The premier full service business brokerage since 1989
Utah Business Consultants
At Utah Business Consultants, we’re proud to offer services in both selling a business and buying a business. Each of these areas requires careful attention to detail, the sort our business brokers have been providing to our clients for years.
Are you considering buying a business for the first time in your career? Whether you’re in this situation or just need a refresher, here are some very general steps we recommend following as you begin the process.
For starters, often before you’ve even contacted our business brokers, you should begin with some very general research. You’re looking at the broad factors here – the kinds of businesses you might be interested in buying, the funds you have available, the sorts of businesses that are doing well in the modern economy, and so forth. This will help you narrow in on a few of your favorite potential options.
From here, as you begin to get a bit more serious about the purchase and look at individual options, it’s time to meet with one of our high-quality business brokers. This person will walk you through everything that will be in front of you from this point on, including which documentation you need to have present, important dates in the process, and more.
In addition, however, business brokers can help you obtain information you might not have been able to get on your own. This information might be regarding business types you’ve looked into, exit plans for a given company or other areas. Your broker will help you settle on a single business and focus on obtaining it.
When you’ve identified the business and have begun negotiations with the current owners or managers, one of the first steps here will be signing a confidentiality agreement. This agreement covers the potential seller in case things don’t work out with the sale – you may learn important, even proprietary information about the business during the negotiation process, but the agreement stops you from disclosing this to others in the industry in this case. Signing this agreement allows the seller to open up to you about these private areas of the business, helping you get an idea of whether you want to buy it.
Once you have all the required information, you’ll sit back down with your broker and go over all of it. Your broker will break down the most important areas to focus on, plus any questions you should reach out to the seller with.
And finally, it’s time to decide if you’re going to make an offer on the business. If you decide yes, your broker will help you ensure the offer is written properly and contains all the right contingencies. If the offer is accepted, you begin due diligence and asset evaluation, another process your broker will assist you with.
For more on the steps to buying a business, or to learn about any of our business brokerage services, speak to the staff at Utah Business Consultants today.