By: Patrick Ungashick
If you are like most business owners, you probably receive a steady flow of emails and phone calls seemingly offering to buy your company. As you know, many of these inquiries are junk, coming from somebody on a fishing expedition—and you don’t want to end up on that hook. But, how do you know if an inquiry is legitimate and you should consider replying? You could miss a golden opportunity. Then, if you should reply, what’s the right way to respond without appearing too eager, or without revealing sensitive information to a competitor? The wrong move here could ruin a potential deal, or put your company at risk, or waste much time.
To know what to do when a potential buyer contacts you, you must first verify if the inquiry is legitimate. Then, you need to make sure that you are ready for the stream of questions that will immediately come your way.
Step One – Determine if the inquiry is legitimate.
If you already know the party contacting you, and you know they are a legitimate buyer (or represent one), then you can skip this step. Otherwise, you have to determine who the inquiry is from to evaluate its legitimacy. If the inquirer is vague or guarded about their identity, then it is a waste of your time. For example, be wary of obscure phrases such as “I am working with several buyers…” or “I represent a buyer looking to make acquisitions in your industry…” As long as the inquirer will not disclose who they are (or whom they represent), you probably should not respond.
However, if the person or company contacting you openly discloses their identity, usually you can quickly determine the inquiry’s quality with a little online research in three ways:
Generally, you want to make sure that this person and/or company is established and credible. For example, if their website is “Under Construction,” then probably you should delete the inquiry and go back to work. Or, if they have a website but it hypes only transactions they have done in an industry totally different from yours, then delete and go back to work. Or, if the person who contacted you has a LinkedIn page featuring the bright shining face of somebody fresh off a college campus, then probably delete and go back to work.
If you do not uncover anything that concerns you, proceed to the following ten essential questions to know if you are prepared to talk to a potential buyer.
(Disclaimer: At this point, you should enlist the help of professional advisors who have experience in these situations—people like us. Your company is too valuable and important not to have the best team working for you. However, at NAVIX, we genuinely want to help all business owners, so here are the remaining steps if you intend to do this yourself.)
Step Two – Evaluate if you and your company are ready for this conversation.
There are many risks associated with responding to an inquiry if you and your company are not ready. One is lost time and focus. Potential buyers are notorious for chewing up business owners’ time with ever-expanding information requests. Today, they only want your financials. Next week, they’ll be asking for your customer lists and pricing model. Many buyers look at dozens of companies for each one they seek to buy. So, there is a high probability that you will expend a lot of effort and achieve nothing. A second risk is revealing sensitive information to a potential competitor. Even providing your company’s basic financial information tells a competing organization a lot about your operations, strengths, and weaknesses.
Unfortunately, many business owners wing it when responding to unsolicited inquiries. This practice rarely leads to a successful outcome. To be ready to respond to an unsolicited inquiry, at a minimum, you must know the answers to the following 10 questions. There are many more steps involved to get you and your company ready for sale, but these ten are “go or no-go” issues. Meaning, you must know the answer to these ten questions to consider replying to one of those emails or returning one of those phone calls. If you don’t know the answer to even one of these questions, you will likely reveal to a potential buyer that you are inexperienced (and thus vulnerable) or disorganized (and therefore either not worth pursuing, or not worth top dollar). The ten questions are:
The lack of knowledge is not just about price. Maybe halfway through due-diligence, you are not so excited about this buyer’s plans for your company or your people. If you are talking with only one buyer, you don’t have another buyer to compare their plans for the company. Leverage is essential, but knowledge is power. You will give up that power when they follow through on unsolicited offers.
If you can answer affirmatively to these ten questions—actively, clearly, and unequivocally—then it may make sense to respond to an unsolicited inquiry which you believe to be legitimate. You will still have dozens of more things to do from here, but you should at least be off to a solid start. However, if you cannot answer affirmatively any one of the ten questions presented above, it may be too risky, and it may cost you too much lost time to reply to any of these emails or phone calls. Instead, use your time to get you and your company ready, so that you can properly reply to a future inquiry. To do this, contact us to learn how we can help you as we have helped many hundreds of other business owners achieve successful and happy exits.
If you have a quick question coming out of this article or, if you want to discuss your situation in more detail, we can set up a confidential and complimentary phone consultation at your convenience contact Tim 772-221-4499.