Services & Benefits of Selling Your Business with Sunbelt
A Complex Process – Made Easy
Selling a business is more complex than most people realize. At Sunbelt, we understand the issues and we’ll help alleviate much of the anxiety that comes with such an important decision.
With Sunbelt you can be confident that you’ll get what your business is really worth; we’ll also help you sell it with the least possible disruption, headaches, and risk.
Three of the top reasons sellers choose Sunbelt:
- Sunbelt sells more privately owned businesses than any other business broker in the world.
- We have more highly-trained brokers than any other organization in the world.
- We have the proprietary processes, resources, and technology to support the successful sale of your business.
The Services You Need
You’ll find many benefits to working with Sunbelt. Here are some of the ways we help our customers succeed.
Our Strategic Selling System
Sunbelt’s refined and time-tested approach to successfully selling your business has 5 distinct phases. During each phase, we’ll guide you through the details, strategic thinking, and critical decisions while providing professional insights to ensure that you’re completely comfortable.
Complete Understanding: Before you commit to selling your business, we want to be sure that you have thought everything through in detail. We also want you to have a thorough understanding of the entire process you are about to embark upon.
We also want you to have a thorough understanding of the entire process you are about to embark upon. A Sunbelt intermediary will be pleased to take the time to explain everything and answer all of your questions.
Determine the MPSP (Most Probable Selling Price): One of our early goals is to try to get to know as much as possible about both you and your business. This involves a considerable candid discussion about your business, your reasons for selling, your goal in selling, what you plan to do after selling, and what you plan to do with the proceeds of the sale. Each one of these areas of discussion impacts how we undertake to sell your business as well as the terms of sale.
At our initial meeting, we will go over your financials and tax returns and show you the Most Probable Selling Price of your business. It is very important that we are on the same page. You deserve to know how much money you are likely to have after our commission and the taxes on your proceeds are paid.
Detailed Business Analysis: One of the most critical steps in this process is the determination of what we expect will be the most probable selling price for your business. This process involves gathering a tremendous amount of data for analysis on a confidential basis including financial statements, operational details, inventory, furniture fixtures and assets, market conditions, company history, building details, leases, staff, proprietary technologies, and processes. We need to look at every single consideration of value in order to defend our valuation with potential buyers.
Financial Recasting: An important part of determining the Most Probable Selling Price of your business involves revealing and reflecting some of the hidden value of your business that doesn’t always show up on the financial statements. This process of the recasting of financials is essential to more accurately reflect the true value that a purchaser might actually expect as the future owner of your business.
Most Probable Selling Price: Once all of the information has been collected, digested, analyzed, and researched against similar businesses, comparable purchase options, and industry standards, we present you with a comprehensive report that forms our professional “broker’s opinion” of what we realistically think your business might sell for in the current marketplace.
IBBA Accredited Process: Our Most Probable Selling Price recommendation is based on an evaluation of 13 different approaches to business valuation that have been developed and recommended by the International Business Broker’s Association. They also comply with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice as set out by the Appraisal Foundation, the world authority in appraisal practice. These complex calculations involve considerable number crunching, detailed industry analysis, objective analysis, and the use of comparable statistics and industry research. The result is an exceptionally detailed and insightful report that has tremendous value to any business owner.
Marketing Agreement: Once you are comfortable with Sunbelt’s capabilities and approach to selling your business, it’s time to get started. This requires your signature and the signatures of all owners on our Marketing Agreement. This agreement sets out the terms of our relationship, as well as disclosure and confidentiality considerations that allow us to go to the next steps.
Kickoff Meeting: Stage two begins after you have reviewed and agreed with the findings of the Most Probable Selling Price and signed the Marketing Agreement to confirm that you wish to proceed at the agreed-upon asking price. It is now time to get your business ready to take to market. Marketing Tools Development: We use two primary documents to begin marketing your business throughout a wide range of media and marketing opportunities.
Blind Profile: In order to begin attracting prospective purchasers for screening, we create a teaser document that we refer to as a Blind Profile. Our Blind Profile is a one or two-page advertising overview of your business that gives just enough information to solicit interest in a business of your type in the general classification with only high-level financial information, in order to ensure the identity of your business remains confidential. All marketing materials used to promote your business are approved by you.
The Confidential Business Review (CBR): Our Confidential Business Review is an elegant marketing document or business prospectus designed to provide prospective buyers with a detailed overview of your business. This substantial presentation summarizes all key aspects of your business that a buyer would need to know in order to start getting serious about making an offer. It is only made available to qualified prospective buyers who have been pre-screened by your Sunbelt representative. They must also have signed a strict and detailed, legally enforceable, non-disclosure agreement prior to viewing the Confidential Business Review.
We now begin to pro-actively market your business and bring solid, qualified offers to the table. Our goal is to sell your business quickly, under terms and conditions that achieve your goals.
Marketing Campaign: We use a multitude of approaches to market your business. These include internal buyer lists, Sunbelt Network contacts, targeted searches, and solicitations, as well as web advertising on the Sunbelt Network and other top business marketing websites. ONLY Sunbelt of Florida advertises on over 200 websites while maintaining confidentiality!
Buyer Screening: All responses and requests for information are filtered and pre-screened in order to select only legitimate buyer prospects. Once we are confident of the viability of a potential buyer, we will meet personally with that buyer to do further due diligence. This may include verifying personal financial statements or having the buyer talk to one of our lenders to have them pre-qualified for creditworthiness.
We also undertake personal, lifestyle, and business capabilities interviewing to confirm that the prospective buyer is suited to and capable of running your business with a reasonable likelihood of success.
Managing Buyer Expectations: This is the stage where the process becomes exciting and often challenging. Managing the expectations of a prospective buyer, as well as the negotiation process, may be the most difficult and critical part of what we do. It’s also very important that all negotiations are handled exclusively by your Sunbelt agent in order to ensure the greatest likelihood of success.
Negotiation: In most cases, because of seller financing and seller training, there is a requirement for an ongoing relationship between a buyer and a seller. It is therefore essential to maintain a positive relationship and create a win-win outcome between the buyer and seller. Your Sunbelt intermediary is trained to objectively manage this often challenging and often emotional process in order to create the best possible outcome.
Proceeds of Sale: We prepare the buyer’s offer onto our Asset Purchase Agreement before we present it to you. That way we remove the messy step of using an LOI (Letter of Intent) which can create too many misunderstandings between the buyer and the seller. Sunbelt wants you to know all of the terms, conditions, and contingencies associated with your transaction before you sign any contract. Small changes in terms, rates, and other considerations can often make a significant difference in the net outcome and viability of an offer.
Due Diligence: Another critical role of your Sunbelt agent is to manage the due diligence process with the lawyers, accountants, financial and business advisors of the prospective buyer. Sunbelt uses the latest technology to track every document upload and review in our Bank-level secure Data Room. Most deals that fall apart do so during due diligence. This is not so with Sunbelt at the helm.
This is the final stage in the process of selling a business. Your Sunbelt representative will again manage all details to expedite this potentially delay-prone process. We’ll keep the lawyers and accountants synchronized on both sides to ensure a timely and successful conclusion.
Ask about our closing attorneys and how they are in sync with our process.