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Replies
it is not easy selling a gardening business unless you have contracts with your cliants otherwise you only have good will to sell
when i was selling my business i got mucked about for quite a long time by 3 potential buyers then in the end it came to nothing
it came to a point that i had to tell my clients that i was retiering but was still trying to find somone to take over about 6 of them said its ok i know somone that will do it in the end i sold about half of it but not for a lot of the value more like finders money
even your tools are not worth a lot seccond hand i still have a lot of mine not been able to sell them
Having looked at buying businesses in the past, I think there is minimal concerns in existing clients being ‘Stolen’, more likely they could be ‘Lost’ if the potential sale is handled badly (by rumour or unsettled clients etc).
I’d suggest a larger problem is that most small businesses are not ‘formal’ enough to be sold as a ‘package’ to a potential buyer - by that I mean minimal documentation, unclear accounts, overvalued assets & goodwill.
On the resi side many will not have contracts, so to a buyer their value could be minimal ( yet maybe still valuable ).
Commercial contracts tend to be formal, with an assigned value that will help reflect the business valuation ( ie a 1 or 3 yr contract reflects well for a buyer as, if they perform, therevenue is guaranteed and thus helps justifies the asking price ... )
There are some books / articles around detailing how to prepare / sort out a business for sale and for many it’s a process that starts in previous financal years.
Cheers majority of the work we do is commercial, but as with all contracts they can be got out of, and lost the next time round as someone has approached them. That's the problem I foresee, therefore by the time sale goes through it's devalued.