Buying interest

Someone has asked whether you would sell.

An approach rarely arrives at a convenient moment. It arrives when someone else is ready. The question is not whether you want to sell, but whether the business is in a state you can negotiate from.

Signs
  • An unsolicited approach from a competitor, an investor or through an intermediary
  • You cannot say which part of the result hangs on you personally
  • Being unavailable for four weeks to run a process is not realistic
What matters now
  • A buyer examines not the numbers first but how much of them keeps running without you
  • Time is the scarcest resource here. Owner dependency cannot be fixed during a process
  • An honest reading before the conversation is worth more than a quick clean-up after it
What does not help
  • Assembling documents at short notice. That dresses up a state a review uncovers anyway
  • Starting the process and hoping the dependency does not come up
Next step

The Owner Dependency Diagnostic measures across four areas how much actually hangs on you. The result tells you whether you can negotiate or have to build first.

Owner Dependency Diagnostic