Business Brokers: Acing the Interview and Getting the Listing
Finding the right advisors when selling a business can be a challenge. But it doesn’t have to be. First off, most business owners will already have a relationship with a couple; an attorney and accountant for example. That’s a start – but only a start, because the RIGHT attorney and accountant are what’s needed. The RIGHT attorney decidedly is NOT the owner’s divorce attorney or the one that keeps getting their kid off on various speeding charges. The right attorney is a “transaction” attorney – one with experience in handling the sale of businesses. The same can be said of accountants. Not all accountants have experience in the ins and outs of selling a business. But what about business brokers?Finding the Right Business Broker

Question: “How will you handle confidentiality during the selling process?”
When selling a business, confidentiality is critical. Not all business broker or M&A firms will have a very detailed, well-defined process for protecting the confidentiality of the businesses they’re hired to sell but failing to maintain the highest level of confidentiality is the fastest way for the market to know that a company is for sale, which is guaranteed to create problems for the owners with their employees, customers, and suppliers. We have to be able to clearly explain to our potential clients that we understand how critical this aspect of the process is and what we do to ensure that confidentiality is maintained from start to finish. In our Course, “Learn How to Value and Successfully Sell Businesses”, we describe the many facets of confidentiality and how to assure potential clients that we are able to maintain it. We also advise our clients how to handle a surprise phone call from someone inquiring about a possible sale._____________________________________________________________________________
Our course, “Learn How to Value and SUCCESSFULLY Sell Businesses“, teaches you how to value and sell businesses.
Become a Professional Business Broker…
Most importantly, we let our clients know that, if news that their business might be for sale gets out, it will be from a breach on their end, not ours. Many owners have not thought about confidentiality or how important it is to the successful sale of their business. Properly explaining how – and more importantly, why – we focus on it, allows us to be seen as true professionals with our client’s best interest foremost in our mind.Question: “What is the size of the transactions you usually handle?”
In our case, we work in the Main Street and Lower Middle markets. That is, businesses with transaction values of between $250,000 and $20 million (though some of our brokers handle smaller deals, especially when they’re just getting started). We are not – and have no intention of becoming – investment bankers competing in the $100 million market. We tell our potential clients up front that this is the range that we’re most experienced in and that, if their business is larger, we’d be happy to refer them to a firm that has more experience with larger deals. But there are millions of businesses around the world that fall into our size range. We recognize that we can’t and don’t want to be all things to all people – and I advise new brokers to adopt this position. It reflects positively on us if we refer potential clients to someone who can better serve them. We’ve found that advising our clients about our self-imposed “limitation” enhances our credibility.Question: “How will you market my business?”

We’ve launched a coaching program specifically tailored to Realtors that want to sell businesses, business owners and to anyone that wants to become a business broker.
If you’d like to learn more, email me at joe@WorldwideBusinessBlog.com
Question: “How will you value my business?”
This one is tricky because we have to realize that the business owner may be interviewing several brokers and it is not uncommon that one or more of them will try to flatter the owner with an unrealistic number just to get the listing.
Question: “What is the likelihood of finding a buyer for my business?”
This one is pretty easy because there are some pretty good statistics out there. Anyone who has read this blog with any regularity over the past couple of years knows the low level of successful business sales and why that level is so abysmal. (Hint: it’s usually the business owner’s fault.) Though there are more than a dozen good reasons that businesses don’t sell, there are only about five that are responsible for the vast majority of such disappointing results. And these five – mostly the result of decisions made by the business owner – are more likely to be avoided if they are explained to the potential client. Finally, the big question is, how do we get paid? Because that question covers so much ground, it needs a post by itself and that will be the topic of next week’s post.The Bottom Line
Business brokers are sure to be interviewed by business owners when the owners believe it’s time to exit. That interview is likely to involve dozens of questions, many of which might be specific to the business. But as a rule, the five questions discussed above will almost certainly be asked and we need to know how to answer them. If you have any questions or comments on this topic – or any topic related to business – I’d like to hear from you. Put them in the comments box below. Start the conversation and I’ll get back to you with answers or my own comments. If I get enough on one topic, I’ll address them in a future post or podcast. I’ll be back with you again next Monday. In the meantime, I hope you have a safe and profitable week.
Joe

The author is the founder of Worldwide Business Brokers and holds a certification from the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) as a Certified Business Intermediary (CBI) of which there are fewer than 1,000 in the world. He can be reached at joe@WorldwideBusinessBlog.com