Archives for March 2019

New Year’s Resolutions & Selling Your Business

Most people fail to keep their New Year’s Resolutions.  But where buying and selling a business is concerned, failing to keep those resolutions could mean an abundance of lost opportunity. Todd Ganos at Forbes recently penned a thought-provoking article entitled The 8 New Year’s Resolutions for the Sale of Your Business.  In this article, he compares selling a business to getting in shape in the months preceding your visit to the beach.  It is necessary to do a great deal of planning and hard work if you want to be in good shape for the big “beach body reveal.” When it comes to selling a company, Ganos believes that there are eight factors that must be taken into consideration.  Listed below are those factors he feels are a must for business owners looking to get their business ready for “the beach.”  These are the eight factors that Ganos believes are most essential and should be on your New Years’ Resolution list for your … [Read more...]

Confidentiality Agreements: What are the Most Important Elements?

Every business has to be concerned about maintaining confidentiality.  In fact, it is common for business owners to become somewhat obsessed with confidentiality when they are getting ready to sell their business. It goes without saying that owners don’t want the word that they are selling to spread to the public, employees or most certainly their competitors.  Yet, there is something of a tug of war between the natural desire for confidentiality and the desire to sell a business for the highest amount possible.  At the end of the day, any business owner looking to sell his or her business will have to let prospective buyers “peek behind the curtain.”  Let’s explore some key points that any good confidentiality agreement should cover. At the top of your confidentiality list should be the type of negotiations.  This aspect of the confidentiality agreement is, in fact, quite important as it stipulates whether the negotiations are secret or open.  Importantly, this part of the … [Read more...]

Goodwill and Its Importance to Your Business

What exactly does the term “goodwill” mean when it comes to buying or selling a business?  Usually, the term “goodwill” is a reference to all the effort that a seller puts into a business over the years that he or she operates that business.  In a sense, goodwill is the difference between an array of intangible, but important, assets and the total purchase price of the business.  It is important not to underestimate the value of goodwill as it relates to both the long-term and short-term success of any given business. According to the M&A Dictionary, an intangible asset can be thought of as asset that is carried on the balance sheet, and it may include a company’s reputation or a recognized name in the market.  If a company is purchased for more than its book value, then the odds are excellent that goodwill has played a role. Goodwill most definitely contrasts and should not be confused with “going concern value.”  Going concern value is usually defined as the fact that a business will … [Read more...]