Business Growth, Advice for Small Sized Business, How to Sell Your Business, Tips to Grow Your Business: Pembridge Partners

Finding a buyer

Making your business as healthy as possible at point of sale is about preparation - knowing your prospective buyers, since multiple offers on your business increases your valuation.

• When looking for a buyer, talk to an experienced advisor such as Pembridge, as well as looking at the business press;
• Most deals are published - you should be able to see what kinds of businesses making acquisitions;
• This could include major players like Interpublic or Omnicom; smaller players, such as Huntsworth and Chime; and international buyers Proton and Chiel.

Finding the right buyer is about using your own unique networks – looking at those companies that you work with; other agencies; and other kinds of suppliers. It is not just about the usual list of companies that you put on any buyer shortlist.

Your prospective buyer could easily be within your own network: perhaps you do some joint activity on a specific client with a large American-based agency, and so, it could be a sensible fit for that agency to buy your smaller UK-based company.

Lateral thinking allows you to have a more rounded shortlist.

For example, a crisis management PR company would have marketing services firms on the buyer shortlist, but an advisor like Pembridge might also introduce insurance firms who also work on the crisis management of brands.

If you would like Rose Lewis at Pembridge to help your company find a buyer, please email info@pembridge.net or call +44 845 2600 344.

Selling your business: 3 factors for leverage

If you can get these three things right, you have the opportunity to sell at the best price. The ideal time to sell your business is when:

• The economy is thriving
• The industry is growing,
• Your business is at its best.
  

When you look at 2009, none of the three factors looked very good – and so, this year was one of the worst times to sell a marketing/creative business. Only a handful of sales were made in the industry.

Yes, you can’t control the economy and the industry. But you can still keep up-to-date with what's happening there. If you know the trends, you can take advantage of them, and make sure that you position your business to reflect those.

For example, the trend for 2009 was social media – and one simple thing that every company can ask itself is this: how does your company reflect that trend? 

More specifically:

• Do you have clients buying services form you in the social media sector?
• Do you have clients who are aware of social media?
• Do you have people on your payroll who are focused on making sure you’re up do date with social media?

Rose Lewis works at Pembridge and has sold a dozen companies to date. These include Northbank Communciations, Razor PR, Lexis and Haslimann Taylor - all sold to listed groups. If you would like the benefits of working with Pembridge, please email info@pembridge.net or call +44 845 2600 344.