How to Find Buyers for Your Business
You're ready to market your business for sale, and your goal is to get your business in front of as many qualified business buyers as possible. You want to drum up enough interest to generate multiple offers and have options for negotiating the terms.
Ideally, you would leverage several channels simultaneously so that you can consider multiple offers at the same time. That means tapping into various audiences, including the broad business for sale market, local business owners that may also serve your customers, your competitors, and your own professional network.
Let's look at some of the options you have to make these groups aware of your intention to sell.
List Your Business on Appropriate Marketplaces
*Self-serving suggestion alert. You are on BizBuySell, after all – it's what we do.
Business buyers will turn to the internet to find information on local business acquisition opportunities, so to tap into the largest pool of buyer prospects, you will need to make your sale available online.
Listing your business for sale online involves finding the right website(s), choosing the appropriate industry categories, deciding the level of detail to include in your listing, and choosing a placement option.
1. Find the most appropriate websites
The simplest way to find out where buyers are looking is to look yourself. Spend some time on Google trying different searches for businesses for sale in your market and see which websites consistently appear.
2. Create your listing and consider confidentiality
You probably want to keep your business sale confidential to prevent creating any friction for your customers or spooking your employees. Most business owners will create a “blind listing”, which just means limiting the information listed to the type of business, the general area of its location, the important top and bottom line financials, the asking price, and some color on the circumstances of the sale. Any information that would make your specific business identifiable is only passed on to interested buyers who have signed a confidentiality agreement.
3. Decide where to post your listing
Every business for sale website will organize their listings into industry categories, so you will need to select the categories (restaurants, medical practices, construction companies, software companies, etc.) that best suit your business. You will also want to look into options for helping your business stand out from the others. This usually means buying more visible placements if you are selling in a market with a lot of competition.
(For more on publishing your listing online, see 10 Steps for Creating a Successful Online Business-for-Sale Listing.)
Posting your business to the broader business buying community is the best way to cast a wide net, but also requires spending some time screening prospects and moving forward only with those you determine are qualified.
Reach Out to Your Professional Network
In addition to making the broader business buyer market aware of your sale, it may be beneficial to reach out to trusted business associates, owners of complementary and competing businesses, and financial professionals with whom you do business.
The goal here is to make your sale known to strategic buyers who may be in a position to benefit by acquiring your operation, customers, and employees. “Strategic buyers” are those who would want to acquire your business to complement or expand on another business. They may not be actively looking for businesses to buy, but may have the resources to take advantage if given an opportunity.
The key to this approach is to use the broader market to get competing bids and set a price target.
Engage with Local Business Brokers or M&A Professionals
Business brokers not only help you through the process of selling your business, they also have their own database of potential buyers, and a network of professionals working in the business for sale market.
An effective broker can open doors that may not be available to you otherwise and help boost the ultimate selling price of your business. Strategic and private equity buyers will often work with brokers and M&A intermediaries to find acquisition targets.
(For everything you need to know about business brokers and how they operate, see the articles we have listed under Working with a Business Broker.)
Consider Your Most Trusted Employees
Sometimes the path with the least friction is the best. Passing on the business to trusted, long-time employees is a favored option because you can be sure the business you've built is left in the hands of the people who know it best, and the transition is much easier than selling to a third-party. That's why it's a common part of a small business succession plan.
There are various deal structures that will allow employees to raise funds and purchase the business from you. The trick is setting a price that's fair for both you and your employees. Again, drumming up offers from the broader market is helpful by assuring everyone involved that the price they pay is reflective of the business's market value.
For more on how this can work, see our overview article on Selling Your Business to Your Employees.