Selling Your Business And Achieving The Highest Price

When selling your business it is critical that you understand the processes involved. After all, unlike other business decisions this will only be made once!

So here are a few questions that might help you in the process.

Why are you selling? Are you selling because the business has reached its full potential or do you want to get out because you have had enough? It's important to have a reason for the sale as you will get asked this question from all potential purchasers.

Is your property on a lease? If a buyer is looking at your business he will want to see a long term lease in place. Negotiate with your landlord an extension to your lease and make sure that you have a clause in there which allows you to transfer the lease to the new buyer.

When did you last value your assets? This is especially important when it comes to property as prices are constantly changing and you might get a very pleasant surprise.

Do you want to sell just the goodwill and still own the property? Often when selling a business it is possible to keep the property and lease it to the new buyer. If you do not need the full proceeds it is often wise not to sell the property as long term it will be an appreciating asset. Make sure though that you get a full repair and renewal lease put in place with the buyer.

Are you the one hundred percent owner? If not what do the other shareholders think about you leaving? One of the easiest ways to get out is to sell your stake to the other shareholders.

Do you want to protect some workers in your business once the sale has gone through? You might have members of the family or close friends who work in the business and they might need some security after you have left. One way to do this is to provide them with decent employment contracts prior to the sale.

Is the timing right? The best time to sell the business is just after you have had a good year of trading. Even economists disagree about what the future may bring so try not to predict how the trading environment will change but get out when profits are high.

Prime the business for sale. Just as a house will achieve more with a lick of paint and the garden in top condition so a business will need as many loose ends tied up as possible so that it is easier for a new buyer to walk in. Get rid of all the dead stock and dispose of all old and useless machinery.

Tidy the place up. Make it look as attractive as possible and for heavens sake make sure all the light switches and bulbs work. Make sure the place is as bright as possible by using higher power bulbs than normal.

Get professional help. If you have a small business all you need are the services of a good accountant and lawyer. If the business is more complicated a decent business broker might be required to get the maximum price for your business.

The easier you make it for the buyer to move in and start running the business from day one the higher the price you will achieve for the sale.

Why Price Point Is Crucial When Choosing A Home Business.

How important is the initial start-up cost (price point) of an online or home based business opportunity? This is a very delicate subject that is often not credited with enough significance. Hitting the right “sweet spot” with start-up costs can literally make or break your success in the online entrepreneurial world.

Call it what you want – ”price point”, “start-up cost”, “price threshold” (the initial fee to get registered and started in an online opportunity), but it is crucial that this amount is not priced too low, or too high.

TOO High Priced Business Opportunities

The problem with high ticket business opportunities are twofold: 1) your field of prospects is radically reduced, and; 2) most newcomers underestimate the additional costs of getting a business started. Most people who join high ticket business opportunities ($2,000 to $10,000) are not told about the high cost of making each sale (the average cost of acquiring a new customer). Advertising is your most significant ongoing investment. Online beginners hear that an opportunity is… $3,500 (for example) and forget that this amount will only get them started. What about advertising? What about ongoing maintenance fees? (turn-key websites, accounting and training services, etc.) For an opportunity with a flat start-up cost of $3,500, your average cost per sale can range from $1,000 to $4,000. Why you ask? Because, as mentioned above, businesses with higher price points narrow your field of prospects dramatically, so you must advertise more to adjust for the waste, or pay significantly higher rates for upper income prospects. You would be shooting yourself in the foot if you didn’t expect to invest a minimum of $1,500 to $4,000 per sale to advertise it right. So you really need $5,000 to $7,500 to start this business correctly. On top of that, if this business is a 2/up system (where you owe your sponsor your first two sales), you’ll need another $6,000 to $8,000 for these training sales. That’s a total of about $12,000 to $15,000 to get you started right. A brilliant man once said that before you start anything, “count the costs”.

Bottom line, “High Ticket Home Business Opportunities” can be great if you have a lot of money. Again, the problem is that most people do not plan well enough in advance. In fact, they usually don’t know what they don’t know to even ask the right questions.

Here’s something else to consider – when you sell a program that exceeds $1,000 for sign-up fees, you’ll need to be good on the phone (or be a fast learner) since most people will not invest much over $1,000 without talking with someone.

TOO Low Priced Business Opportunities

The problem with business opportunities that cost $10 to $100 is that they’re just so difficult to turn into serious money. Let’s compare $10 to $100 price points. If you stand to earn $10 to $100 per sale, you will invest the same amount of time, energy (and usually advertising costs) to make 1/10 to 1/100 the amount of money. You’ll have to make ten to one hundred TIMES the number of sales to make the same amount of money.

Most people don’t realize that the cost of making a $15 sale is almost as high as making a $500 sale. Especially when you consider one of your best sources of advertising…Google. The average cost per click for the “Business Opportunity” related category cost about $0.75 to $1.50. You would have to sell one in 10 people who come to your site…just to break even (with no net profit). There are free advertising vehicles of course, but these require massive amounts of time and oversight, which ultimately limit you quite a bit.

So what’s the best price point you might ask? In my opinion, it’s somewhere between $300 to $1,000.

The article is brought to you by Peter Grundner at P&T Enterprises

Why You're Ebay Business Is Doomed If You Only Focus On The Lowest Price

If you really want to become a successful eBay seller, meaning that you want eBay to be a real business for you instead of just a hobby or a way for you to clean the clutter out of your house, you’re going to need to make a shift in the way you sell on eBay.

Most people will sell anything on eBay that they can find as long it can make them money (and sometimes even if it won’t).

If you try to run a business on eBay using this model of selling anything and everything, you’re going to find yourself playing the low price game where you’re always dealing with razor thin margins just so that you can get your products sold.

However, there is a way for you to have better than average margins on your products. And that’s simply by specializing in a certain line of products.

Once you take the time to specialize in a particular area, such as beef jerky makers, video editing equipment, or violins, you can make yourself the expert in that area. You’ll want to take an area that you are already knowledgeable in, or one where you that you don’t mind learning about so you can be the expert.

Once you’re an expert on the products that you’re selling on eBay, you now have a competitive advantage over the other people that are trying to sell the same products that you are. You’ll want to make sure that you make it clear to your potential customers what extras they’re going to get from you that they simply can’t get from your competition. For example, it could be as simple as offering email support on setting up your products (if they’re the type of products that require it).

Another way to give yourself a big competitive advantage is to include a free bonus that you’ve created, such as an eBook, video, or podcast that you’ve done on the topic. For example, if you were in the beef jerky maker business, you could include an exclusive cookbook that you’ve written with your favorite recipes and tips on making great tasting jerky.

Once you’ve established your competitive advantage in the marketplace, you can demand higher prices than your competition and people will happily pay them. In some cases it might mean that you only get 5 or 10% more on a typical transaction, but that extra few percentage points can mean the difference between a product that you were only breaking even on to a profitable product. And in some cases, you can charge prices 3 to 4 times higher than your competition by showing your potential customers that they’re much better off buying from you because you specialize in those products and can offer better support than those who sell everything under the sun.