***Advertisement: Ascent Partners 4 August 2010***

As the industry business sales specialists, working in the market on a daily basis, we know what’s HOT – what sells and what makes our phones ring. We detail this, provide an example of what strategy we adopted for a “not so hot” business, and argue that most businesses need to identify where the demand is and where it may lie in the future, even if they are not on the market. Richard Rasmussen lists his hot tips for businesses.

The HOT
•    Goodwill (clients and associated systems) especially those that are capable of sticking and growing – because additional revenue is always in demand. Most purchasers want to hire / contract many of client facing employees and often the boss. Well spread “direct” clients, with good transfer assistance will sell very quickly
•    Digital print businesses (non franchise) – high demand from new entrants, commercial printers wanting to grow into digital and some print management / print broking firms
•    Wide format print businesses – high growth area
•    Web to print businesses   - they are highly systemised, great spread of clients, generally growing and the ones we’ve seen highly profitable
•    Profitable businesses – always a market for fairly priced, profitable businesses

This is where we’ve enjoyed good success and high enquiry rates in the industry in the past six months.

The not-so-HOT

Don’t despair if your business is not in this group – you do after all have the first of these (Goodwill) within your business. As we said last week, a lot can be done in the way the deal is structured.

For example, the advice we recently gave, and implemented, for a marginally profitable commercial printer was:

•    Appraise the business first. Advise the achievable going concern price, and the goodwill / equipment values
•    Market the business as a going concern (to those on our known purchasers data base, and / or via Print 21 On Line)
•    If within one month, we don’t have serious enquiries / prospects – split the sale (sell goodwill and plant and equipment separately)
This process achieved the best and fastest result - all done and dusted within three months. It may not be for everyone, but we know it works

So, it’s certainly not all doom and gloom in the business sales market. Everything is saleable, but pricing needs to be tuned to market demand and prevailing conditions, and it needs to marketed in the right way to the right target market

Ideally aim to be where the future demand is  

It may be that you’re not ready to sell now, but with knowledge of where the demand presently lays, and where it is likely to lay in the future, we’d argue is just about an imperative for most businesses. After all, for most it’s the retirement fund!  Ideally you need to work towards getting your business to be attractive, and “in demand” to the market place – demand and price are certainly related.    

Call Richard Rasmussen at Ascent Partners (0402 021 101) for a confidential discussion about where your business sits, what the value may be, and where the demand lies.