When is the best time to sell your business?
As we know time waits for no man (or woman)! When planning to exit your business when is the best time to sell?
There are a few things to consider.
1) Selling when the business is growing and performing well makes the buyers much more interested. Selling post peak and it starts to get more difficult and may take longer to sell.
2) Finding a buyer can take anything from 1 month to one year and then the actual transfer, including contracts etc can take 1 or 2 months, so plan for the worst case and prepare for a longer exit than you may have initially thought. If it happens faster which it may, then you can enjoy the success earlier!
3) Buyers look all year for the business they want and although there are seasonal variations on volume, we see businesses transact all year round. i.e to the buyer they do not care about the timing when they find the business they want.
- Try and time the sale with your lease? We often have this discussion and frankly, it is too hard to predict. In the end you sell when you have found your buyer and you never know when this will be.
By advertising broadly and being responsive to enquiry you can shorten this process, but never control it!
