Getting Your Business Ready For Sale When Approaching Retirement

As of February 2024, 30% of UK business owners confirmed they plan on selling their business to fund retirement plans. With many owners investing all of their profits back into the successful performance of their companies, this is a common theme we see for organisations of all sizes. However, 1 in 8 business owners have to stay in their companies beyond 70 due to a lack of exit strategy.

At Hysons, Chartered Accountants, we always recommend that owners start making plans early on to offer the best possible chance of securing that essential retirement revenue. In this blog, we will share our top tips for getting a business ready for a profitable sale.

Why Is It Important To Prepare In Advance For A Business Sale?

When it comes to future-proofing plans for a business, it’s never too early to set the wheels in motion. For a company to look appealing to buyers, it doesn’t just need a viable path for future success ahead of it but should possess a long-running history of strong operations.

Starting to plan for a sale before retirement will facilitate a sale more rapidly and with ease. Additional benefits of being prepared include more chances of improving value, improving brand image over the long term for better-perceived value, and reducing the risk associated with being unable to sell at all.

How To Get A Business Ready For Sale

Getting a company ready for sale is an important business planning process that all owners should undertake. Below, we have gathered some of our top tips for getting prepared in advance of retirement timeframes.

• Create a business structure that can operate without you at the helm.

Being able to transition to a non-essential role is important for business owners. If operations and customer trust are focused solely on that person, it will make it hard for someone else to take on the role. It’s best to have a phase-out plan, which means recruiting a strong and reliable team.

• Ensure professional management of financials.

Business sales require a deep look at financial performance and history. By working with a professional from day one, a robust track record of operations can be ascertained which a new owner can have confidence in. Selecting bookkeeping and accounting services is a fantastic way of achieving this plus your accountants can then transition to support a new owner with ease.

• Regularly manage risks and update damage control strategies.

Keeping a business in strong condition for sale means ensuring it offers an enticing proposition. By demonstrating active methods of reducing past risks and preparing for the future, buyers will likely want to take on the operations. One way to do this is to choose compliance measures that suit your company and operating industry.

• Conduct regular audits of performance and document all findings.

Lastly, we recommend keeping all aspects of operations tidy, which can be achieved with regular audits. These should cover performance against established KPIs, with the results published as official documents. Future owners will want to understand how strong a business is and how performance has been improved in the past.

Why Choose Hysons, Chartered Accountants To Support With Business Sales?

If you are planning on getting a business ready for sale when retirement arrives, there is no better time than the present to start working with our team. Contact us today to learn how we can establish efficient financial landscapes that will appeal to potential owners when a sale arrives.