Examples include not putting in place a motivated management team not putting in place a solid business model (with good long-term contracts to underwrite the value of the business) and not protecting your IPR.

Not taking key steps to build up and protect your business value and make it attractive to potential buyers.Although to be fair, earn-out deals are often quite standard, particularly in the case of ‘people’ businesses. The buyer might also say that you might get paid more or less depending on the financial performance of the company in the years following the sale (an earn-out). Any buyer might then insist that the price you get will depend on you working out a post-sale employment period with the buyer for years after you had hoped to retire. Leaving the business so dependent on you that it has less value to a buyer.Having to work on way past planned retirement age to try belatedly to build the business up for sale and find a buyer.Instead, you may have to close it down, or at best pass the ownership on to employees for a knock-down price paid over time. Not planning for your retirement, and ending up having to retire without being able to find any buyer for your business.Try not to fall into some of the traps I have often seen owner managers fall into, such as:

Over the years I have come across so many business owners who through lack of planning or focus have failed to get anything like the value they could have obtained for their business, or even worse, failed to sell it at all and had to wind it down (and up) on retirement. Here are 8 pitfalls you need to watch out for 1. From preparing to get your company oven ready for a sale, to early negotiations with interested buyers, and dealing with all the challenges that buyers are going to put your way, you need an experienced specialist corporate lawyer on hand to guide and help you. Most business owners don’t get to sell a company more than once in their lifetimes, and don’t know what to expect. The average share purchase agreement (‘SPA’) produced by a buyer’s solicitors is over 70 pages long. Selling a company can therefore be a complicated business, and can take a long time to arrange, negotiate and document. Any buyer you do find will then want to protect itself in all sorts of ways. Sadly it doesn’t work like this in practice! It can be hard to find a buyer and to get a good price. All you need to do is find a great buyer, agree a great cash price, hand over a share transfer form, get cash on the nail, resign as a director, and walk away into the sunset with no ongoing risks or liabilities.

You can’t take it with you when you retire, so unless you want to keep it in the family, or just close it down when you retire, you will probably want to sell it one day and spend the money (or build another business!).įrom a business owner’s point of view, selling your company could be extremely simple. Along with your house and pension, owning a business can be your biggest asset.

I want to sell my business