How to Market your Sale Discreetly

Hey ,

One of the trickiest parts of putting your business up for sale is making sure the announcement only gets to the right people.

You don’t want to make your staff concerned, or make it look like the business is in trouble.

Often companies placed on brokerage sites suffer this fate, and to add insult to injury the vast majority of businesses dumped onto bizbuysell.com or other sites don’t even sell anyway.

How do you get around this while still having the deal shown to the right people?

For two easy sources of prospective acquirers, rely on people with a close relationship with several companies in your industry:

Ask accountants in your space 

Ask lawyers in your space

Simply have an informal chat with them about if they know any potential buyers in your niche. Both of these will not only know several players in your market, but will also have advanced knowledge of their desire and capacity to acquire. They know their financials and business goals in ways not shown in public, so they’re in a perfect position to make a qualified introduction.

Bankers are also good for this, but merger banking tends to be on the larger end of the deal spectrum, so I prefer accountants for SME deal flow

Also if you operate as a supplier to other businesses, there’s potential to offer them a vertical integration by buying you out, this needs slightly more tact and we’ll deal with that in a different email

All of these methods can be done over the phone or text so won’t require a big public declaration of your exit like brokerage websites need.

Overall, finding people with network effects are crucial for getting a sale over the line,

Remember, Quality not Quantity!

Until next time,

Unlocking Wealth Weekly