How Long to Sell a Big or Small Business

Whether the business has 100’s of employees or is just a Mom and Pop business, it takes time to properly package, market, locate buyers and close a transaction in order to get the best price and the best favorable tax treatment.

Small Business Brokers Los Angeles

Acquisition Services Group (ASG) is one of few professional small business brokers in Los Angeles that will accept listing of small businesses. The key for us is that the small business needs to be profitable. As long as there is a history of profitability, we can sell a small business and achieve the goals of our client.

Once a business is taken to market, it typically it takes anywhere from five to seven months to canvass all the potential Buyers, conduct the site visits, negotiate an acceptable Letter of Intent, properly perform due diligence, and agree all the legal documents including the Purchase Agreement, Non Compete, etc.

Occasionally we are not able to get a small business sold in that time frame. In most of these instances the reasons are beyond our control. For example, when 9/11 occurred, the US economy almost ground to a halt with businesses reluctant to make investment decisions. On September 11, 2001, ASG had a number of small businesses in various stages of the process. A number of potential buyers decided to put a halt to acquisitions, and the few that were still active significantly lowered the amount they were prepared to pay for a business.

In consultation with our clients, we concluded that we should just take those businesses off the market and revisit the situation in six months or so when hopefully the economic prospects were brighter. As it turned out we took the majority of these small businesses back to market within the following year and were able to successfully get them sold.
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