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Making the first steps to selling your profitable business

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Building a profitable business is a dream for many, from building a lucrative blog or website to nurturing a successful restaurant. If you are one of the lucky few who has grown a wildly successful business- congratulations! If you are someone who is making the steps to get there- you can do it! If you fall into either of these camps, you may have already thought about how you might go about selling a business in the future. You have probably heard of Martin Lewis, founder of Money Saving Expert, his website became so successful that he went on to sell the website in 2012 for up to £87m to Moneysupermarket.com group. Mr Lewis received £35m cash upfront in the deal, in addition to 22.1m shares in Moneysupermarket.com and £27m in future payments. Pretty impressive, right? So now you might be wondering, how would you go about selling your profitable business?

selling your profitable business

Selling your business will be the largest deal you will ever make, and so it’s vital to get some specialist advice. Building a business is a tough job but selling a business is even tougher. Your very first step once you have decided that you would like to sell is to get in touch with a company such as BCMS – a market-leading mergers and acquisitions company. Getting in touch with an expert means that you can get the help that you need to value the business, and most importantly, selling your profitable business. BCMS have a proven track record of over 600 deals over the last decade, and have been running since 1989- that’s over 25 years of experience, so you know that you are in safe hands.

Determining the selling value of a business is extremely complex, and if you are a business owner yourself, you have probably wondered what your business is worth in monetary terms on more than one occasion. When you take the leap and decide to speak to an advisor about selling up, some advisors will offer the use of a business valuation calculator- which is not the best way to find out the value of the business that you have poured blood, sweat and tears into. BCMS never place a value on your business themselves, and this is because they have already done the hard work, and learnt that you can only determine how much your business is really worth by researching buyers, generating competition, and leaving it up to the buyers to value your business.

BCMS believe that a business shouldn’t go to market with a price tag- they know that a business can only be valued on its future prospects, not past performance. Advisors will aim to bring more than one potential buyer to the meeting table for selling your profitable business, which establishes and encourages competition and helps you get the very best value for your hard work. The biggest driver behind successfully completing a business sale, is the potential for growth- BCMS sum it up well on their website:

The most important financial data is therefore not the profit you posted last year, or the year before last. It's your future financial performance, and the value-added benefits to an acquirer that buying your business will bring.

Luckily, BCMS will prepare a bespoke and detailed 3 year forecast for your business- with dedicated accountants to arrange profit planning and analysis of all key commercial and sales data. This shows the potential buyer how well your business would perform under their management- with the credible evidence to back it up. This is why getting specialist help is crucial to determine the value of your business, the value of a business is undoubtedly in its future potential and it’s well worth bringing in the experts to help forecast where it might be heading.

If you want to find out more information on selling your profitable business, BCMS have a wealth of free resources such as sale guides, webinars and e-books online. The company also hold regular events throughout the country- head to their website to find out about upcoming events near you.

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Emma Drew

Emma has spent over 15 years sharing her expertise in making and saving money, inspiring thousands to take control of their finances. After paying off £15,000 in credit card debt, she turned her side hustles into a full-time career in 2015. Her award-winning blog, recognized as the UK's best money-making blog for three years, has made her a trusted voice, with features on BBC TV, BBC radio, and more.

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