The sad reality of selling your business, is most people who sell, do so when they are nearing retirement.

The hope that the business is worth enough money to last them the rest of their lives, in most cases that’s not enough.

Like every major business decision, it needs planning, careful thought, and years and years of execution to maximise the sale value of your business.

Also, it’s never worth what they think it’s worth.

It’s not like property (especially in this current climate) where you put it up for sale and you get 10 people trying to outbid each other – It just doesn’t happen.

Your best hope/prayer is that you get someone who hasn’t got a clue about buying a business, and just accepts the value without extensive due diligence and benchmarking.

When you sell your business, I estimate that 99.9% of sellers don’t maximise the sale price, based on not having the business “sale ready”.

Even if you were selling your home, you would get it ‘sale ready’ to get the best price, so why don’t we with our businesses?

Even if you have no desire, now, to sell your business, start setting it up so you CAN sell your business.