TEMpting; How Business Buyers and Sellers Have Been Tempted This Week…

How Saleable is Your Business in 2014?
How Saleable do you want Your Business 2014?
What are you waiting for? GET YOUR SCORE…

This week, I bought a website!

Great domain name.
Both dotcom and dotcom.au versions in included.
Already channeling “uniques” and $$ (small numbers at this stage but great berth)
A delightful seller, willing to assist with the transfer (although my techies are good to go whenever I make the call!)
All for less than $200.
Good shopping or what…

Really looking forward to the “renovation” part now, to get this little baby humming along nicely. Waiting for the tap on the shoulder from the few corporates that will want this. Time will tell on this strategy.

But even if they don’t, no matter. At this rate, the investment will be paid off under 12 months so the rest will be cream.

Gotta love that!

GOT A WEBSITE FOR SALE?

If you want to do sell a website or you’re looking to buy a website (excellent bolt-on possibilities), please email me at dhall@businessbrokers.com.au


If any of the following tickle your fancy, please email me at dhall@businessbrokers.com.au, letting me know which one it is…

FOR SALE…

BS30 Online Venue Business

Completed Sellability Score
Still waiting on the revised figures. Since got confirmation that they don’t look as healthy as first intimated. Deciding whether to go back to the 4 interested parties, maybe there will be some interest regardless.

BS49 Home Help…

So the two parties have meet to sit down and nut it out. A 2 hour briefing covered off most of the pre-Due Diligence questions. We’ve got one more meeting with the potential buyer tomorrow. Be interesting to see what further questions are to be asked. Wondering if it might be an earnout conversation… Next week should see this move rather quickly.

BS53 Balloons! and all that goes with them…

Touched base with local competitors and two parties were interested enough to request and return the  CA, in readiness for receiving the Business Profile. Really want either of these two to be courageous enough to give it a go, as they at least understand the industry and the potential this one offers, especially as a bolt-on. Such corporate appeal, so untapped. Let’s see what their feedback is.

BS59 Niche Service Provider in Building Trade

via Sellability Score. It’s all systems go! Awaiting on sign-off of IM and advertisement. Once done, we go to market. This is a cracker for a white-collar wanting to get out of the office or a tradie wanting to get off the tools.

BS60 Advertising and Events agency
(via Sellability Score)

Waiting on one final piece of information for the IM. Advertisement is good to go on the websites, so that will be arranged tomorrow. Looking forward to calling a few people I know about this one too, can see it slotting in very nicely.

BS72 Niche Bookseller and Training Provider

The IM is taking somewhat longer than expected (which is most frustration!) but nonetheless, it is what it is. Hope to get that sorted by tomorrow as well.

Training provider

Assisting colleague by introducing the perfect buyer for his selling client. This should be a no-brainer, expect with the vendor being particularly unhelpful, the Buyer is in the process of deciding what it’s worth to their business to buy as opposed to what it’s worth. This number is almost finalised, so hope to get it sorted shortly.


 

It’s all happening….

Others I’ve talked too.. are you interested in any one of them?

  • a particular event
  • sales and services
  • magazine
  • specialty bed linen
  • facilities management
  • speciality giftware
  • technology reseller
  • specialty children’s products x 2
  • overseas medical procedures

If yes, let me know…


 

Exploring the Sale Option?

GET YOUR SCORE…

Onwards and Upwards!

answer these questions to kickstart your Online Strategy…

help

The following is a series of questions to help start your thinking around your Online Strategy. 

  • Does the Business currently have an online presence at all? If not, why not?
  • Is there a mapped out Online Strategy in place?
  • If yes, how old is it?
  • How well has it been executed?
  • If not yet and  it had to be executed immediately, does it make sense?
  • Is it addressing what really needs to be addressed?
  • If yes, what’s worked? what hasn’t?
  • What are you still doing that you shouldn’t be?
  • If selling is an option, does it appeal to a Buyer in its current form?
  • Is it set up to be able to “hand over” to a third party?
  • How are the online records (eg Google Anaytics) looking?
  • Does this reporting of the Business (e.g.: to the ATO) reflect its online “value”?
  • Where is the Online Strategy at right now vs. where does it want/intend to be?
  • If it relies solely on YOU, what steps need to be taken to reduce the risk/potential damage?
  • Is there the option to do both ie build/acquire to grow and then Exit once all in place?
  • Alternatively, is now the prime time to acquire an Online business to help fill gaps, if that’s possible?
  • If looking at a Buy option, will acquiring a website get the Business there more quickly?

In order for you to Start with the End in Mind TODAY, what has to happen?
Based on where the Business is now and what is wanted long-term, will determine the gaps to be filled.

By all means contact me if you want to talk any of this through…

buy | sell websites; here’s what I need in order to pique my interest…

GoogleAnalytics

So you have a website to sell.
You want to come and talk to me about it but you’re not sure about what’s involved.
Here’s what I will ask of you.

Apart from standard questions I ask, mainly around the history of the site, why it started, it’s story really, I will need to see the following to substantiate revenue/income and traffic/statistics:

  • screen shots of what you use to collect the monies
    for example: PayPal, Adsense, affiliates, etc
  • Screen shots or PDFs of the Google “Analytics” summary

Ideally these are for the duration that the site has been running.

With any of this information, please blacken out any personal details not relevant to me, like bank account details etc.

These are the basics required to ascertain what you’ve got and how you prove it.
Easy!

 

what has Online Strategy got to do with Exit?

OnlineStrategy3

 

During the life-cycle of building a Mother of a Business, it makes perfect sense to ask a number of provoking, asset-protection, risk-minimisation questions to get YOU, the Business Owner, thinking along the lines of “Start with the End in Mind” TODAY, regardless of how old the Business is.

Thinking Online Strategy is no different!

Taking this initiative is paramount for ALL Business Owners who seriously want to successfully transition the Business while YOU are in the best position to do so. With potential Business Owners asking more and more about Online Strategy and Execution as part of their due diligence, you cannot afford to be addressing it.

There are benefits to the business now as well, in the proactive nature of this action taken. This is in terms of knowing that a plan is in place, that it is being actively worked towards and that it will add to the value of the business at time of sale..

Where you don’t not want to entertain this discussion at all when in a position to influence the Exit outcome, you may instead think it will all sort itself out in the end. To some extent, this is correct. Ultimately, it will get sorted, but in the way YOU the Business Owner had envisaged? Possibly not.

If an Online Strategy does not feature has part of the business model, the asking price will be discounted.

Why? Isn’t that an opportunity for the new owner? Yes it is. But a Buyer is not going to pay you for the privilege of trying something that you have not.

Your Business may be the 2nd largest, if not the largest asset owned, therefore it needs to be handled with respect accordingly.

If you’re serious about having this conversation, please contact me.

buy | sell websites; must be able to prove what you claim…

OnlineBusiness1

Of late, I’ve had quite a few website owners come to me saying they want to sell… excellent. But (following on from yesterdays post), when asked to “prove” what they’re telling me, they go very very quiet. So what’s going on?

Whether it be a business or a website, you still need to answer these questions:

  • have you been able to make a go of your Business/website?
  • Is your business/website making a profit?
  • How does your Business/website make money?

Just because it’s a website does not make the answers to these questions any less important.

Having a website for sale implies similar criteria is being taken care of, as is for a business ie::

o    a database of clients/customers
o    systems in place (which may be technology driven)
o    Google presence
o    looked after its position
o    growth potential
o    automated, so it’s not reliant solely on the owner
o    numbers that make sense and can be verified
o    measurable ways of indicating how all of the above makes profit!
o    assuming all goes ahead, options on how to make the sale happen

Bottomline = how can you prove what you are claiming?

Selling a website is no different from selling a business really.
It’s not called an Online Business for nothing!

The business model may be what’s different but the fundamentals still apply…

 

how well is your Business doing what it does (really)?

Proof

Lets review how well your Business sells itself, both online and offline. What I mean by that is…

  • have you been able to make a go of your Business?
  • Is your business making a profit?
  • How does your Business make money?

A learned Broker colleague once said to me:
“What a buyer buys is profit, the reason they buy it is the potential”.

If you’re not able to demonstrate how you have made a go of your Business, how it is turning over revenue, paying all its bills and leaving profit for you as the owner, to do with what you will… then how can you expect a prospective buyer to believe that it’s possible and be able to weight its value.

Granted, there is always the acquisition of a business from a strategic point of view (ie buy it for its client list only for example), but that really does depend on a particular type of buyer,and they’re not likely to reveal that to you, the seller, are they?

Having a business as an asset implies certain criteria is being taken care of, that it has:
o    a database of clients/customers
o    systems in place, and ideally automated
o    brand presence
o    looked after its IP
o    growth potential
o    management, so it’s not reliant solely on the owner
o    numbers that make sense,and have been reported
o    measurable ways of indicating how all of the above makes profit!
o    assuming all goes ahead, options on how to make the sale happen

Bottomline = how can you prove what you are claiming?

If any of the above cannot be qualified, then it raises the question of whether this business is actually an asset, or as good as first portrayed, ready for sale.

The answer may very well be no.

However, that’s not to say that parts of the whole cannot be sold and some payback realised. It may mean though that the vision of grandeur dreamed about come sale day will not eventuate after all…

Start with the end in mind TODAY, regardless of how old your business is, and slowly but surely think through how well you can demonstrate and illustrate what your Business does, what you can do to improve it, restructure it, have it show the profit that all Buyers are looking to score!

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