Corporate services

Evaluations, appraisals and benchmarking

Strategic corporate acquisitions

Corporate divestments

Target marketing

Steps to a successful sale

Steps to a successful sale

When marketing a highly specialised business such as yours, our preferred approach would be by Competitive International Tender, as outlined in Target marketing.

The steps to achieving a successful result include:

1. Learn as much as possible about your business, so that we can:

Produce a credible selling document
Value the assets and intellectual property involved in the business as a going concern
Develop a profile of the most likely type of buyer
Identify the individual key selling points and synergies for each likely buyer, and
Identify any potential "turn-offs" for each potential buyer, and devise a strategy that could convert each from a negative to an opportunity
Most importantly, do all of this without disrupting your business, or alerting staff and competitors.

2. We attack the most obvious buyers first. We research our buyer database, and the worldwide web, to come up with a list of prospects who would have the most to gain from acquiring your business, and approach them directly, on a highly confidential basis.

3. We back this up with directed advertising on the web, and in selected media, such as the "Australian Financial Review", which, in our opinion, provide the most economical means of reaching the largest possible number of qualified buyers.

This is what we call "Stage I", of the marketing plan, and in over 70% of cases, this strategy results in a buyer, usually within six months.

If these efforts do not produce a buyer, then more drastic action is required, which we call "Stage II". This would begin with a de-briefing, and a survey of the prospects approached, to find out what went wrong, and why they did not proceed to purchase.

Possible reasons could be:

We approached the wrong class of prospective purchaser
We did not identify the right buyer benefits for the prospects
We could not demonstrate the value to them
There could be some perceived problem with, or threat to, your business, that we were unaware of, and that would need to be addressed with an appropriate strategy, in the business profile.

Once reasons have been identified for the problem, we can attempt to rectify them, and continue with a revised marketing plan.

We do not believe in failure. Failure can only happen when you give up trying.