What is the best place to sell a business?

When deciding what is the best place to sell a business it is essential to first invest in a clear pathway to maximising the probability of a successful sale and optimising the business value. Putting the business itself in its best place is as important as finding who or what is the best place to sell. This is an investment not a cost.

At Dexterity Partners we achieve this by undertaking the project management for each stage of the process. The use of multiple advisers with no one person owning the end-to-end project leads to delays, additional costs and misunderstanding. Having one experienced person on speed dial to answer all questions and demystify the jargon is the best solution for an owner who has probably never sold a business before. The best place for an owner wanting to sell is with a knowledgeable and experienced adviser who can help to avoid the pitfalls and own the problems.

There are many options when considering the best place / organisation/ channel to sell a business. Corporate Finance functions either in standalone firms or part of large accountancy firms play an important role in large complex deals, but do not do all the end-to-end process. These functions are often less important for small private company sales.

Sales agents / brokers are another place to go to sell a business. These often focus only on finding a Buyer via large scale direct marketing campaigns only. They do not always undertake commercially astute preparation for sale. They have not actually bought and sold their own companies and do not provide the financial and legal support required.

The simplest option is to subscribe to a website offering to list your business. This is more of a lucky dip gamble. If an interested party is found via this approach there is still the need for a Seller to find advisers to negotiate, manage due diligence, provide financial and taxation. Then legal advisers are required to establish non-disclosure agreements, Heads of Terms and a Sale and Purchase Agreement. This low-cost website listing option soon runs up significant costs from a number of other advisers and still no one person is controlling the overall process.

After over 30 years of selling and buying their own businesses, co-founders of Dexterity Partners Limited, Jonathan Priestley and Dr Simon Brayshaw, realised their complete project management approach was the solution to address the stressful, slow and costly multi adviser problem. In doing so it helps inexperienced owner managers by increasing the probability of a successful sale at full value.

As a result, Dexterity Partners designed a one stop approach to selling from; initial preparation, to ensure key value drivers are in place ( “fit to Sell”), to identifying and marketing to Buyers, qualifying and negotiating with Buyers , managing the due diligence process; preparing a sale and purchase agreement.

Dexterity Partner’s has the ability to project manage all of this as Jonathan is also a partner in 3volution Limited, a law firm, who we work with to address all legal issues. This ownership of the whole process and the knowledge and experience allows Dexterity Partners to act as a sounding board for owners. At Dexterity Partners we believe we are the perfect place for owner managers to sell their business.

For further information and impartial advice, feel free to contact our founders at Dexterity Partners.