Getting your business ready for sale

You have made the decision to sell your business after deciding that 35 years at the helm was quite enough. It’s time for you to move on and get someone in to pay you cash to take over the business that you have built up and generated goodwill for.

So what do you do next?

Naturally I would like you to use our law firms for sale service – we do not charge any sellers fees, which makes us fairly unique in the market. Ten Percent work in the opposite direction and we charge buyers a fee instead.

However there are a number of things you can do to prepare your business for sale.

Initial Questions

Right from the start any broker or potential buyer will have a list of questions you need to be able to answer swiftly. They will want to know your turnover and profit margin for the last 3 years, details of any assets being sold with the business, details of any staff likely to be subject to a TUPE agreement, number of ongoing clients and files open at any one time, sources of clients, geographical spread of clients, percentage mix of work. reason for sale, plans after sale – most importantly whether you plan to stay on for any length of time, claims historical or present and details of any run off cover quotes you have had.

One of the first questions every buyer asks is how much you want for the business. This is a very difficult figure to indicate of course (see our website for full advice). Some people know exactly what they want, others are better speaking to a few buyers initially to gauge an idea as to what they can expect.

Once you have this detail, you can then move on to consider the more extensive information that will inevitably be required if a firm if you manage to get to the due diligence phase. It is worth thinking about this level of detail from the outset. This will take some time! We have put together a list of questions that will need addressing here: