What is the Best Way to Approach Exiting Your Business?

Exiting your business can be a lot more complicated than you might think. Whether through insolvency or because you think it’s time to move on, there are often complex procedures that you need to take care of, many of which can be quite confusing. Here, we explore some of the main stages you’ll need to go through to approach exiting a business that’s relatively financially healthy.

Think about your objectives

To start things off, you’ll need to think about your objectives. These might include how quickly you want to get the process over and done with, how much you want to get for the business, and whether you consider it important that the business ends up in trustworthy hands. You’ll likely want to prioritise certain factors over others – these priorities will determine the rest of your approach, so it’s important to get clear on them early on.

Conduct a valuation

Next, it’s important to carry out a thorough valuation of your business. This will include adding up all of the assets, and making as accurate a prediction as possible on likely revenue and profit over the coming years. 

You’ll need to document all of this as accurately as possible, so that you have something to show potential buyers when the time comes. It’s important that you’re entirely transparent in your valuation; you’ll likely want to get as much as fairly possible for your business, but if you fail to disclose anything important or artificially inflate the value, you could face serious legal issues later on.

Marketing the business

If you’re choosing to sell the business, then marketing will be an important step in the process of exiting. Getting it right will not only speed up the process, but it’ll also ensure that you get the right price for all your hard work. It’s important to reach out to a professional business broker such as Dexterity Partners; they’ll be able to take you through the process, leveraging their network to expose your business to the right kinds of buyers.

Identifying the right buyer & handing over

Identifying an appropriate buyer for your business can be a tricky process. You’ll want to get a good price for what you’ve built, but you’ll also likely want to see it end up in competent hands. This is a difficult balancing act, and it can take quite a long time to get it right.

Once you’ve found an appropriate buyer, you can start to hand the business over. Exactly how this works might differ slightly depending on the niche you’re in. You’ll likely have a duty to inform shareholders and clients at a certain point – managing all of this in the right way is important as well, and can take a lot of hard work and communication.

Exactly what your exit strategy looks like will differ depending on your goals and what kind of business you have. In most cases though, you’ll need to go through the steps listed above. It’s important to get help from professional service providers, to ensure that you manage the sale well and that things go as smoothly as possible.