Intentions Change During Buying a Business
If you are buying a business, you might entertain several ideas to work together.
If it is a SMB, you are probably going to ask the owner to stay on for a period of time.
Transition is usually baked in to a deal. Anywhere from 14 to 30 days or up to 6 months, depending on the size of the deal.
Generally, anything after that is a consulting arrangement or a salary type situation.
You are buying a business. The seller’s intention is to exit.
However, you might want a partner instead. But that expectation should generally be set upfront.
You might throw out the idea of being 50/50 partners.
During the first conversation, the seller might be open to it.
Then, conversations after might result in a little flip flopping from the seller.
You shouldn’t think to draw conclusions that they are committed or not committed to run the business.
When they listed the business for sale, they were positioning it for an exit. Not so much for a capital injection, although sometimes that is made clear initially.
Some business owners want to exit completely. Others are open to a capital injection.
You want to understand if the seller has the ability to continue for the long haul or they are looking for a capital injection, and then build the company and then exit.
There are multiple ways to view this. Either they really do want a partner and injection of cash, someone like you is what was missing for their fulfillment in this business, or they are flexible and that will lead to.
One thing you want to be open to is if after you come in, they do plan to exit at some point and what that means. Are you in this for the long term and are you okay with this partner wanting to exit.
Once you are a partner, you can do 5 things.
- You can buy them out when that comes around where they do want to exit
- You can do a phased approach of buy-in for the seller’s share
- You can replace the partner with another partner
- You can exit with them
- You can sell your share
If you want help with a business acquisition, work with us. Doing the above alone is not only daunting, but you may miss a lot of things without someone who has been through the ropes before. You don’t know what you don’t know.
You want to make sure you have an experienced team behind you preparing you for each step of the way.
If you would like to hop on a call, so we can go over things. We do a one hour deep dive where we go over your needs as it relates to acquisitions, and then we go on the hunt for you to line up a business that makes sense.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions relating to acquisitions:
Email – acquisitions@jarbly.com
Phone – (800) 773-1523
Simply engage us below to get started whether it comes to bringing you qualified buyers where we list your business for maximal value or engaging us to bring qualified and vetted businesses that match your exact target criteria such as industry and EBITDA multiple if you are buying a business:
Buyer-Side Engagement – Retain Us to Provide you with Qualified and Vetted Businesses that Match Your Target Criteria
Seller-Side Engagement – Retain Us to List Your Business and Bring Legitimate Buyers to the Table
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- how to partner with a seller
- partnering with a seller
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