Business and Magazine

Are you about to place your business for sale in the marketplace or are you at the time in your life when you wish to sell your company and reap the fruit of your labor? Selling your business is a huge decision and milestone, and a step that signifies that you have achieved all the goals you set for yourself with this particular business. After all the years of work and sacrifice, it would be insulting to accept far less than fair market value of your organization.

In order to obtain the greatest value and most current fair market value for your company, follow these five critical steps to sell your business at top dollar.

1. Obtain a Business Valuation – Likely the most important step, obtain a business valuation from a professional and experienced company. A valuation will help you asses the true value of your company and what you can expect in terms of the sale. This document is completed by professionals who offer a neutral and unemotional perspective when valuing your business to help determine actual value and worth.

2. Clean Up Your Books – Before placing your business on the market, take the necessary time to ensure your books are all in order. If you maintain precise and accurate records, your success rate for a faster and more expeditious sale is much greater. Placing yourself in the shoes of the buyer, it is natural to understand that there would be more confidence in the transaction if the financial were accurate and in order.

3. Organize Your Legal Documents – Make sure that all business legal paperwork is in order and is accurate. Such documents could include paperwork on the business entity, business permits and licenses, contracts with vendors and clients, as well as leases. Ensuring all your legal paperwork and documentation is in order will facilitate a faster and smoother sale of your business.

4. Establish a Succession Plan – Develop a comprehensive plan as to how the business will operate without your physical presence. Do you have a team of key players in place to help the business succeed when you are no longer running the company? Establishing a succession plan is essential and can be damaging to the potential sale if such a plan is not developed ahead of time. Such a plan must be put in writing and can even be temporary in nature. This documentation allows the business to run smoothly while offering the new owners time to acclimate to operating the new organization.

5. Leverage Your Advisors – Never sign on the dotted line without speaking to your team of financial and legal advisors. This will ensure the sale of your business is completed in a smooth and successful manner, while preventing legal issues in the future.

The start of 2012 offers a fresh beginning for many companies, both small and large. This transition time offers businesses time to review the previous year and evaluate both successes and failures. The New Year also offers time and a new chance to review new and creative avenues to grow and profit, as all companies have certain areas of weakness they can improve upon. The following outlines four creative yet impactful areas where you can expand and grow your business.

· Obtain a Professional Business Valuation – One of the most impactful steps you can take for your business is to gain a clear and accurate picture of your business value and worth, above and beyond merely annual revenue. Obtaining a professional business valuation allows an experienced individual who offers an objective analysis the opportunity to value your company. A professional will help identify company strengths while pinpointing areas that would be of major benefit to improve upon.

· Establish a Loyalty Program – Consider setting up a loyalty program for your customers to improve customer retention. Due to current economic challenges where the lowest price on a good or service wins, loyalty programs offer customers another reason to continue to frequent your product or service. Such loyalty programs can be established as a discount program or points program. The bottom line is to provide your customers with an incentive where the competition is not. Saving money is always a great incentive to keep customers for the long term.

· Creatively Advertise – With the rise of social media, ensure that your company is staying on top of current trends. Social media has become one of the most popular forms of advertising, brand awareness, and customer loyalty. Leverage this technology to your benefit.

· Consider Franchising – If your business is brick-and-mortar with the opportunity for growth, consider franchising. The fastest way to leverage company growth is to expand upon the number of company locations. Because your business cannot be in more than one physical location at a time, franchising helps leverage your proven business process while expanding your geographic and demographic reach.

The New Year and first business quarter offers opportunity to expand current marketing initiatives, explore new avenues of advertising, and to grow your business in ways you have never thought of before. Think outside the box in today’s competitive age of marketing, advertising, and business building and you will see your way to success.

Selling your business is a difficult and oftentimes long process. In most cases a business can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months before the sale is finalized. There are many legal issues and challenging bridges to cross when selling your business, which is in part why selling a business can take an extremely long time to successfully sell.

However, there are also a few critical mistakes that most business owners unknowingly make when selling their business that forces their company to remain on the market for far more time than necessary and upon the sale, for a lower price. The following outlines three areas that most business owners fall prey when selling their company.

· Stating Your Listing Price - While it is tempting to draw prospects by publicly presenting your asking price for your company, this is one of the most common and damaging mistakes business owners make. Most entrepreneurs who are seeking to purchase your business have made similar purchases before. They are professionals who understand the entire process of company acquisition, which translates into the fact that they can (and usually) offer far less than your asking price from the start. It is important to be patient and let the offers come to you from prospects that are interested in acquiring your organization. Never list your price and never jump at the first offer.

· Divulging Company Secrets - This may be an obvious statement, but never allow your organization’s secrets reach the hands of your competitor or even your prospective buyers until the deal is complete and your business is sold. This means that the paperwork has been signed and the check is on your hands. A confidentiality agreement should be signed prior to exposing all the intimate details about your company. If you speak to openly about the intimate details of your company, the potential buyer can walk away with your trademark secrets in hand and create a damaging situation for your company. Again, patience is key.

· Not Fully Understanding Intangibles Of Your Business – After years of work, you understand your business as well as day to day operations. You have poured your blood, sweat and tears into making your company the success that it is today. However, do you understand all the intangibles of your company assets? Can you break this all down for a buyer so that they can really understand the full picture and scope of your business? The most valuable step you can take prior to selling your business is to have a comprehensive business valuation completed by a professional organization. This objective document can be presented to the prospective buyer and offer a clear picture of the true company value while justifying your asking price.

Being an entrepreneur is an exciting challenge that many people prefer over working for someone else. However, it does come with many challenges. Running your own business is very much a solo act, and you need to wear many hats throughout the day: bookkeeper, salesperson, accounts manager, appointment setter, and janitor, among others. If you lack skills in any one of these areas, it could mean lower profits at the end of the day. With a business service, you could outsource some of these activities to help you concentrate on the areas you are good at.

For example, if you are not good with numbers, you may want to contact a business service to take care of your bookkeeping and accounting tasks. There are different packages available for weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly service. Just hand them your paperwork and receipts and they will do all of the work for you. They can even do your taxes when needed.

A business service could also consist of a virtual assistant. These have proven to be an invaluable resource and have increased in popularity over the last decade. A virtual assistant can provide any number of services such as call forwarding, mailing, appointment setting, and call answering.

Another type of business service is web hosting and SEO strategies. In today’s world, you need a website, regardless of whether or not your transactions are conducted online. A reliable web hosting service will ensure that your website is always up and running; an SEO strategies company will ensure that your potential customers can find you, no matter where they are located.

A business service can help you with certain areas of your business you either don’t fully understand or you have no time for. When you outsource these tasks, you can concentrate on your areas of strength. You will achieve much greater results when you have an expert working on each task independently.

These services are obviously not free. A business service will charge according to your specific requirements and needs. Many companies will allow you to customize packages that can expand as your company grows. When you are researching each company, be sure to investigate their experience, reputation, customer service track record, and response time. Read through some testimonials and ask other business owners for their recommendations. When you are confident you’ve found the right service for you, you can run your business more efficiently, and more profitably.

It can be very tough to find the right one for you but if you know what to look for it can make it much easier. There are so many companies out there claiming to be real and honest but unfortunately many of them are not. Many of these systems turn out to be get rich quick schemes and use the fact that people need money right now.

So, the first thing you need to focus on when looking for business opportunities is great coaching and training. Preferably look for a company with a mentor that has been there before and is willing to share their successes and failures with you. Honest training from someone who really knows what it takes to succeed is very important. This is important because it allows you to minimize the mistakes that you ultimately make and the coach can help you stay on track and stay motivated. Also, it is always a plus if your business opportunities have video training so you can watch exactly what you should be doing and see it for yourself.

Next the business opportunities you are thinking about joining should be free to join. It should be free to get your foot in the door and see what they are all about. There are too many companies out there right now that give a great sales video and sales pitch but then make you have to pay to see more about their program. Does it make sense that you should pay a lot of money just to see what the business is? That shouldn’t make sense again think of this as a business you should not have to pay a lot to get paid.

Finally, look for turnkey business opportunities. Turnkey means that it is easy to duplicate. This ultimately makes it easier for you. Duplication allows you to speed up the learning curve and allows you to work smarter and not harder. You don’t want to spend all your time teaching other people how to build your business the system should do all that for you. You want to spend all your time on income producing activities and not answering the same questions over and over again.

These are just three important keys to think of when looking for business opportunities. There are many more out there but these are the most important. With just these three things in mind picking the right program shouldn’t be too hard. Just make sure to do some research before joining something. Don’t get into a company and waste your time because it is the wrong one for you. You can never get your time back.
Like many other teen male internet sensations a majority of Austin’s audience is teen girls. His rise to fame had not came easy. Although Austin Mahone has had lots of success in the past couple years it took a lot of hard work and detication. Austin plans to keep going with his music career and make it in the big time.
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