These people deserve our respect. They have beat the odds to build a business that the community demonstrates is important by continuing to buy their products and services, taking care of their employees and generally providing a good living for the families. So these X-Factor leaders generally deserve our respect and admiration as a starting point for a relationship. In fact, being willing to consider buying someone's business for millions of pounds is in itself a great demonstration of respect, which is a great starting point. Why Do Business Owners Sell? The Retiree - In the small business space, generally the answer to this is…because it is time to leave. The best way to describe what we have observed is that there is a switch in the heart that goes off and says it's time to go. Sometimes, people are aware that this switch is coming and have a 3-5 year runway. Often they have ignored this and now the switch is a very acute feeling and they feel life pulling them in another direction. Most often, this is due to retirement and a business sale not only becomes monetary but also buying time to do the things they want while they still have time. Functional Exits - Another reason people want to sell their business is they have what we call a mechanical reason. For example, they are moving to another geography, they have a health issue that no longer allows them to run the business or a major life circumstance change. These are very straightforward situations and they just need to find a Buyer that can take over and get what they can monetarily. The Young Overwhelmed Entrepreneur Syndrome - Sometimes you will get younger people with successful businesses that think they want to sell. Upon enquiry, what has happened is that they became an entrepreneur to get freedom (the most common motivation). Now that they have a successful business…there are staff issues, reporting requirements, legal issues and lots of problems to overcome and they
30
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online