💣 keep messy records
💣 leave sale until the latest possible time, 64 and 9 months seems to be a popular choice
💣 have bad relationships with minority shareholders
💣 create complexity and hardship inside your premises lease
💣 do not demonstrate you have paid yourself a fair wage over time, like any employee
💣 do not establish a pattern of dividends over time (in addition to wages)
💣 be personally critical to the operations of the business
💣 be massively reliant on a couple of key staff, customers and/or suppliers
💣 occupy a sector of the market under stress and/or in decline
💣 confuse fair value with what you would like for a price
💣 keep your business plan in your head
💣 ignore risks
💣 select a broker who can’t show you a written marketing plan/strategy to sell or isn’t motivated to complete the sale
💣 get into lawsuits and trouble with the revenue authorities
💣 insult would-be buyers
💣 make sure your business is worth too much so an employee or mum and dad team can’t afford it, but also not valuable enough to be interesting to an M&A style purchaser
Obviously this is tongue-in-cheek but unfortunately it’s super easy to fail to sell.
Something like 3/4 of all attempts fail, and it’s usually because of one or more of the above.
Sometimes a good offence is a great defence.
Shore up a business’s value by working on the above as early as possible for buyers.