Niche Exit Planning Tactics
Selling a Winery
For the right sellers, the business-for-sale marketplace is a friendly environment for winery opportunities. There aren't any guarantees, but if you adhere to fundamental business sale concepts, you can likely get a good price for your business.
When it comes to selling a winery, there are no shortcuts to success.
To sell a winery now, sellers need to make a strong case for buyers to purchase at or near the asking price.
Legal Concerns
A basic understanding of legal requirements is foundational for a successful business sale. Despite the confusion that exists among many sellers, the essentials of the sale are described in the Letter of Intent, a seminal document that is created prior to due diligence . If you are seeking buyer concessions, the time to address them is before the Letter of Intent is drafted. Never sign a Letter of Intent until it has been properly reviewed by your attorney and you are in complete agreement with everything it contains.
Selling a Winery to an Employee
Employee sales have pros and cons. There are some perks to selling the business in-house. Since the worker already knows the ins and outs of the business, due diligence should be a breeze, not to mention the fact that you won't have to wait months or years for the right buyer to emerge on the open marketplace. However, some employees feel they are entitled to special treatment and pricing, especially if they have played a key role in the company's success. Most of the time, employees also expect owners to finance a large portion of the sale. So if you aren't willing to finance the sale or need to get top dollar for your winery, a sale to an employee is probably not a possibility.
Finding Prospects
Many sellers don't realize how many prospective buyers there are for their businesses. We frequently see qualified buyers emerge from the seller's network of business and personal acquaintances. In other cases, sellers take a proactive approach to finding likely buyers and contacting them directly. Competitors may seem like natural prospects and they are. The downside is that they won't pay top dollar and will probably absorb your company into their own.
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