8. Be confident but vague on your financial resources - They need to know you have the money (that you are not just a nice person but wasting their time). However, often Sellers don't understand the level to which we use debt to buy businesses and it can put them off early in the process. The best advice is to say that you have looked into this and have your own resources, can get a large credit line on your existing business and also have investors that have expressed interest and leave it at that. If they ask for more specifics, just say it will all depend on the opportunity and you would need to work with your advisors on a case-by-case basis. 9. Address excess cash in the business head-on - If they have cash in the business, they may be worried about that and it is very likely to come up. If they have a lot of excess cash (common) it could be more than the business is worth and handling this elegantly at this stage could put you in pole position. We realise there are some business Buyers who advocate for trying to manoeuvre around this topic and get excess cash as part of the sale. Our experience is that this is counterintuitive to Sellers (as they could just take a dividend) and engenders mistrust early. Again, our advice is not to go into detail but just to say something like: we realise that your excess cash in the business is historical profit you have not taken out yet and belongs to you. We also know a business sale is a great time to extract that very tax efficiently. However, we would obviously want enough working capital (including cash) left in the business so it would continue to function after closing day. We have some very good advisors that can help us with this. 10. Key things you can try and gently understand but don't push unnaturally : a. Why they are selling and their timetable as well as plans afterwards
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