A timely, thoughtful approach to selling your business begins well in advance of your target sell date. When you choose the right M&A team, you assemble a group of professionals with experience, skills and a well-defined process who will help you achieve your goals and prepare you and your business for transition.
The Core Team
M&A Advisor
Your M&A Advisor will take overall responsibility to work with you to build your team, your plan and ultimately sell your company.
Selling your business is like building a house. One of the first people you want to talk with when you are building a home is a general contractor, who helps you capture your vision, understands all the pieces, coordinates the process, and brings in the right people at the right time to get the job done. The right M&A advisor can lead you through the process and keep you on track to achieve your goals.
Your advisor can also help you create a vision of the future for you, your business and possibly your team as part of the transaction. Listening to your desires and working with you, they will work to create the positive results you are seeking. Having been through the process with other business owners, your M&A advisor can support you and help with the uncertainties and doubts that inevitably come up. Your advisor wants to help you get the best outcome based upon your individual desires and situation.
M&A Lawyer
The M&A advisor will help you select a M&A lawyer who has experience in handling business deals similar in size and nature to your business. They require good business sense. They need to understand that it’s all about getting a deal done and not about being confrontational. And they need good ‘chemistry’ with you. Insist upon complementary values and principles. If your goal is to do a win-win deal, you want a lawyer who works the same way.
Tax Lawyer
A good tax lawyer will help ensure that your after-tax costs are minimized. They have expertise in all areas of taxation related to selling your business including corporate structure, corporate and personal income tax, international tax, and the taxation of trusts and estates. A pro-active approach will achieve tax savings and you can take advantage of legal deferrals available under an increasingly complex tax system.
Accountant
Your current accountant will be a critical part of the team. It will be important to clearly articulate the past financial performance of the business. The accountant must also help you build a solid financial projection of the next few years. A buyer will take great comfort in the numbers if they are professionally prepared. Your accountant may also need help from an expert Tax Accountant.
Financial Advisor
A financial advisor can help invest the proceeds of the sale. In most cases that means creating “your pension plan”. They can recommend tax-advantaged tools that will help you manage risk in the period leading up to the sale of the business and ultimately, to transform business assets to create personal wealth. A good financial advisor will collaborate with your other advisors to set up plans that will take advantage of tax and insurance strategies to minimize and optimize your future tax expense.
What’s Next?
Preparing to sell your business might seem overwhelming. Trying to Sell your business can be stressful and very complex. Picking the right advisors to help is critical. Let us know if we can be of service.