Niche Exit Planning Tactics
Selling a Wedding Caterers Business
A good business is about more than dollars and sense. To make your wedding caterers business what it is today, you've had to fully invest yourself in its success. But the hard work isn't done yet. Before you can make a graceful exit, you will have to invest yourself in your business sale.
It takes dedication to sell a wedding caterers business under the best of circumstances. In the current market, you'll need to redouble your efforts and get serious about convincing prospects that your company is a good investment.
There is no simple way to sell a business. But the most prepared wedding caterers business sellers are achieving fair market value and more for their companies through persistence and the application of sound selling techniques.
Leveraging Industry Connections
Today's wedding caterers business buyers can be found in a variety of locations. To advertise your sale to the widest possible audience, consider a listing on BizBuySell.com or other top online business-for-sale listing sites. For more targeted lead generation, consider tapping into your network of industry contacts. When leveraging industry relationships for sales prospects, you'll need to be cognizant of the potential for competitors to use knowledge of your sale against you in the marketplace. Use good sense in restricting the flow of information within the industry and focusing your efforts toward trusted industry allies.
Pre-Sale Checklist
There is a lot of work that needs to be done before you're ready to sell your wedding caterers business. Perhaps the most important pre-sale consideration is to right-size your expectations to the realities of the market. Armed with a realistic timeframe and asking price, you can begin to consult with your broker about the best way to approach likely buyers.
Identifying Serious Buyers
Unfortunately, many of the prospects you will encounter aren't serious buyers. Even though tire kickers are a fact of life in any sale scenario, they sap valuable time and energy that could be spent identifying more serious prospects. Good business brokers are adept at separating serious buyers from the rest of the pack. As a rule, they limit the amount of information that is provided in the initial stages of an engagement, waiting to reveal the juiciest details of the business until the prospect has been thoroughly vetted. Smart sellers may require prospects to provide background and financial information fairly early in the process as a way of verifying the financial capacity to close the deal.
Share this article
Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs