10 tips to speed up your deal
- Hire an experienced corporate finance advisor to do the heavy lifting, from finding potential buyers to negotiating and follow-ups
- Use an experienced M&A lawyer ensures emerging legal issues are resolved or accommodated
- Organise your data before sale. Get all your company paperwork, contracts, trademarks saved in a digital format so you can supply these more quickly when required
- Commit time to the process. Cut back on holidays to ensure you are around during key periods in your business sale. There's still time to get away during quieter phases
- Trading well and hitting performance targets. An obvious one, but a strong financial performance is a great confidence boost to the buy-side team
- Call people if things go quiet. Maintain momentum with regular progress calls, and share good news such as new contract wins, new hires or market movements
- Clean financials. Buyers want to see year-on-year financials, so don't confuse everyone by changing your accounting year end when you're about to sell, or make other unnecessary radical changes to how you report your numbers.
- Consider a management buyout (MBO) if you want out quickly. These transactions tend to complete quicker as both parties already know each other
- Answer buyer queries quickly. As with anything, good communication oils the wheels
- Ensure everyone's on board. Silent shareholders and key staff will need to be brought into the loop at some stage to avoid unexpected reactions