Exit Planning Tips

Selling a Holistic Health Practice

A lot can go wrong during the sale of a holistic health practice these days. More than ever before, it's important for sellers to know the tactics and techniques that are being used to maximize sales price and achieve desired sale outcomes.

It's a fact: Successful business sales take time.

At Gaebler, we're seeing holistic health practice sellers succeed by applying sound sales principles combined with a refusal to be intimidated by a down economy.

Working with Accountants

Accountants lay the financial groundwork for a business sale. From a seller perspective, an accountant can offer personal financial assistance, especially when it comes to handling the disposition of sale proceeds. Brokers often advise their clients to have an accountant perform an audit of the business prior to sale. With seller financing becoming common, professional accountants are playing a more central role in negotiations and buyer qualification.

Average Timeframes

It's rarely possible to sell a holistic health practice in a month or two. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules about the length of time your business will be on the market. Pricing plays a role in sale length, but there are no guarantees that a fairly priced business will sell quickly. Before you can list your holistic health practice, you'll need to invest as much as a year in preparing it for prospective buyers. Even though it's conceivable that an attractive opportunity could sell in weeks, an immediate flood of offers could indicate that the business is underpriced.

Buyer Concessions

Most holistic health practice sellers realize they will need to offer concessions to sell their businesses. But for every concession you grant, there may be an opportunity to obtain a concession from the buyer. Although this scenario frequently plays out around seller financed deals, it's possible to push for a higher sales price or other form of compensation if you agree to mentor the buyer for a specified period of time. Asset exclusions, retained ownership shares and long-term contracts with another of the seller's companies can also be leveraged to extract concessions from buyers.

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