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How to sell or buy an online business?
Our missions is to bring together sellers and buyers of (ecommerce) sites. Our past experience has teached us many lessons on how you'll be successfull in selling your business to the right (new) owner. Below is a detailed path one can follow for a successfull business transfer.
Listing & Application
Sell your website on time: make sure that recent annual reports are available, that the figures are cleaned up of unrelated costs and improve your value with improvements to your online store. In this phase it makes sense to do a valuation of your business. First, to get an idea of the value of your company, but the report will also guide you on how to improve the value of your business.
Specific:
- Collect the relevant figures for your business. These figures must be accurate and complete.
- Register for free as a 'Vendor' on Ecquisition.com and list your store for sale.
- We creata a profile for you with the shared data and distributes this anonymously to potential buyers.
Tips:
- In this phase, start writing an extensive sales memorandum to share with potential buyers.
- Make sure to deduct your own hours from the net profit.
- Link your Analytics account to your account. This gives buyers an anonymous view of your statistics.
Selection & Introduction
After the first interest in your business, it is important to get determine what the best leads are. You do this by giving them a proper overview of your business as fast as possible (without giving away all your secrets). Personal contact is a big plus in this phase: if there is no chemistry between the buyer and the seller, the chances on a successful deal are small.
Specific:
- In this phase, make sure you have a sales memorandum ready to share with buyers who are interested in the next steps after seeing your website.
- If you receive many responses to your profile, you can consider asking these parties for an indicative (non-binding) bid based on the shared information.
- With the parties who are still interested (and perhaps have published an indicative offer), it is now important to schedule an introductory meeting as quickly as possible.
- After that, you can (under the conditions of the signed confidentiality agreement) give access to your Google Analytics program and more details. Buyers can then carry out their own investigation into your business.
Tips:
- It is good to remember that all buyers who contact you through our site have confirmed a confidentiality statement.
- Until this point, these buyers didn't know your website URL. It is therefore normal that a large part of the buyers drop out at this stage, because your shop does not match their profile.
Negotiations with buyers
The negotiation process also starts up from the first moment of contact with potential buyers. Buyers try to get a good picture of the company during the discussions. Matters that are disappointing will be named and included in their valuation. On the other hand, sellers will try to highlight their webshop as well as possible and to work out all the questions in constructive answers.
Specific:
- Take at least 2 appointments the time in which (serious) buyers can ask their questions and sellers can answer them.
- Be clear to each other and do not leave any important information: sellers have a duty of disclosure and buyers have a duty of investigation!
- Use a clear timeline from the first appointment and do not try to keep the negotiation going too long.
Tips:
- Align your negotiation style with the number of parties you are in contact with. If you have a choice of 30 buyers, your approach is different than when this is 1.
- Do not give up too quickly and ask for a return for every commitment / discount.
- In terms of content it will occasionally go very fast. Make sure the relationship stays good. ('Be hard on the issue and soft on the person')
Due Diligence
Before an acquisition is finalized, it is customary for the seller to give the buyer the opportunity to establish that the shared figures and information are accurate. This is done through a book search (for the figures) and through various webshop scans (for the webshop). This check is called Due Diligence.
Specific:
- Start by signing a Letter of Intent. The probable buyer gets access to all figures, agreements etc during the Due Diligence and the intentions must be fixed at this stage.
- Sellers must ensure during the Due Diligence that buyers can view all important information and buyers must thoroughly prepare and execute Due Diligence (Obligation to Report and Investigation).
- For this step, take out at least one afternoon. Ask your bookkeeper for support and have the shop checked externally.
Tips:
- The content of the LOI will be similar to the acquisition agreement to be signed but contains a reservation regarding the outcome of the Due Diligence.
- Determine in the LOI what the maximum correction of the agreed price can be in the case of deviations observed during the Due Diligence.
- In this phase the route is exclusive and a salesperson no longer negotiates with other buyers.
The agreement and the transfer
If something is important, or the careful and unambiguous recording of the agreements made! After the moment of takeover there is sometimes disagreement and interpretations turn out to be different. So make sure you have a good checklist in all cases. We also advise you to have a lawyer look at it. By signing the agreement, the actual transfer of the webshop starts. Experience shows that a few weeks pass before the seller has transferred everything.
Specific:
- Prepare or allow a solid readmission agreement.
- Sellers prepare a transfer document in which the buyer finds all accounts, logins and passwords. Also explain in this document what the most important processes are and add important contacts.
- If the takeover sum legitimizes it, make an introductory round along the most important parties for the transferred company (suppliers, partners etc).
Tips:
- Who pays that determines. So consider yourself a lawyer for the contract and not to rely on the lawyer of the other party.
- Better a (lower) acquisition price that is paid immediately, then complicated earn-out and repayment constructions. These are often a source of disagreement afterwards.
- Sellers are often no longer waiting for questions and contact after the transfer. So make sure you organize this transfer carefully and accurately, so that buyers no longer need you to access accounts e.d.
Knowdledge base tags: Business valuation, Finance, Legal, Marketing, Acquisition process, Technology
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