Selling Your Business

Four Traps When Selling Your Lawn or Landscape Business

Four Traps When Selling Your Lawn or Landscape Business

Business owners have been known to refer to due diligence as “the entrepreneur’s proctology exam.” It’s a crude analogy but a good representation of what it feels like when a stranger pokes, prods, and looks inside every inch of your business.  When it comes to selling your lawn or landscape business, it will pay to  be prepared. Experienced acquirers will have a checklist of questions they need answered if they’re considering buying your company. They’ll want answers to questions like: Are financial statements current and accurate? Have revenues been growing consistently? Are gross margins and net margins stable or growing? How … Read more

What Are You Doing Next? Here’s What One Landscape Services Client Did After He Sold His Business

We always ask our prospective business sale clients what they are planning to do after they sell their business.  If they have a really hard time answering that question, we know they might possibly not be ready to sell. We always enjoy following what our clients who sell but aren’t ready to retire do for an encore performance.  We are going to begin telling some of their stories here in this bnlog. One story playing out right now is Dave Dworsky, who sold his landscape services business n the Los Angeles area to The Brickman Group nearly three years ago. … Read more

Three Key Numbers to Focus On When Selling Your Business

Here are three key numbers to focus on when considering the sale of your business:  Your Number, the Market Value of Your Business and the Gap between them. Your Number I’ll call the first number Your Number.  Your number is what you need to realize from the sale of your business to achieve your post-business sale objectives.  You will notice that Your Number has nothing whatsoever to do with the value of your business. Your number may have a number of components.  In many cases, it may be the amount of liquid assets you need to assure a comfortable retirement.  … Read more

Four Traps to Avoid When an Acquirer Comes Calling

You may be eager to sell your business, and happy to have an acquirer at your doorstep, but what’s it like when an acquirer starts looking inside every inch of your business? Most professional acquirers will have a checklist of questions – both objective and subjective – that they need answered before getting serious about buying your company. Examples of objective questions include: • When does your lease expire and what are the terms? • Do you have consistent, signed, up-to-date contracts with your customers and employees? • Are your ideas, products and processes protected by patent or trademark? • … Read more

Acquisitions and Woman Owned Businesses

I was recently asked what impact being a woman-owned business enterprise (WBE) might have on the business- sale process. Like most similar questions, there is not really a simple answer to this question.The important thing to remember is what a business buyer will be interested in when buying your business.  In most cases, it comes down to two basic questions: Will the buyer be able to retain the business’s customer base? and Will the buyer be able to retain the employees of he business? If the business’s status as a Woman Business Enterprise raises a question about the buyer’s ability to … Read more