Honesty in business is as it is in life and a must and extremely important.

If you are about to sell your business or if you are in the middle of selling it then make sure you are honest from the outset…not only with the broker, if you are using one, but also with potential buyers.

If you tell lies at the outset or during the initial stages then it is very likely this will be found out at the due diligence stage of the selling process. The problem with telling lies is that if they get found out you may put off potential buyers and lose their trust.

Put yourself in the shoes of a buyer and you will know that they will feel both stressed and worried about the whole process. Don’t make it worse for them by putting any element of doubt in their mind…they may be thinking if you are lying about one thing you might be covering up any number of other things and they may well walk away from the deal.

I remember going to look at a business which was being advertised as turning over around £8,000 per week, when in fact it was only turning over around £4-5,000 per week. Admittedly, at some point in the past this business had been doing this level of turnover and more, but the broker had not bothered to update their advert. This then wasted my time and their time in looking at a business which was highly over valued.

Always remember that with the majority of business sales that it is a ‘Buyers Market’ and rarely is it a ‘Sellers Market’ – which means that when you have a buyer on the hook, as it were, you want to play them well and nurture the whole business sales process from start to finish.

Article by Russell Bowyer