Do not make any significant changes to your business when it is for sale. In the months leading up to a business sale, you’ll want to carefully get everything ready. Once the business is listed for sale, you will want to avoid making any changes to how you run your business. Here are some specific examples of things to avoid during a potential sale:
- Avoid price changes of any kind during a business sale. If you want to run a special, that can be ok. You do not want to raise or lower prices during a sale.
- Do not re-do your physical or online space during a sale. You should maintain what you have, but making changes is not a good idea.
- In terms of employees, it is not a good idea to do anything out of the ordinary. If you need to hire to replace someone or as a matter of standard operations, you should. Extra hiring should be avoided during a sale. Same for terminations – only terminate someone if that person is causing trouble to your business (and would be detrimental to the new owner).
- In terms of personal relationships with customers and staff, keep it simple when your time is short. Stay friendly but don’t start anything new.
- Ditto for contracts. If you can avoid signing up for anything new during the sale, you should.
- If you need to make changes while your business is in diligence or engaging in talks with a potential buyer, talk to the buyer about the changes. Perhaps get their advice, or, at the very least, explain your decision.
In summary, when you business is for sale, you want to maintain and keep the status quo. Leave things that need to be improved to the new owner. Do not mess anything up – drive it smooth and steady.
As always, book a discovery call about how we can support you during your business sale.
