When selling a house, preparation typically involves cleaning, minor repairs, and staging to make the property appealing. Preparation for a business is similar, but quite more extensive, often taking a year or more. It includes not just sprucing up physical assets but also optimizing operations, normalizing your books, and strategic positioning to attract the right buyers. 

You want everyone to know when you’re selling a house, but you don’t want anyone to know when your business is for sale. Change is scary for employees and customers, so we sell businesses in a closed auction process, selectively targeting potential buyers who submit offers thorough a controlled and confidential environment. In this stage, we reach out to every identified prospect and collect NDAs from those interested. We take the lead to get answers to their questions and collect and negotiate offers, protecting the seller from buyer’s bombardment and freeing them to concentrate on running their businesses. This method ensures that the business is sold not just for a great price, but to the right buyer who aligns with the seller’s goals and values.

The buyer needs to see proof of everything they’ve been told and make sure that their assumptions hold up. Due diligence typically takes a few months and can be an arduous process. Feedback from several transaction attorneys who work with many different investment bankers is that many, if not most, advisors seem to largely disappear during this stage of the process, while the 10zing team is very present and active in quarterbacking the due diligence process for their clients resulting in less stress, lower legal bills, and successful transactions and transitions.