The average time it takes to sell a business is in the range of 6-7 months. This discounts the fact that many businesses are liquidated or shut down as opposed to ever being sold at all as operating entities.

Business offering memorandums typically include the past 3 years of financial history and sometimes 5 years. It only stands to reason that if you are going to be able to influence the value of your company significantly, you need to start preparing 5 years in advance to be able to positively affect your selling history.

Thus, we at Strategic Endeavors LLC are glad to start working with you to help you enhance your business to produce the most favorable result when the time comes to exit the business. We will review your operations and financial reports and make specific recommendations to prepare your company to maximize its value. We call this business enhancement.

Another situation we frequently encounter is businesses that are on a downward trend. The business owner says "We're off a little right now, but look at what we did 2 years ago." Unfortunately, the time to sell was 2 years ago. A smart buyer will look at a weighted average of the last 3 years with most of the weighting assigned to the most recent year.

Just like selling and buying stock of public corporations, to sell your company for the most value, timing is everything. Buyers never want to pay for potential, but unless sales and cash flow are rising, you can't even have the conversation.

So bottomline, call us well in advance of your planned exit. Don't worry, we can keep a secret or we would not be successful in this business.