Can every small business be sold, even the smallest?

Case 1: profitable, and you can go on holiday

The company is profitable or breaking even, your staff handle most of the work, and you regularly manage to take a holiday without it causing problems. No difficulty here: whatever its size, the company can be sold, and you will receive money for it.

Case 2: profitable, but you are irreplaceable

Or you believe you are. If you do manage to take a holiday, you stay in constant touch with the office. This case is more delicate.

In practice, preparing the sale will start with a thorough analysis of the company and of the way it runs: understanding which of your skills create value or are strategic, and which are secondary. From there, several strategies are open. Redistributing your responsibilities differently, which makes it easier to find candidates. Drawing up a profile of the skills required and looking for a buyer the way a headhunter would. Or turning to neighbouring or complementary companies that already have those skills in-house.

The conclusion is the same: yes, the company can be sold. Finding the buyer will simply take more craft.

Case 3: the company is making losses

This is more complicated. A thorough analysis will establish whether the situation is lasting or not. It will also determine whether there are combinations that would create synergies, with individuals or with companies, by opening access to new markets or to better production capacity.

The analysis will also check whether one of the activities could be profitable on its own, even at the cost of dropping the others. For instance by giving up a trading arm that ties up capital and resources, in order to refocus on the core business.

In our experience there is no solution in every case, but there is often a way to hand the business on. Whether it will always be profitable to do so is another matter.

Case 4: you are on your own, or two or three

Could your company interest anyone? In principle, yes. In this case the prospective buyer will almost always be a private individual, an employee. That makes the search more complicated and calls for a suitable approach to help them arrange the financing. But it can be done.

The right question

Broadly speaking, there is a growing number of would-be buyers ready to commit and keen to take over a small business. What they don’t know is how to find the right match.

The point, then, is to find a specialist in small business transfers who can handle your case, who knows where to go looking for those candidates, how to convince them and how to support them through the purchase. The right question is not whether your company can be sold, but how and where to find the right buyer.

Nady Bilani