With over thirty years of experience as M&A business brokers, we have worked successfully with a wide variety of people in buying a business. The following are a few of the many factors that drive or defeat a buyer’s success:
- Experience Matters. Highly experienced mergers and acquisitions advisors, M&A brokers, investment bankers or certified business brokers bring many advantages to buyers as well as sellers. Experience brings an all-important sense of the market. A seasoned M&A business broker will know what is available, how to get a deal done, and may even be able to point toward lender’s likely to support buying a business. Regardless of who they may represent, the most fundamental part of their assignment is to get a deal done – successfully.
- Register Your Interest & Qualifications. You can expand the effectiveness of your search for a business to purchase by registering your interests, objectives, and qualifications with Bluestem. We will then be on the alert to find the business you are seeking and make you aware of opportunities. The deal you seek may be coming to the market, but without registering, you may miss the buying window entirely.
- Sell Yourself. People who are buying a business sometimes choose counterproductive behaviors to posture for negotiations. In the end, a business owner will normally require affinity for the buyer to be willing to close a sale. Before a transaction is closed, there is invariably a need for the seller to trust, and believe in, the buyer’s genuine interest in the well-being of the seller. Stated differently, the buyer will need to sell his or herself to the seller. Negotiate a good deal, but don’t kill the opportunity by posturing your position.
- Who’s agent? While a merger and acquisition advisor or business broker may help either or both sides in facilitating a business transaction, it is very unusual for the broker to fundamentally represent the interests of both buyer and seller. Ethics and results are better served by being primarily responsible to buyer or seller, not both. That said, experienced brokers will be highly responsive and valuable to prospects for buying a business, even when representing the interests of a selling owner. Top brokers serve as informed guides throughout the process. Wise buyers heed this guidance, but expect to verify in due diligence.
- The lightning rods. Buyer and seller have a shared major objective – closing a business sale and acquisition together. There is ample reason to be cordial and cooperative. They also have strong opposing interests in specific price and terms issues. Having a lightning rod to absorb, or deflect, the inevitable issues until resolved often proves invaluable to closing the deal and preserving good relations between buyer and seller to and beyond closing. Bluestem does this.
- Protect confidentiality! You will be required to sign a strong confidentiality agreement by any knowledgeable seller. Honor it in spirit and word. If you buy the business, it is to your advantage the confidentiality has been preserved for you. If you do not buy “this” business, do not damage it or sour your reputation by careless treatment of information that was entrusted to you.
- Embrace BluestemUSA’s proven process. Our proven M&A selling process works. It simplifies and expedites the purchase, and the sale. Professional buyers welcome the represented seller, following the accepted process. The buyer knows the steps and the seller understands them too. The selling process has many complications and is not enhanced by a serendipitous or haphazard process. Bluestem understands this and works to keep an effective process for selling or buying a business to the benefit of all parties.
- Educated & motivated seller. A prime advantage from using a mergers and acquisitions business broker comes from their investment in preparing their buyer or seller clients. Accepting an ill-informed or improperly motivated seller is a mistake M&A business brokers learn to avoid. As a skilled broker, Bluestem qualifies and educates its buyer and seller clients before going into the market to create a superior environment for success. This helps ensure the buyer is working with a seller who knows what to expect and who will be both responsive and reasonable. Surveys confirm that experienced business buyers prefer to work with sellers that are represented by a well-educated and professional M&A business broker, such as BluestemUSA, to guide them.
- Conduit of information. Obtaining needed information before buying a business is critical to reducing the buyer’s risk and progressing to a closing. Qualified business brokers appreciate the value of investing in gathering, organizing, and effectively presenting information about their selling clients. “Do it yourself” sellers seldom have command of the need and steps to fully prepare. BluestemUSA serves as a coordinated and informed focal point and conduit of information between the buyer, the seller, and their respective advisors, lenders, etc. Bluestem can efficiently facilitate this through its investment in state of the art file sharing capabilities.
- Trust, but verify – do your due diligence, First, trust your gut; if the buying a business feels wrong, be prepared to walk away. Second, trust your financial and legal representatives and the business owner, but verify. Due diligence is a crucial part of buying a business. Take it seriously and do it well. If anyone has informed you of anything that is material to your purchase transaction, prove it to your satisfaction in due diligence.
