How To Sell My Service Business

Sell My Service Business

Maximising The Value of Your Business

Service businesses are all the rage. We live in a service economy. In a country like Australia, where manufacturing has been reduced to almost nothing, it is all about services. Whether that be property services, business services, cultural and recreational services or the mass of other service businesses, there are many other things you can do to boost the value of a services business.

Some people will tell you that you can’t sell a services business because you are the business. If you are the business, then the business has little value.

When selling any business, to transact that business for good value you need three things, profitability, maintainability of profits and transferability of profits. With service businesses, the key is transferability.

What you will be selling is goodwill and when it comes to selling a service business, you need to build goodwill that is transferable to a buyer.

So what areas can you work on to make sure that you are selling a business of value.

Infrastructure. Build something around you, be that a staff roster, systems, products, e-commerce website, whatever will provide transferable value outside you.

Clients. no service businesses are really selling their client list. You don’t want your client list to have a major concentration in one or two clients – so you need to build the business so that there is an even spread.

Database. When selling a client base, you are really selling the database. Database is the list of everyone you do business with from clients to suppliers to prospects to networking associates

Systems. The better your systems, less reliant you are on people and the weakness of a service business is its reliance on people, especially the owners

Service. Increase your service offering. Remember, you’re looking to hand over something more than just business that relies on the expertise or labour of the owner. If you are known for your service, and that service is provided by people outside the owner, then you are starting to build a business that has transferable goodwill.