potential buyers.
8. Financing: Most buyers to not have a good grasp on obtaining a loan to acquire a business. They assume that business loans are easy to obtain.  They may already have told by an acquaintance that works in a local bank that they could easily obtain a bank loan.  The reality is that bank loans for an acquisition are very difficult to obtain.  In today’s economy and banking realities bankers require that the buyer put down a substantial down payment and that the seller offer some seller financing.
9. Due Diligence: Most sellers assume that the buyer has been through the process and knows the stages of buying a business.  The buyer that has never purchased and or operated a business can be difficult to deal with because they have very little or no knowledge about the process of buying a business let alone operating the business.  The experienced buyers are usually easier to deal with since they have purchased businesses and operated businesses in the past. However, you have to be very careful with these experienced buyers, they will tell you what you want to hear and after 6-8 months of due diligence will tell you that your business is only worth 50% of your asking price.  Having a very good grip on all of the possible issues that arise during the buyers due diligence is very critical.
10. Closing: When it is time to close on the sale many events need to be carefully coordinated.  Many deals fall apart at this stage since the deal terms such as taxation, purchase price allocation, bank financing, contract language, last minute negotiation attempts by buyers, nervous buyers and other issues may kill the deal.  It’s at this time that experience in Mergers & Acquisitions can be extremely helpful.

Our Value Added Services Outperform The Function of Business Brokers

What Is My Business Worth?

Solid and defensible valuations - Click Here

Is My Business Ready For The Market?

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