How Long Does It Take To Sell My Business?

We’re glad you asked. There is a lot to this question and if we were to give you a typical answer, in a typical selling environment, we’d say about 6 months or less. We’ve had companies literally under contract 2 days after they went to market and sold just a few weeks later and we’ve had deals that were under contract in a month to 45 days and it took 10 months to close due to franchisor issues and training and discovery day conflicts. When the business is priced right, advertised properly and the listing managed well, we normally have most (over $450k sale prices) completed in about 6 months or less. Why the price tag? Smaller deals tend to have smaller earnings which equates to more risk for a buyer and there could also be more erratic earnings and sales, which makes the transaction more complicated and just plain harder to sell. It also can put the business out of the realm of bank financing as most banks don’t like deals where the overall loan amount is less than $250,000. If we can’t get a bank on board then we’re likely looking at much more in down payment funds or all cash.

Advertised Properly: There are 3 main things (among several others) that go into most of our ads, but out of hundreds of brokers we have not seen all 3 of these in any ad that we’ve run across. Again, this is part of our “secret sauce” and a key reason that our deals sell for more money and quicker than the competition.

Well Managed Ads: Having your ads managed well is another huge reason our clients have such success and there are 2 main things that we do that we don’t see any other broker do, but again that’s for a phone conversation as this information is very proprietary. Here’s a hint… We’ve been doing this for so long that we know the idiosyncrasies of every website we use (there are several) and know the things it takes to keep a listing at the top of categories or how to keep them fresh. We have found that our specific methods generate the best lead flow and that’s what you need to get a company sold…lead flow. To manage ads to this degree requires a huge amount of work and a full time person dedicated to it. We don’t know another company that pays attention to ads to this degree nor allocates the resources like we do.

These activities and so much more are specifically why we get our deals completed in such a short time period.