Source: ErmanCivici/iStock

While much has been written about what persuades investors to buy stakes in businesses, a lot of the discussion revolves around the investors’ decision process in relation to assessing seed or start-up investment opportunities. Advice is often targeted at “the pitch”, the qualities of the founder/s, etc. However, in the market for mature and, ahem, “post-revenue” businesses — and contrary to Silicon Valley thinking, established businesses making a profit do exist — criteria, decisions and funding work by slightly different rules.

Early Stage vs the Rest of the World

Early stage opportunities involve high risk, high cash-burn businesses. Investors who take equity or quasi-equity in these businesses expect most of these ventures to tank and a small fraction to become so enormously successful that they more than compensate for losses elsewhere. A VC would expect to get a higher return on money invested in (risky) early stage businesses than he’d get in safer, more liquid markets. But his ROI expectation is a fund-level expectation (i.e., it’s the overall return expected from his whole portfolio of investment). He does not expect that level of return for each and every business in the portfolio.

However, the much larger mergers & acquisitions (M&A) market marches to a different beat. It’s composed of trade and institutional investors, private equity firms, family offices and others, and they are looking for businesses with demonstrated viability, positive cash flow and a loyal customer base. Essentially, they want established and proven businesses. Every business “acquired” has to be a business which can be sold later for a higher price, usually after creating value by driving growth and/or reducing inefficiencies. The same logic applies in mergers — the merger makes sense when the merged entity is more than the sum of its component parts, meaning value has been created.

Risk vs Return

Acquisitory investors like private equity firms judge businesses differently to how VCs do. They are looking for a pre-determined level of return for a given level of risk. In other words, they have a wider range of potential acquisition targets — if the risk-reward ratio matches or exceeds their threshold, they’ll take a peek.

This is a key difference. In M&A deals, unlike with VC, considerable power to alter the risk-reward ratio rests with the business owner seeking investment.

Illustration: Acme Ltd. has an enterprise value of $5M. Acquirer PLC studies the business and forms an opinion that it will be cash generative over coming years to the tune of $400,000 per annum (8% of the asking price). Acquirer PLC also quantifies the risk of meeting those earning targets. They decide that the return doesn’t compensate them enough for the risk.

Acme Ltd. has two options to close a transaction — lower the price or lower the risk. Reducing the price of the business to $4M leaves the cash flow of $400,000 translating to a return of 10%. The higher rate just might be acceptable to this investor.

Alternatively, Acme Ltd. can reduce the risk PLC perceives in the business. Vendors may underwrite select liabilities, extend warranties and indemnities to the investor, or even accept part of their compensation being contingent on future performance. In doing so they change the risk profile of the business. In our case, the acquirer may be then willing to accept a lower rate of return — 8% — because they are also taking on less risk.

Understanding the Mindset of the People with the Money

Different players in the M&A market have different motivations, criteria and yardsticks on which they assess potential targets. Knowing the players and what drives their decisions is essential to succeeding in getting acquired, and getting acquired at the right price. To provide a couple of examples…

The Trade Investor

A trade investor is guided by his company’s strategic plans and the context his board has set out for potential acquisitions. This will include a framework for evaluating acquisition targets including, for example, specifications on sector, technologies, skills or intellectual property. They often attempt to make part payment in shares.

It is difficult to know each acquisitory company’s individual preferences, but to the extent the vendor can demonstrate the whole being greater than the sum of two parts, he’s on the right track. These buyers are not so keen on the business continuing to grow as it has in the past, but are more interested in accretion — how the integration of the target will aid their own growth. They see change. They worry about how that change will impact both operations. They are interested in back-office infrastructure, what functions they can eliminate and what cost savings they can extract.

They may be elements of a target that are not of strategic importance to these investors. It’s important to establish early into the dialogue as much as possible about their intentions, strategy and goals. This is to the vendor’s advantage. It allows him to focus on promoting to the acquirer those elements of his business that offer the synergies they’re seeking.

Even within individual acquirers, there will be competing interests. The CFO may be concerned about valuation multiples, ROI and current debt, and may not like the factoring company being used. The CTO may see hurdles in integration of IT systems — he never did the CRM software you’re using. Internal politics may have others align themselves against any acquisition if they perceive the status quo as a safer option for them as individuals. A good intermediary assisting with placing a business will be as much a politician and psychologist as a salesman.

The Financial Investor

These come in many shapes and sizes. They are not looking to merge operations so they evaluate targets as a stand-alone entities.

They may be financing a management buy-out (MBO) or they may be providing growth finance via a partial or complete equity transfer, but the intention is to facilitate the company’s growth. After this, they cash out by selling the business (or their stake) in about four to six years. Post-finance, the target company continues to operate independently with the same management team and with little personnel change except for new board appointees by the investor.

The prospect of the company delivering high growth in the near future is key to landing these deals. Continuity and growth are the themes, not change. As these investors are likely not familiar with the target’s industry it’s worth the vendor focusing more on explaining the industry, the competition, the business’ place within the ecosystem.

Conclusion

The importance of knowing the buyer, and what the buyer is really after, cannot be overemphasized. The approach best likely to result in success is the one targeted to what each specific acquirer is actively seeking.

Written by Clinton Lee

Clinton is the founder of The Exit Firm, a UK M&A consultancy that advises business owners on their exit options and connects them with the right professional expertise to help them achieve their exit goals.

Prior to starting this consultancy, Clinton’s entrepreneurial career spanned over three decades and included building, buying and selling of over two dozen businesses.

Now based in the UK, Clinton originally studied accountancy in India as an undergraduate and attended Virginia Tech in the USA for an MBA in finance.

Areas of Expertise: UK-based private companies with turnover of up to £10M.

How can you improve the value of your business?

Complete the “Value Builder” questionnaire today in just 13 minutes and we’ll send you a 27-page custom report assessing how well your business is positioned for selling. Take the test now:

It is common for executives at companies to undergo an annual physical.  Likewise, these same executives will likely examine their own investments at least once a year, if not more often.  However, rather perplexingly, these same capable and responsible executives never consider giving their company an annual physical unless required to do so by rule or regulations.

Most Business Owners Don’t Know

Recently, a leading CPA firm undertook a study that was quite revealing.  In particular, this study concluded that a whopping 65% of business owners don’t know the value of their company and 75% of the surveyed business owners had their net worth tied up in their businesses.  Phrased another way, 75% of business owners don’t know how much they are worth!  Perhaps most striking of all was the fact that a full 85% of business owners have no exit strategy whatsoever.

Having Recurrent Valuations is a Must

Business owners should know what their businesses are worth at least on an annual basis.  Situations, both personal as well as in the economy at large, can change very rapidly.  A failure to have a valuation leaves one exposed if issues suddenly arise involving estate planning or divorce or even partnership issues.  These are just two examples of potential problems.

It is also vital to understand how your business compares to last year and previous years; after all, valuations should be increasing not decreasing.  A valuation can also help you understand how your business compares to other businesses.  Perhaps most importantly, an annual valuation can help you spot and fix problems.

“Buy, Sell or Get Out of the Way”

If you don’t know your valuation, then you truly don’t know where you are headed.  As former Chrysler CEO, Lee Iacocca once stated, “Buy, sell or get out of the way.”

Standing still isn’t an option.  You need to know your valuation in order to take full advantage of opportunities.  You may feel that an acquisition isn’t the right move at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ready!  Having a current valuation means you’re ready to go if opportunity does, in fact, knock!

You never know when a potential acquirer may enter the picture.  Imagine missing out on a tremendous opportunity because you didn’t have a valuation in place.  Often hot offers and hot opportunities depend on speed.  The time it takes to get a valuation could mean that the opportunity is no longer available.  An accurate annual valuation of your business provides a valuable option whether you choose to exercise it or not.

Copyright: Business Brokerage Press, Inc.

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San Francisco, CA – BizBuySell.com the Internet’s largest business-for-sale marketplace, reported today that small business transactions continued at a strong pace in the first quarter of 2015, growing 6 percent from the first quarter of 2014. A total of 1,830 small businesses were reported sold in Q1, continuing a two-year trend of exceptionally robust activity in the business-for-sale market. The full results are included in BizBuySell.com’s Q1 2015 Insight Report, which aggregates statistics from business-for-sale transactions reported by participating business brokers nationwide.

Recent surveys of buyers, sellers and business brokers attribute the transaction increase to the growth of both supply and demand in the business-for-sale market. Baby Boomers continue to supply the market with quality listings as they reach retirement age and buyers (who now have access to more lending options) are pulling the trigger on their small business ownership plans.

A key reason buyers and sellers are entering the market in larger numbers is the improving health of small businesses in general. Financial indicators remained high in the first quarter of 2015, giving sellers hope that they can earn a high sales price and giving buyers optimism about the future of their potential acquisitions. The median revenue of small businesses sold in Q1 increased by 10% versus the same time last year.  Median cash flow being earned on these transactions also increased, hitting the highest numbers reported since BizBuySell.com started tracking this data in 2007.

Lastly, and most importantly, the median sales price achieved on these transactions continued to increase, topping the same period last year by over 14%!

With revenue and profits increasing, sellers receiving higher multiples, and at the same time business transactions continuing to increase, we continue the shift toward a Seller’s market!

Is the time right for you to considering selling your business?  Curious to see how you might improve the value of your business to both strategic and financial acquirers?  Complete the Sellability Score questionnaire today and we’ll send you a 27-page custom report complete with your score on the eight key drivers of Sellability. Take the test now:

If you’ve achieved some success in your startup’s first product, how do you keep growing? What should you do if an upstart gives your customers a product that delivers more bang-for-the-buck than yours? How do you know when the needs of your customers are changing and adapt to those changes effectively? How should you alter your startup’s business strategy to take advantage of new technology?

I’ve seen startups use all kinds of strategies to stay ahead of changing customer needs, new competitors and evolving technology. One CEO acted as chief customer service officer, visiting with each customer after the sale to ask for feedback and adjust offerings as needed. Another wrote press releases three years into the future to create a vision of what the company should be doing three years from now.

Both of these approaches have their benefits — providing motivation to move forward and a clearer vision into the future. But what if your vision of the future is not the best one for your startup or your current customer doesn’t represent your future target customer?

To tap into the strengths of some of these approaches while overcoming their weaknesses, I developed a six-step process to help entrepreneurs grow their business without boundaries.

1. Create a forward-thinking team. You should lead a team consisting of key functional leaders in your company and select customers and suppliers who can help you rethink your startup strategy. Check in with them often to stay on top of their needs.
2. Map your startup’s value network. The value network is all the industries from your product’s raw materials to the end consumer. Your team can gain valuable insights by fanning across the value network and finding which companies are growing fastest and why.
3. Choose who you listen to. Monitor the market signals generated by the most interesting participants in your industry’s value network. For example, what new products is your fastest growing competitor working on? Which customer segments seem to be adopting your product the fastest?
4. Generate a business model hypotheses. Based on your team’s analysis of these market signals, you should generate ideas about how you might change your strategy such as service features, customer targeting, pricing and channel marketing.
5. Get market feedback. Launch the top three ideas and see what kind of feedback you get from the market. Do this launch as quickly and inexpensively as you can. You can always adapt and make changes later.
6. Refine based on feedback. Add more features that customers want and take away ones they hate. Always be looking for ways to improve.

Family businesses may resemble their non-family counterparts in most ways, but there’s one crucial difference. Whenever close relatives work together, deep emotions invariably become involved – emotions that can further complicate the already difficult decision whether to sell a family enterprise. If you’re thinking about selling a family business, don’t overlook what your emotions are telling you about the potential sale. In some instances, of course, you’re better off listening to your head. But in this case, it’s just as important to consider what your heart is telling you too.

Why You Might Sell

Your decision to sell a family business may start with financial need. Maybe you’re looking ahead to retirement and want to feel more secure. Or maybe you see stiff challenges ahead for your company, with fewer growth prospects available or increased competition. You might also look to sell a family business if you’re concerned that no one in the next generation has stepped up as an obvious management successor. In addition, the stress of working together can be too much for some families to handle comfortably. Family strife is always unpleasant, but when family members who work together don’t get along and the tensions spill into the workplace, it can make for a destructive personal and professional environment.

Why You Might Not

Selling a family business can feel like selling a part of your family. If you sell, your decision will have a significant impact on the lives of people you care about – relatives, employees, and, especially if the business is in a close-knit community, local residents. Your decision to sell may be especially stressful if you’re thinking of selling a business handed down to you over many years. You may wonder about what your forebears would do in your shoes. With such factors to consider, you may decide to refuse an otherwise attractive offer and keep your business going – a decision that will allow you to maintain your independence, and pass on to future generations the same opportunities that you received. Yet before you turn down an attractive offer, make sure you discuss your expectations with the members of the next generation. If your chosen successors aren’t interested or able to manage the business, you may be setting the stage for serious family conflict.

No Easy Answers

Sometimes, selling your business may be the best solution for everyone involved, providing you and your family with the assets you need to pursue your next dreams. But because the decision to sell can be highly emotional, make sure you are comfortable with the idea of selling. Just because the numbers may add up doesn’t mean you’ll be happy when you no longer have the business that has been an important part of your family.

Whether you’re buying or selling a business, a few guidelines can help you negotiate a deal more effectively and improve your chances for an advantageous outcome. While you’re probably already familiar with basic negotiation strategies, most parties to an M&A transaction can use a refresher course when it comes to what may be the biggest deal of their lives.

Know Yourself

Good negotiators start by knowing themselves. Before you enter into sale negotiations, take time to identify your goals and your tactics for achieving them. If you’re buying, what’s your “reservation price”-the most you’re willing to pay? Would you be able to walk away from the deal if the seller refuses to budge on price?

If you’re selling, similar questions apply:

• What’s the lowest offer you’ll accept?
• Are you in a hurry to sell?
• What conditions will you require as part of the sale?

For example, the retention of certain employees may be a priority. Also be prepared to speak confidently about your business’ strengths and address any perceived weaknesses. Since the buyer’s negotiating leverage emphasizes your weaknesses, you need to be aware of them and ready to provide a solution that mitigates an adverse effect on the buyer’s offering price.

Know the Other Party

Knowing the other side is as important as understanding your own priorities. This knowledge allows you to map out the negotiation ahead of time. As a buyer, you should have a thorough understanding of the business-gained through extensive due diligence.

If you’re a seller, it’s essential to know that your buyer can afford to purchase the business and, if the deal will be seller-financed, how well the company will be run while the note is being paid off. It’s also helpful to learn if your buyer has looked at many other businesses. Buyers who know they have other options if your deal falls through will probably drive a harder bargain.

Gathering knowledge involves more than research; you also need to be a good listener.

If you’re talkative by nature, make an effort to speak less and listen more when meeting with the other party. The better you understand them, the greater chance you have of anticipating their moves and preparing counter offers.

Build a Relationship

There are plenty of opportunities for differences of opinion in any business transaction, and a business sale is no different. Establishing a cordial relationship can go a long way toward reducing misunderstandings or unintended offenses. Social occasions such as dinner or a golf outing can break the ice. Expressing interest in the other party’s opinion and a sense of humor also can help build a good working relationship.

Going back on your word, exaggerating points or misrepresenting facts in an attempt to strengthen your position, on the other hand, can damage goodwill. Finally, don’t try to box the other party into an untenable position-it’s a tactic that’s likely to misfire.

Flexible is Vital

Selling a business is a complicated process, of which price is only one component. When entering the negotiation stage, keep in mind other items that are subject to bargaining:

• Down payment amount (more info);
• Interest rate on a seller loan (more info);
• Collateral (more info);
• Seller warranties (more info);
• Earn-out provisions (more info);
• Non-compete agreements (more info).

Also consider the structure of the deal – whether the company’s stock is being acquired, or just its assets. In general, sellers prefer a stock sale and buyers prefer an asset transaction, which provides better cash flow after the deal.

Good negotiators take advantage of the multifaceted nature of the process by remaining flexible throughout. This may mean compromising on some elements to get the ones that are most important to you, such as those related to financing terms, the closing date, employee retention or seller warranties.

With so many moving parts to consider, flexibility can get you past obstacles. If you’re hung up on a tough issue-say, the price of a particular asset-try putting it aside temporarily, moving to less controversial points such as the price of other assets, and then circling back later.

If you’re curious to know how well your business is positioned to be sold, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score without any cost or obligation:

The most powerful metrics in any business are ratios that express your performance on metric A as it relates to metric B. For example, knowing what your revenue was last year is interesting; but knowing what your revenue per employee was will give you a sense of how efficient your business is at leveraging your investment in people.

If you’re a retailer, knowing what your sales were last year is far less useful than knowing what your sales per square foot were, as this measures your effectiveness at leveraging your investment in retail space.

One of the most important ratios to keep an eye on is your ratio of CUF:CAC. CUF stands for Cash Up Front, and it is the amount of money you get from a customer when they decide to buy. CAC stands for Customer Acquisition Cost, and it is the amount of money you need to invest in sales and marketing to win a new customer.

Improving your CUF:CAC ratio can ensure that you have the cash to grow your business without having to rely heavily on outside sources of capital.

HubSpot

To understand the CUF:CAC ratio, let’s first look at HubSpot.com. HubSpot is a software business that provides a platform for businesses to manage all of their marketing. HubSpot allows businesses to build a website, set up a blog, manage their social media accounts, create email marketing campaigns, and analyze it all through a single dashboard. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform for businesses, and HubSpot’stypical customer is a small to mid-sized company that needs to present a professional online image but doesn’t have the necessary internal resources or the budget to hire a team of designers.

According to a recent article in Forbes, HubSpot invested an average of $6,793 to win a new customer in Q2 2012. Their average customer paid $577 per month for access to the software, so if HubSpot had charged its customer just the monthly subscription fee, their CUF:CAC ratio would have been an abysmal .084:1.

But obviously HubSpot is in the subscription business, so they get $577 per month, and their average customer stays with HubSpot for more than three years, so they clearly recover the cost of acquisition over the lifetime of the customer.However, if they hadn’t had a strategy to improve their initial CUF:CAC, they would have required a boatload of money from outside investors.

To improve their CUF:CAC, HubSpot sells an “Inbound Marketing Success Training” package and charges new customers $2,000 to recover some of the costs of getting them set up. By charging $2000 upfront for the training package, their CUF:CAC ratio goes up to a much more respectable .37:1.

Forrester Research

To understand a company with an excellent CUF:CAC ratio, take a look at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research. Forrester’s primary business is selling syndicated market research on a subscription basis to billion-dollar companies. Founded in 1983, today Forrester generates roughly $300 million dollars in revenue from 2,451 customers, including 38 percent of the Fortune 1000.

Their core product is called “RoleView,” and for around $30,000 per year, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) can get research insights delivered to them based on their functional role within their company. Each RoleView subscription typically includes accessto research, membership in a Forrester leadership board where peers discuss issues they have in common, phone and email access to the analysts who perform the research, unlimited participation in Forrester Webinars, and the right to attend one live event.

Unlike HubSpot that primarily charges by the month, Forrester RoleView subscriptions are mostly charged annually, upfront. Subscribers get an entire year’s worth of their customer’s money in advance, giving them a positive CUF:CAC ratio. George F. Colony, CEO and Chairman of Forrester, revealed the benefit of charging upfront for subscriptions in his letter to shareholders in early 2013. He concluded: “Forrester’s business model yields healthy levels of free cash flow. Wetypically carry between 50 and100 million dollars in cash.”

Your CUF:CAC ratio is all about improving the cash flow in your business, which is one of the eight key drivers of Sellability.   If you’re curious to benchmark your company on this topic and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score without any cost or obligation:

When you look ahead to next year, will your revenue growth come from selling more to your existing customers or finding new customers for your existing products and services?

The answer may have a profound impact on the value of your business.

A recent analysis of owners who completed the Sellability Score questionnaire provided some very interesting conclusions.  Data was reviewed from 5,364 businesses that completed the survey.  When isolating the businesses that had a historical growth rate of 20 percent or greater, the earnings multiple received in selling their business was 20 percent greater than their slower growth counterparts.

However, the real bump in multiple came when comparing those companies that claim to have a unique product or service for which they have a virtual monopoly. The niche companies enjoyed average offers of roughly 50 percent more than the average companies, and fully 20 percent more than the fastest growth companies.

Nurture your niche

Chasing “bad” revenue by offering a wide array of products and services is common among growth companies. The easiest way to grow is to sell more things to your existing customers, so you just keep adding adjacent product and service lines. But when a strategic acquirer buys your business, they are buying something they cannot easily replicate on their own.

A large company will place less value on the revenue derived from products and services that you have in common. They will argue that their economies of scale put them in a better position to sell the things that you both offer today.

Likewise, they will pay the largest premium to get access to a new product or service they can sell to their customers. Big, mature companies have customers and systems, but they sometimes lack innovation; and many choose a strategy of acquisition as a way to buy their innovation.

Focusing on your niche is one of many areas where the long-term value of your business is at odds with short-term profit. For example, if you wanted to maximize your short-term profit, you might avoid investing in new technology or hiring a head of sales, arguing that both investments would hinder short-term profit. The truly valuable company finds a way to deliver profit in the short term while simultaneously focusing their strategy on what drives up the value of the business.

Now may be the time to find out how Sellable your business is?  If you’re curious to benchmark your company on growth potential and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score without any cost or obligation:

A recent survey by The Sellability Score found companies that would perform well without their owner for a period of three months are 50 percent more likely to get an offer to be acquired when compared to more owner-dependent businesses.

There is no better justification for taking a blissful, uninterrupted holiday than to see how your company performs in your absence. The better your company runs on autopilot, the more valuable it will be when you’re ready to sell.

To gauge your company’s ability to handle your absence, start by taking a vacation. Leave your computer at home and switch off your mobile. Upon your return, you’ll probably discover that your employees got resourceful and found answers to a lot of the questions they would have asked you if you had been just down the hall. That’s a good thing and a sign you should start planning an even longer vacation.

You’ll also likely come back to an inbox full of issues that need your personal attention. Instead of busily finding answers to each problem in a frenzied attempt to clean up your inbox, slow down and look at each issue through the lens of a possible problem with your people, systems or authorizations.

People

Start with your people and answer the following questions:

• Why did this problem end up on my desk?
• Who else is qualified to answer this question and why was that person not consulted?
• If nobody else is qualified, who can be trained to answer this question in the future?

Systems

Next, look at your systems and procedures. Could the issue have been dealt with if you had a system or a set of rules in place? The best systems are hardwired and do not require human interpretation; but if you’re not able to lock down a technical fix, then at least give employees a set of rules to follow in the future.

Authorizations

You may be a bottleneck in your own company if you’re trying to control spending too much. Employees may know what to do but do not have any means of paying for the fix they know you would want.

For example, you could put a customer service rule in place that gives your front line staff the authority to make a customer happy in any way they see fit provided it could be done for under $100.

You might allow an employee to spend a specific amount with a specific supplier each month without coming to you first.  Or you might give an employee an annual budget, an amount they can spend without seeking your approval.

Given the fires that may need to be extinguished after the fact, taking a holiday may seem more of a hassle than it’s worth. But if you transform the aftermath of a vacation into systems and training that allow employees to act on their own, you’ll find the vacation is worth what you paid for it many times over: your company will increase in value as it becomes less dependent on you personally.

Now may be the time to find out how Sellable your business is?  If you’re curious to benchmark your company on growth potential and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score without any cost or obligation:

BizBuySell.com the Internet’s largest business-for-sale marketplace, reported today that small business transactions jumped 41.7% in the third quarter of 2013 as compared to the same period of 2012.  The results are included in BizBuySell.com’s Third Quarter 2013 Insight Report, which aggregates business-for-sale transactions reported by participating business brokers nationwide.

Small business sales have continued to improve through 2013 and into the Third Quarter as a result of the improving overall economy, strong supply and demand fundamentals (i.e., an aging business owner demographic and an increase in the number of qualified business buyers) and continued improvement in small business performance.

After years of limited supply and demand in the small business market, both are picking up as the economic recovery is starting to take hold. Many Baby Boomers have been looking to exit their business and retire for some time now, but either haven’t been able to close the sale or have delayed selling in hopes of a higher price once their business performance and the economy recovered. The confidence of such owners that they can now receive an appropriate sales price in a reasonable time appears to have blossomed and supply is coming onto the market. Indeed, according to BizBuySell’s recent Buyer and Seller Confidence Survey, 70% of current small business sellers expect to be able to sell their business within one year of listing it.

In terms of demand, buyers who wanted to purchase a business became understandably hesitant once the Great Recession hit in 2008. They either did not have the confidence to purchase a business in such an uncertain economic environment or found that acquisition financing was not available and that their own financial resources were weakened. However, the upturn in economic activity and personal wealth, combined with continued improvement in small business health, have increased buyer confidence that they can find a sustainable and growing business to buy and do so in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, according to BizBuySell’s recent Buyer and Seller Confidence Survey, 88% of prospective buyers consider themselves in the market to purchase a small business within the next 1-2 years.

At VR Business Brokers, we are experiencing s resurgence of business transactions as well, with Sold Listings and New Listings both up in double digits for the year 2013 versus last year.    We have closed transactions this year that range from $89,000 to $7,200,000!

The Dallas and Fort Worth metroplex area continues to be one of the top markets in the country for the total number of closed transactions, selling price and earnings multiples.

Now may be the time to find out how Sellable your business is?  If you’re curious to benchmark your company on growth potential and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score without any cost or obligation: