With everyone either selling or buying, you would think it’s a simple process for them to meet and finish the job. However, many business owners and buyers alike still have a hard time looking for the right business or buyers for them. Rob Amerine, certified business intermediary of The FBB Group, Ltd, talks about selling a business and helping buyers see what they want and need. He shares some nuggets about how to have good businesses that are ready to sell as well as the things you need to have a higher sales price. Rob walks through the process and discusses the small business development council (SBDC), the market, some expectations and misconceptions, and more as he advises businesses to build to sell.

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Rob Amerine: What You Need To Know About Selling A Business

We’re very fortunate to have https://www.linkedin.com/in/robamerine (Rob Amerine). He is a Certified Business Intermediary with the https://www.fbb.com/ (FBB Group) in Colorado Springs. If you would, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

Our firm was originally started in 1982 called the FBB, First Business Brokers, and then we changed the name to the FBB Group. We wanted to become a little bit more nuanced, people have a lot of questions about confidentiality so we want to make it more straightforward. We actually added the ability to do stock transactions at that time as well. Our Founder, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronchernak (Ron Chernak), had his FINRA license. There was a little branding and name change at that point to the FBB Group.

What is it that you guys do?

If you don’t live in this world, you don’t realize that a lot of small businesses transact through intermediaries like ours where a seller needs to sell and we have buyers that come to our firm. It’s a very niche industry, but it’s very important to the economy, being able to find buyers for sellers that are looking to transition their business. It’s one of those businesses where you don’t realize it touches a lot of different facets of the business from the legal side, to the accounting side, to the marketing and the operations. You can imagine all the different things that we touch and see. It’s vital to what sellers need. Rarely do businesses sell without someone like us. If it does happen, it’s some of the bigger businesses. Small business is the engine of the economy, and selling businesses is where this value changes over.

Looking back over the past few years, would you say that there’s a fair quantity of businesses available to be sold? Is there a shortage?

There are a lot coming on the market, more so than we’ve seen before since the recession. We’re going through that cycle. No one knows when it’s going to end. There’s a lot of them out there. There are also a lot of businesses that are not ready to sell that out there. They’re trying to sell and they’re very frustrated. About one in ten go to the market actually sell. When you use a firm like ours, that can increase to maybe three or four out of ten. You increase your percentages by having a firm like ours involved.

You’ve got the business owner reading this and he goes, “I know what my company’s worth.” When you find the nine out of ten businesses that don’t sell, what are the typical reasons you run across as to why they don’t?

Unrealistic expectations. Most of the time, business owners have gotten their valuation from their accountant. The accountant does a great job of doing accounting, but they’re not selling businesses. Usually, when they value business, they may not have the latest information. Some accountants do a great job, others don’t. The question is,