Why do you really want to sell your business?

There isn't a business owner alive who hasn't dreamt of selling their business. Just as millions of office-bound workers dream of quitting their jobs and going it alone, so business owners dream of the day when unreliable suppliers, bad payers, seasonal dips, and the maze of modern marketing are no longer problems that haunt them in the early hours.  Even very highly successful entrepreneurs, particularly in the UK, dream of getting out and going back to the simple life –leisure, sun-kissed beaches, and happy family lives all playing a significant part.  So much so in fact that it's a well-established fact in the UK entrepreneur market that a lot of serious entrepreneurs are actually second-time-rounders. They've already set up one successful business, and sold out for the magic million mark.  (It's funny how we still dream of being 'millionaires' even though a million barely buys you a house with a garden in a decent part of Edinburgh these days.  If being a millionaire were your aspiration five years ago, you better up the anti.)

Anyway these people have made it, life is good, and they can relax now.  Except they can't; or at least the good ones can’t. In the UK you get a lot of folk who 'make it' then realise that it was never just about having the money to pay off the mortgage and take the round the world cruise.  They really miss the thrill of running a business. Most of all they miss the strategy and buzz of playing the game and trading one business for another in the search of further success - I hope that's why you're reading this chapter.  But at the end of the day if all you really want to do is sell up and go fishing then good luck to you.

 If you're selling up to get out of the game or selling up as part of a plan to cash in your chips and move to a bigger game then a lot of the ground rules are still the same but you must be absolutely clear in your head which type of seller you are. Don't think it's going to be easy either because people bidding for your business will demand no end of information about it and you'll have to have an answer every question – starting with the obvious one of 'why do you want to sell it?'  If it's because you fancy retiring and growing prize marrows then great because that's the kind of answer people might want to hear, but don't expect anyone to believe that if you're in your twenties (or for that matter if you're an Asian-Scots multimillionaire known for speculating).

So, given that you’re not just giving up, what is your reason for selling? If the real reason is that you think you've reached a dead end and the business is either going to stay still or else start to decline then that's likely to be sniffed out by potential buyers who will either lower the bid or walk away.  You really need to get the business into a condition where you can, hand on heart, say that while you are confident about the business and its future, you desperately want to focus on another project that's got you excited in a different direction.  This had better be the truth and you better be able to give evidence of the secure future of the business you are selling because the buyer won’t stop probing until they’ve found what’s really going on.

Be confident about a business you are about to sell because of its intrinsic value, not its superficial appeal.