***Ascent Partners 5 April 2011; Business Sales Service 3 – Complete Business Sales Service***
No matter where you are located with Australia Ascent Partners can help you market and sell your business. In recent weeks we have outlined our Base and Intermediary service; today we provide an overview of our Complete Business Sales service, where we do the pre sale preparation, marketing, selling and negotiating on your behalf.
As a business marketing and sales agent, with over 20 printing related business sales, and 30 years industry experience, we understand how printing businesses operate and talk the printer’s language. We also understand the profile of buyers that will provide the best return for your business.
The Complete Business Sales Service is offered around Australia. We provide an overview of what that service encompasses below:
• A business appraisal – we request information on the business, and through our analysis and research, we provide you with a guiding estimate of what we think your business is worth, and the rationale, based on market realities, of how we arrived at that figure
• If vendors wish to proceed we are then engaged on a sole agency basis for a minimum of 120 days. For interstate businesses we often work with local business agents (no additional charges for the vendor, we simply share our fees with them, and we work as the lead agent).
• We then prepare an Information Memorandum (IM), which is the document we later provide interested parties with, after they sign a confidentiality agreement. The IM provides the prospects with all the relevant information – including company background, staffing, machinery, financial overview, client overview (not by name), premises, systems, services and asking price etc.
• We then market the business in four of the largest Australian Business Sale websites, and of course our web site and on Print 21 On Line. We also market the business to our registered interested buyers on our internal data base. In most instances our marketing does not divulge the name of the business, just provides a general location (ie rural Victoria), size (i.e. $1,000,000 turnover of 6 staff) , type (ie commercial printer) and maybe key features (ie highly profitable, excellent client base)
• We then qualify buyers – by asking questions about their interest, background, capacity to fund and their urgency.
• Upon successful qualification we issue confidentiality agreements and subsequently the IM
• The usual process then is, for those remaining interested, to get them to visit the business and meet the vendor. We, or our local business agent that we are working with, always attend, and guide these meetings. Selling your business is usually an emotional business, and it’s important to stay objective. It’s here that we play to role of intermediary. We also respond to all further questions from the prospect directly with them. The vendor is hence left free to run their business
• Negotiations then ensue. No business sale is ever the same, our role is to conclude the sale on the best possible terms for the vendor – this includes price, but often just as important are the terms
• Once the deal is concluded, a deposit is usually required and a contract drawn up. Here we help brief the lawyer and hold deposits in our trust account.
• Due diligence usually follows where the purchaser and their advisors usually seek to verify information –examples of this is where they wish to see the lease on the premises, or go through the financials to verify the sales
• We then manage the process until the settlement occurs
The above is an overview of the major components of the Complete Service – Basically we act as your agent offering professional services, marketing and advice, to ensure you get the best possible outcome.
Details of this Complete service and our other scaled down services (Base and Intermediary) are contained on our web site, www.ascentpartners.com.au. Monthly fees for businesses with a transaction below $2,000,000 are also contained on this site, although the success fees are quoted on a case by case basis.
We have also developed a PDF Brochure on the three Business Sales Services – you can request that by completing the Contact Us page on our web site, tick the Business Sales Box, and in comments state “please send Business Sales PDF”. Or simply ring Richard Rasmussen on 0402 021 101 and he will provide.
