What are the Options?
The decision to sell your business is a milestone. Selling a business that you have worked so hard at and so long for is difficult for many people. However, when you do decide that the time is right to sell then you must do everything you can to ensure that you get the best value for your hard work. There are different routes you can take to selling a business. You can use the services of a professional business broker, try to sell it privately or try some different avenues. This article will quickly explore the different ways to go about selling a business and hopefully it gives you some insight into the process.
Business Broker
Using a business broker to help you sell your business is an excellent step to make. Business brokers are professionals that specialize in the business sale transaction. Brokers are licensed in the Province of Ontario and must undergo educational qualifications in order to be able to buy or sell businesses. Brokers help business sellers in many different ways:
- Helps determine the selling price of a business
- Maintains confidentiality throughout the process
- Screens potential buyers for you
- Finds a buyer
- Helps facilitate with buyers
- Is a go-between for the buyers and the sellers
- Provides professional input
A business broker is the professional that specializes in business sales. If you are looking at selling a business, consulting with a broker would be a great first step.
Suppliers or Employees
If you are not overly concerned with maintain confidentiality when you are selling a business then you may consider talking to your employees or suppliers to see if there is any interest in purchasing the business. There are some great advantages to selling to suppliers or your staff – they know the business, they are familiar with the customers, there would be minimal training involved, due diligence might be a lot quicker and you already have an existing relationship with them.
Word of Mouth
If you have a large enough network you might find that someone you know is in the market to buy a good business. Obviously you must not be concerned with confidentiality if you go down this route. Many times friends, neighbours or church members are in the market to do something entrepreneurial and just need the impetus to take the plunge. Spreading the word that your are selling a business might be the nudge that is required to get an offer on your business.
Trade Magazines or Groups
If you are a part of an industry that has a trade group or publication that comes out that might be a good option for you to advertise that you are selling a business. Many time your competitors might be looking to expand their operations or get some synergies by buying a similar company so this might be a good resource for you to explore.
When you think it’s time to sell your business please think through all the options carefully and choose what makes the best sense for you.
Contact us if you think you’re ready to sell. We serve the Golden Horeshoe area including Toronto (GTA), Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Hamilton, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.
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what are the requirements for becoming a Business Broker in new jersey?business broker to sell businesses not real estate. I know if a diner or a movie theater is for sale you must use a real estate broker but, supose its only the business and not the real estate?
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Business for Sale in Toronto, Hamilton and surrounding areas in southern Ontario, Canada. We are a full service business brokerage here to help you buy or sell a small business.
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amazing video~! i am in awe of you. in awe.
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Here's a demonstration: Type in the URL window: "www.pizzanextdoor.com" which will bring up their pizza website. Take note of the domain name. Then type in the URL window: "http://home.pacbell.net/vten/1a/pizzamen... and you will see that this is the original homepage which is unmasked without the domain name.
The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is to first set up a website and publish its domain name on major search directories such as Google.com, Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these search directories to provide them with goods and services. In a sense, these search directories are a very large Internet Yellow Pages.
Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using such "generic" queries will not be able to discover your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website, in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.
You may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website with placement of various critical metatags that can surely achieve a high search engine presence and increase Internet traffic to your website. These metatag strategies work well with published webpages at Google and Yahoo.
Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the Internet audience and their incoming setup. For example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages take too long to load up and therefore analog users will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple question, "Who's my end user – is he on dialup or DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users for maximum marketability, then select analog users since 80% of most resident users are still analog Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages is best for them.
A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.
Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material.
Placement of Metatags:
A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which should consist of no more than 65 characters separated by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name.
The second metatag is the "Description" which is usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which best describes one's goods and services.
And the very last category – "Keywords" are also somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. "Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google's spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory.
Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on Yahoo.com: Begin with the search query "pizza downtown los angeles." It will bring up some 1.4 million+ websites as results. Check out where "Pizza Next Door" is ranked. It's in the Top Five! Again, Pizza Next Door's high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Yahoo's publication guidelines.
Good luck!