BizBuy.ca
8750 Jane Street, Unit 16 L4K 2M9 Vaughan, ON, Canada

Selling your business may be one of the hardest decisions any entrepreneur has to make. Your company isn’t a 9-to-5 job. It’s your baby. It’s not surprising many business owners don’t want to contemplate selling. But even if you don’t plan to sell any time soon, it’s still important to think about an eventual exit. Entrepreneurs are driven people and often their business is their life, says Cyril Cochrane, a Managing Director in BDC’s Growth & Transition Capital team, which... finances business transitions. Selling is a very difficult question for many of them. Here are three questions Cochrane suggests asking yourself to know if you’re ready to sell.

You’re ready to sell your business, but can it run without you? If the answer is no, it’ll be hard to find a buyer. And even if you do, the bids are likely to be low. If your company is overly dependent on you, it’s time to establish well-documented, repeatable processes. Employees should know these by heart and apply them consistently. You want to be able to go on vacation for up to three months without anything breaking. That’s the ultimate test, says John Warrillow, auth...or of the book Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You. Warrillow is also founder of the The Value Builder System, a web-based platform that helps entrepreneurs improve the value of their company. He offered these five steps for creating repeatable processes in your business.

Selling a business is a major challenge for entrepreneurs. Besides the complexity of the process and emotions involved, entrepreneurs need to make sure they maximize the value of the business they've put so much effort and time into building. Making cosmetic changes to a company at the last minute before putting it on the market is a recipe for disappointment. Planning and preparation for a transition is the way to go and entrepreneurs need to take the time to do it right.

Selling a small business for the maximum value to the right purchasers on the right terms can be a tremendous challenge, even for experienced business owners. Buying and selling an existing company is a complex process, but one that should be demystified. At its most basic level, the process is straightforward, just like the purchase of a single item. The small-business owner sells the object (in this case, their own business) to a potential buyer for an agreed-upon price and mutually acceptable terms. Yet, as always, the devil is in the details -- in this case how the deal is structured.

Business is like a game of chess: no matter how many hours you spend strategizing and winning, the game has to come to an end. But few business owners realize that there’s life beyond checkmate. They burn out on their business without realizing it and often wake up wanting to exitonly to realize exiting is a beast.