Many experts are predicting that a huge wave of businesses will become available over the next decade or so as baby boomers look to sell. As the economy continues its climb into a full-blown recovery (we hope), it just might be the perfect time for you to fulfill that lifelong dream of buying a business.

If you can find the right business that is the right fit for you, I think this is a great time to buy!

Overall, I think it’s a pretty good list.  When we create a Confidential Business Review (CBR), we try to address these questions up front before you even meet with the owner.

Some of the questions not asked by Inc., which we think are important include:

1. Can you as a new owner successfully run and operate this business? If not, the other questions don’t really matter.
2. What do you bring to the table? Ideally, we want people who bring more to the table then the owner.  You don’t have to duplicate their strengths but you do need to have strengths that are applicable to owing the subject business.  These tend to be the true success stories.
3. What are the challenges facing the company? Odds are good that this is why the owner wants to sell.  If your not the solution, your probably better off letting someone else take over the company.
4. Do you have a business plan? Most SBA Lenders require a new owner to have a business plan, for good reason.  People with plans generally outperform those who don’t.  Furthermore, if you know what your doing, creating a plan is easy.  If you don’t, you better get help or start questioning the value your really bring to the table outside of your life savings!
5. Are you an Entrepreneur? Only about 2% of the population own a business, making them a rare breed.   Most of them feel like they have to own a business regarding of ROI, wealth or “prestige”.  On the flip side, if your not an Entrepreneur, you might find out the hard way that owning a business is a lot harder and demanding then you imagined.

There is a saying in our firm.  Matching the right buyer with the right business is how we define success.  We hope that all buyers, whether they use a broker or not, take this advice to heart!

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There are many nightmares that the wrong buyer can cause:

• Fear and concern among your employees: Buyers often stop by your business and the wrong buyer will talk to your employees, and accidentally alert them that you are selling the business. This invariably causes fear and concern from your people. Often employees start looking for a job when they know the business is for sale even though they would likely have a job with the new owner.
• The release of confidential information: The wrong buyer might talk to your competitors and perhaps even share your confidential or financial information with them.
• A very expensive waste of time: The worst of all is having your business essentially off of the market for several months while you are working with them on due diligence and find you have lost all that time and opportunity because they can’t or won’t complete the transaction.

Your plans to move to Montana or to buy that other business are shattered.

The good buyer:

• Will be asking lots of questions which are perfectly normal and necessary. You need to engage the buyer in conversation. If the buyer is not willing to answer your questions it is likely that they are not genuinely interested and/or qualified
• Will agree to sign a “Non Disclosure Agreement.”  Before you move beyond the general information about your business to the more confidential and financial information, Again, authentic buyers will be willing to do this.  Your broker will have the appropriate form
• Will respect your confidentiality
• Will be as honest with you as he expects you to be with him

At the risk of repeating myself;

• genuine interest in your business
• the skills to operate it effectively
• and the financial resources to make the purchase

These are the key characteristics of a good buyer for your business. If they do not have these traits, they may cause many problems; they are probably not your buyer and are likely to be a waste of your time.

When you do find a qualified buyer who has taken serous interest, you should be forthcoming and as helpful as you can be to help move the process forward. In most cases you will have some financial interest in his success.

A good Business Broker is experienced in handling buyers and eliminating some of these nightmares. The broker can help make a fair deal for both of you, guide you through the complicated process and help create successful transition for the buyer too run his or her new business. The best deal is one that works for everyone.

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2009 was a rough year for the overall economy.  Businesses across the board showed revenue declines that haven’t been seen in decades.  Many business owners who were planning on selling their businesses and retiring found themselves in a position where financially they had to either reduce their retirement expectations or continue to work.  Until recently, most were opting to continue to work, but now we are seeing more owners adjusting to the new reality and selling their businesses at today’s valuations.

This is a buyer’s market.  Over the last couple of years, many marginal businesses failed and their market share was absorbed by the ones that survived.  So as a buyer you are left with an opportunity to buy a business that has weathered the storm and has had its valuation pushed down, possibly below where it should be.  It is likely that most if not all of the down side is behind you and for someone who is going to own this business for the next five or ten years, you have a real opportunity to build some wealth along with an income.

Banks are starting to lend more, but only under tight criteria.  They are going to take a hard look at you and at the business.  If you don’t have any specific industry experience or have a partner who does then  they are most likely going to deny the loan.  This is a good thing because this limits the potential buyer pool and therefore reduces the ultimate sales price of the business.  If the owner has been having a hard time finding a buyer who can qualify for a loan then you have a real opportunity to make a deal if you have cash.  Good Hunting!

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So we delay and explore other ways to promote our business and wait for someone else to figure out the magic recipe on how to blog time and cost effectively.

Then one day the phone rings and I spend 30 to 45 minutes talking to another first time Buyer who is interested in buying a business. Most of which is spent going over some really basic things they need to know before moving forward. BizEx, our company who specializes in brokering the sale of small and medium sized businesses, gets calls like this almost every day. So I decided to condense these conversations into writing and posted “How to Buy a Business” on my website, and for Business Sellers, How to Sell a Business just to save myself from another daily 45 minute conversation.

Then it dawned on me that this is really what blogging should be about. We should blog to save us and our client’s time and money, by sharing the information they need to fulfill their part of the business sales process. Things that they really need to know and would derive significant benefit from. It’s all about efficiency.

BizEx’s core mission is the support of Entrepreneurialism, and we have a lot to give. We use a consultative approach which requires us to learn what is most critical about every business we represent from the owners who are experts at what they do. Our Brokers specialize in a variety of industries including Retail businesses, Restaurants, Manufacturing companies, Dry Cleaners, Service related businesses like Film and Entertainment companies, Internet ecommerce businesses, and a host of other businesses that would take too much space to list. We have a wealth of information we can share for the benefit of entrepreneurs that we take for granted: Information that would promote the sales cycle and reduce the risk and anxiety associated with the purchase of a business.

Are there SEO benefits we can derive from our blogging efforts? Sure. For Google, content is king. The better the quality of information we provide, the more Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing and other search engines are going to like us. This will equate to higher search engine rankings for our best work.

So now we’re bloggers. We plan on writing a lot more posts in the near future. We hope our fellow entrepreneurs will find them interesting enough to read and comment on.

Welcome to the Biz Blog!

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