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At some point in time, the business owners are ready to dispose their business, planning for an exit from their business career. However, whenever you are looking to sell your business, you must plan out each and every detail so that you don’t lose the business value that you spent so many years in building. This blog covers the 6 best practices you have to follow before exiting your business career.

Incentivize Your Employees

The Key managers are not the only shareholders of a business, and it can create a huge interest of conflict during a sale, holding shareholders as the hostages during the negotiations. This is why; you need to put the incentives in place for avoiding any such issues.

Establish Strong Key Advisor Relationships

There are strong service providers who can help in adding a substantial value to your sales process. What you can do while you are still running your business is to create relationships with the experienced accounting firms, investment bankers, lawyers and business brokers. The ones who have the relevant industry experience instead of opting for your friends. They will guide you to their best knowledge and give you the best business advice when you are ready to sell your business.

Cut Short Unnecessary Private Company Expenses

There are a number of private firms which minimize their taxes to show as much profit as they can while selling their business. This is why; the best thing to do is to cut the expenses which are not critical to the business operations. Even though you would lose the tax write-off you would still be able to compensate it and sell your business when the time comes.

Get your facts and figures right!

The financial statements and figures are a key to determining the company’s value. There are many successful businesses which become less credible due to fewer financials. This means that if you have $5 million in revenue, you need to get the last couple of years financial statements audited. Have the financials reviewed through a reputable accounting firm, to point out the weaknesses, would give you enough room for correcting the issues.

Have Everything Organized

Well, this is the first rule of working professionally. Work in an organized way as having your records in disarray would waste your time, your value and would make you run you in shambles. This is why, from the day one, you need to have the files in the right order to have no major effect on the sales value of your business.

Create a Growth Plan

Even though you are ready to exit your business, show everyone that your business has plenty of rooms to grow further. This is because, no one wants to buy a business that is going down or has got constant profit. This is why, make them realize the importance of your business by showing a meaningful growth they can invest into after having the business reigns passed on from you.

July 22, 2015Businessbusiness negotiation tips, business selling tips, sell your businessadmin

Negotiation of a business is a main element of everyday life as a business owner, manager and an entrepreneur or anyone who is looking to buy or start a new business. Whether you are doing a small business, negotiating a raise or a landlord rental agreement, business negotiation is the most important skill to have.

5 ways for improving your business negotiation are as follow:

Never Undermine Your Offer

Although it’s quite difficult to wait for a reply to an offer, the best thing to do is to hold tight until the interested party comes with a response. Jumping in with a counteroffer to the original offer is going to reflect badly on a user who is trying to become a business negotiator. This is why you need to be confident in your offer and have to wait till the right offer comes.

Don’t Agree Right Away

Most of the time, the first proposal and the offer you get is not the best one. Also, desperation in the business negotiation doesn’t drive success, which means that you must steer away from making faster business decisions. Also, you need to learn to say ‘no’ in a business negotiation. This is quite an important skill to learn as you would realize in your business career later on.

Have Business Negotiation Meetings in a Neutral Location

Have the business meetings conducted in a neutral location. Everyone wants to have meetings carried out in their own places, but for the business negotiations, the best thing to do is to have a meeting in a neutral location, this would help in facilitating the equality environment, in addition to showing maturity and thoughtfulness.

Be Professional

Although you could figure it out on your own, but this is a mistake which most of the people make. Good business protocol and politeness are going to cost you a lot in the business negotiations, so you need to ensure your professional demeanor. Trying to bully or copy the other party is going to end in a bad deal, destroyed relationships and a bad reputation.

Aim for Beneficial Party Outcomes

The positive relationships are what would make your business grow and successful at the same time. This means that to achieve that you need to have both the parties set a business negotiation, goal of keeping the relationship productive and amenable.

When it comes to selling or buying a business, the best thing to do is to become a business broker. We at Bizzouka are the national as well as the international experts in the business brokerages. With our expertise, knowledge and research, you can have a successful, stress-free and a smooth business experience.

July 16, 2015Businessbusiness for sale, sell your business, why sell your businessadmin

There are various reasons as to why the business owners should sell off their business. Instead of waiting for the situation when you would be requiring cash, you must make the decision of disposing your business when the time is right.

3 reasons to sell off your business

Get your business Liquidated

Running a business always comes with some sort of risk, this means that anytime you get a good opportunity for liquidating in your company, you need to consider it in a serious way. The businesses have a face value and they are not liquidated until they go through a transaction.

Strike at the right time

A business that is established with years of hard work is more valuable than the one that is in its early years. So as a business owner when you do decide to sell your business, you need to cash on the investment you have made into your years of established business before any financial crisis.

Waiting for the right opportunity

After you have spent half of your professional life building a business, you must not pass a chance of liquidating it. When you find a good enough opportunity, seize it with both hands and retire gracefully or start another business venture. By being poised for the next move and looking at your options, is always the way to go about your future.

If you are thinking of putting your business up for sale, get the team, business valuables and financials ready. Wait for the right time and plan your business for sale with the professionals of Bizzouka.com

July 13, 2015Businessadmin

One problem which a lot of potential business buyers face is that they set a lot of unrealistic goals about the business they are trying to buy. Even though guidelines are important, it doesn’t mean that the goals set are done unrealistically. This means that if you are willing to buy a business, which is operational for 10+ years, has had just one owner and retirement is the only reason for selling it, then you would be disappointed.

Instead of setting the rules that are narrowed down drastically, eliminating any prospects, the best thing is to set achievable business goals when selling it.

Even though the business’s financial strength is important, you need to be concerned more about the future. Whatever is done is done and as a business owner, you need to focus as to how the business can grow and what it can achieve under your ownership.

You need to have stringent rules which businesses need to have in place in order to buy it. Also, it has to be right. Some of the rules are as follow:

Must be driven by Marketing and Sales

The business needs to be marketing and sales driven. Generation of aggressive sales and marketing initiatives would help the business earn more value.
Check Businesses with High Margins
When it comes to the revenue side of the business, rather than taking it over, you can grow the top line, having a business with good margins is always good enough for exploding the ultimate margins.

Creating a Demand for a Service or a Product

Well, being a seasoned business owner, I know how important this one point is here. The reason is that if the market is not offering you appropriate money, then you would have to spend a lot of time in trying to create its awareness and demand at the same time. Unless, you can grow your business with a lot of budgets, you cannot withstand less revenue. The business has to offer unique services, with the help of which you can gain a competitive advantage, leveraging the growth.

Don’t Strive for a High Price

In case, your business is selling products due to a lower price structure, it’s not a good enough business model. This means that unless you are generating a lot of money with a lot of profits, you cannot grow the business. Also, you are in line with the competitors and are not faced with going back to business every day.

Own Something Unique

Always look for something exclusive to add to your business. It does not necessarily have to be a product, but it can be a location or a process which no one else is offering. For example, if you have a footwear business, you can have the benefit of the direct relationships and capital for purchasing the overstock and end of lines from various manufacturers. The retailers of the competitors buy the same merchandise for paying at least 25% more, translating an enormous retail difference. This way, the prices offered are 3 times less than the competitors and this would automatically drive more sales and business.

Set Your Own Rules

Whatever the rules you set for establishing the business strengths, you don’t have to set crazy parameters that are not met. However, try to have flexible and reasonable goals. After you have set your goals, you can identify the entire process and can thus reduce the time spent on the potential business which is not appropriate for you.

July 10, 2015Franchiseadmin

You run a business, which is growing and doing well for you. You’ve always wanted to expand your business to multiple cities/countries and you are waiting for the right time. In short, you are looking towards franchising your business.

Just like marriage, franchising your business isn’t something that you should speed into. This is because, it’s a lifetime decision and with a lot of business owners failing to do it by obviously going about it the wrong way, it’s really important for you to do your research, in order to franchise your brand properly.

There is a lot of legal stuff that goes into becoming a franchisor, such as getting the legal paperwork done, scrutinizing the trustworthy franchisees, scheduling royalty payments and not to forget various other challenges that you would have to face as you move through the entire process. However, this doesn’t mean that the idea of franchising for your business is all wrong, in fact if done the right way, your business can become the next big brand like KFC or MacDonald. The question is what should you do and how you should go about the entire franchising process for your business?

Given below are the 5 essential questions you must ask to become a franchisor:

What resources to look into as a beginner?

According to Joel Libava, a franchise adviser and author of becoming a Franchise owner (Wiley, 2011) , based in Cleveland, recommends that you research the appropriate franchise development company or consultants, who are experienced in offering franchise consultation services to the interested businesses. They would set you up on the right track, and can also in fact pair you with the potential franchises when the time is right for you.

However, you need to remember that these professionals would charge a high fee, around $50,000 to $100,000 or even more.

The IFA (International Franchise Association) is also quite useful for getting up to speed on franchising, as it offers a handful of free and fee-based education resources.

What is the estimated startup costs required?

The startup costs can range between $100,000 to $150,000 and even more, costing you the amount of marketing, legal and operation procedures for only launching your Franchise from Day 1. You cannot cut financial corners, if you are to succeed and turn your great business into a great franchise for yourself.

After the initial payments, you are required to pay the professional consultation fees, franchise location design, equipment, and construction. Initial inventory and insurance costs come next. This means that your expense list would continue to become bigger as you move through the franchising process.

How much of Franchise Royalty Payment Should I Charge?

Well, this depends on how much money you’ll be earning from franchising. In a majority of the cases, there is a pre-agreed rate cut of the gross sales, between 4% to 6%. However, there are some cases, in which the royalty rate is as high as 25%. According to Libava, a 5% rate is quite normal to charge for licensing the opportunity to use your brand and everything it entails.

The Royalty percentages are collected on a monthly basis, along with a one-time franchise fee, which is usually between $30,000 to $35,000. The fee includes the cost of purchasing a license and the cost of entry in order to operate a business. For the advanced master franchises and developmental deals, it can exceed $100,000.

How much will I make?

There is no exact number as an answer to this question. This usually depends on the profit margins and how successful your franchise business really becomes. However, to make your confusions clear, Libava gives this perfect example,” If you are a franchisor with 500 franchises, each of who own a store, that makes $500,000 on a yearly basis in gross sales, and you are charging 5% royalty fee from each of those franchise every year then, you would get $25,000 a year multiplied by the 500 franchises. It becomes $12.5 million, a good enough amount really.”

What basic legal considerations do I need to be aware of?

Well, franchising a business requires a lot of complicated legal issues to deal with in the first place. This is why; the best way for solving all the legal issues is to get consulting with an experienced attorney, who has expertise in the franchise law. You also need to keep in mind that certain states have registration laws that you need to abide by to have your business franchised the legal way.

July 9, 2015Businessadmin

The process of selling your business is quite hectic and difficult for the likes of a lot of business owners. This is a reason why having a reputable business broker on your site is important, as he would not only give you good advice but would also help you in avoiding the costly mistakes, most of the business owners make when selling their business.

The blog post covers 3 biggest mistakes, business buyers make when selling out their businesses.

The Business Seller Stops Working on His Business

You think that after you have put an on sale board on your business and found an interested party, you can relax. It’s understandable to have some temptation to slack off and stop working on your business after you have decided to leave it. However, this is not the right approach to go about it, when selling your business. Even though you would find interested buyer who are willing to cut off the deal and purchase your business, chances are that the deal won’t close up. This means that now you would have to put the business back into the market, and since you stopped working on it, it would be worth much less, as you didn’t pay attention to its low cash flow and inventory. The business that has reduced its returns can’t go on the same price. This means that despite your decision of selling your business, you have to keep working till the day it’s officially sold to another party.

Business Records are Inappropriate

This is a mistake that business owners might have made early in their business. You could have resisted tax records as your only accounting information for your business for some time. When selling your business in sometime, you would have to consult your accountant to prepare the profits and loss statements accordingly. Most of the business owners want to minimize the earnings for IRS purpose, however this could mean low valuation if it’s the only source of your buyer’s financial information. The buyers are always interested in knowing each and every detail of the financial information, mostly going back to a minimum of 3 years of the financial information period. This means that you need to keep complete records, pay your taxes and still show good enough earnings for the buyers to be interested in your business.

In case your business is going in loss, we can still help you in selling it by suggesting some changes to the potential buyers to make it successful. Yes, we are there to recast your financial records; however we still require positive financial statements. Also, keep your business statements separate from the personal ones to avoid getting into an accounting mess.

Expecting to Get Back the Cost of Renovation through Sale

You most probably have put in a lot of investment in your business overtime, to make it earn you the money, its making. However, the value of your business doesn’t always be the money you’ve put in it. The potential buyers buy a business on the basis of cash flow, and this holds true in most cases. They would pay you for everything that is furniture, fixtures etc., but they would not pay you the amount you paid when all these things were new. Even if you have everything renovated, it would still be wrong to expect them to pay for it, as you don’t know if the buyer is going to rip off the newly installed tiles to suit their personal taste or not.

This means that you would have to cut off the depreciated cost when calculating the total amount for your business. The buyer would pay you 30-40% of your costs, but not all of it.

The franchise business offers its investor’s great assurance of the profitability, compared to the startup businesses, as it comes with a brand name that instantly starts making sales. Also, the risks are reduced as they are associated automatically with an established company, helping the owner to earn profit quickly when compared with the other business situations.

How can you benefit from the Franchise as a Business Owner?

As the franchisers handle certain parts of the business such as product research and development by themselves, the best thing is to negotiate the terms with the suppliers and benefit from the purchasing discounts.

As the franchisers want to succeed, boosting the profits, they offer franchisees with an ongoing and training support for the franchise business. This makes the investors capitalize on their brand name and customer ship instead of starting from the scratch. Also, the franchisers are able to expand their business which helps in both the productivity and efficiency when a new franchise is opened.

Helps in Avoiding the Previous Issues

When deciding to invest in a franchise, you are able to benefit from the different mistakes and successes which others may have experienced in the past. You would be provided with valuable information from the corporate office regarding the increased profits and the error in judgment, compiled from a lot of years from different locations.

Why Investors Succeed with Franchises?

When the entrepreneurs purchase a franchise, their success is ensured given that they stay persistent in their business practices. The operations that require consistency include:

Every day Operations
Customer Service
Advertising Campaigns
Using a Logo

What you need to know as an investor?

The relationship between both the franchisee and franchiser is interdependent and complicated, as both the parties strive to keep the communication lines open and observe the sound management practices. These are really important for the maintenance of common goals, team spirit, and the same objectives.

Founded in 1965, the subway chain of restaurants has grown to nearly 43,000 franchises covering 108 countries of the world. Considering these facts, you would surely want to own a Subway Franchise to kick off your career as a business entrepreneur. However, similar to any franchise business, you need to weigh the pros and cons of every franchise before finalizing your investment decision.

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