After spending time preparing the business for sale, it is important to ensure that when you go to market, the numbers align with the story and all the preparation you have done, leads to the highest valuation possible.
✅You only get one shot at this – if your sales process fails, it is very hard to go back round the buyer pool again, unless there is a completely new story, you will lose credibility – get it right the first time!
✅ Take the time to make sure the business you are selling matches the story in the Information Memorandum – you can’t just add trendy words like ‘renewables’ and ‘clean energy’ if none of your revenue comes from this space – buyers will see through this straight away.
✅ Don’t go into diligence with poor financial information which then delays the process while you go away and tidy things up. This just dents buyer confidence in the robustness of the numbers and systems.
✅ Think about your pipeline – you might know that work is coming but a buyer needs to see this, how sustainable is revenue? We often see forecasts presented that never turn into revenue, focus on genuine opportunities and work on converting these, start tracking your pipeline and showing wins / losses, giving buyers something to diligence means that they can take a degree of comfort over any forecast presented and your ability to turn this into revenue.
✅ Use a good quality CF advisor. There are a lot of areas where a seller can easily lose value, particularly against an experienced buyer. Having someone knowledgeable in your corner will undoubtedly increase the value you get.
✅ Don’t let the process distract you from your day job. Yes it can be very exciting but you still have a business to run and there is nothing worse than trading falling during a process because Management have taken their eye off the ball. This is why you need a trusted CF advisor, who will manage the process for you and leave you to get on with running the business as much as possible.
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