Selling Your Business?

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If you are considering selling your business one day down the road...planning ahead is important. It may well take several years before the ideal buyer is found. Here are some suggestions from a wide range of sources including a presentation at the Syracuse License to Steal.

  • Identify areas for improvement: physical location: clean, polish, paint, landscape

  • Get rid of accounts receivable

  • Divest of slow moving inventory

  • Clean up your files, including employment records

  • Keep your sale quiet for as long as you can so as to not lose key staff

  • Review your financials if you recently worked to eliminate tax liabilities, you will look less valuable

  • Identify any very negative issues up front [potential pending law suits, history of disgruntled employees]

  • Carve out excess assets to make the business more affordable

  • Identify a potential growth plan that you would love to do, but will not because of retirement age, financial limitations, etc.

  • Work on identifying a list of possible buyers

  • Get an independent valuation

  • Sell LOTS of wine prior to all of the above ---- work harder than ever to make the bottom line look VERY black

  • And for some of you:remember the old adage:that a "VERY long and convoluted trip from the cash register to the bank deposit window" will diminish your company value significantly

About the author:

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Donniella Winchell, Executive Director of the Ohio Wine Producers Association...

 
Donniella Winchell