Who is my Buyer?

Fishing Story No. 1

When I was young,  I would go fishing with my Dad.  We had fun but Dad knew nothing about fishing.  When I got a little older I went fishing with my brother’s boxing coach, Bud.  Bud was a short, stocky man with a brain tumor - the result of more than four hundred amateur and semi-pro fights.  That probably explained most of the crazy things in his life.  But Bud knew how to fish.

He told us that he would fly shotgun in small airplanes looking for unfished ponds on farms.  Then he would go ask the owner if he could fish their pond.  Inevitably they would tell him that there were no fish in that pond but go ahead.  Bud had his special lures and eighty percent of the time he caught tons of fish.  The first time I went fishing with Bud, I caught so many fish so fast it felt like I was cheating!  Bud caught fish by fishing in ponds that had tons of fish because no one had fished them in years.  Bud knew how to find fish and, with his special lures, he caught them.

What does this have to do with selling a business?  The most important thing you have to do is to determine who and where your fish (Buyers) are.  These are the people who are likely to be the most interested in your business and therefore the people who will pay you the most.  Who these people are will vary with what you have to sell and what you want to accomplish.  Below, we summarize the major groups and when they are likely to be the best Buyers. We address how to find them later in the book.

Remember to make your business as desirable as possible for your ‘best’ buyer.  This may involve physical changes to the business over time.  It may involve providing financing or training that is a little out of the norm.  It certainly will involve looking at the prospective buyers of your business as you would your regular customers and make your product (the total business) as great as possible.