The Guide is available at www.bizbuysell.com/seller/guide/selling-a-business/. Small business owners are free to bookmark the page for easy reference or print a copy to keep around the office.



Source: SFGate.com

The 7th Annual Small Business Summit Gains Momentum
The Seventh Annual Small Business Summit, (#smallbizsummit) New York’s premier event for small businesses, is continuing to gain momentum among small business owners, larger businesses and groups that work within the small business vertical.
MarketWatch

Small-Business Outlook: What Are The Biggest Challenges On Main Street?
They also named weak sales as the top business concern in NFIB’s monthly Small-Business Optimism Index report for the 16th consecutive quarter. Other challenges recession-weary small-business owners reported?
Huffington Post

Women Small Business Owners Wave a Magic Wand in Portland, OR
Portland, OR women in small business opportunity to connect for free at the Magic Wand Collective launch meeting set for this Thursday, January 26th, 2012, 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 1441 NE 2nd Ave., Portland, OR 97232.
PR Urgent

Small Business Loans: How They Work and What You Should Know
Asking for loans is “unpleasant; it’s like asking your dad for the car keys,” said Charles H. Green, Executive Director at the Small Business Finance Institute and author of The SBA Loan Book.
International Business Times

How to Choose a Mobile Carrier for Your Small Business
AT&T, among other carriers, walks you through choosing small-business products.As for choosing a voice-minutes package, most providers offer free calls on nights and weekends.
PCWorld

Xiimo Brings New Marketing Tools to the Small Business Owner
Named one of the most disruptive cloud based technology companies by VentureBeat, Xiimo is redefining how small businesses market and promote on the web.
Sacramento Bee

More Signs of Increased Small Business Lending
We’ve been hearing about increased confidence in small business and, if you’re like me, you want to believe it – but you’re suspicious, too. How do we really know if things are getting better?
Small Business Trends

Sales of Small Business Companies Increase in 2011 Franchise Stats Lacking
The small-business-for-sale marketplace picked up again last year, for the second year in a row, thanks in part to better business performance. Sales of businesses with roughly $360000 in annual revenue rose 3.3% in 2011, according to BizBuySell.com…
Blue MauMau

Small Business Social Media – Avoid At Your Peril
Friends, Fans, Circles, Likes, Plus 1’s, it can all be a bit intimidating for small business owners. The fact of the matter is though that Social media is not going away…
Business 2 Community

Hiding Income? Look Out, Here Comes the 1099-K
Starting this month, business owners will begin getting new tax forms issued by their credit-card and online-payment processors and intended to keep businesses from hiding income. The form, called 1099-K, will document all 2011 transactions processed for sellers with more than 200 transactions and $20,000 in annual gross receipts.
BusinessWeek

Cloud app helps small companies manage sales compensation
Wondering how much your small business should be paying that great new sales person you want to hire? More important, wondering how to make sure everything is managed and paid out properly?
ZDNet (blog)

21 Reasons You’ll Fail at Marketing
I don’t know what it is about Marketing, but everyone on earth seems to think they can do it. And yet I see so many people NOT doing it or wasting thousands of dollars and not getting results.  I see business owners try the same things over and over, small businesses fail at marketing wasting more money, more time, and more energy.
Bplans

Self-employment in the Internet Age
Everyone who’s ever seen their career crash and burn can point to one or more big picture factors that directly or indirectly greased the wheels of their departure. We can either poison ourselves with bitterness, or find some way to benefit from prevailing changes.
OutOfYourRut.com

Thinking of closing down your business? Read this before you quit
Recently, I have repeatedly found myself in the company of veteran self employed professionals or business owners who feel they have come to the end of their entrepreneurial journey.
awovi

Business Rx: What to watch this year for small business
The fortunes of small business are not solely tied to the local markets in which they operate, but are also affected by national and global events. Keeping a watchful eye on the big picture is key to remaining nimble in such uncertain economic times.
Washington Post

How Many Customers Did You Lose Today?
But genuinely, one of the most vexing dilemmas for senior executives is being plugged in to what is actually going on in the front lines of their business.
Harvard Business Review

Weight Watchers For Small Business: Silver Lining Helps You Set Financial Goals
The majority don’t raise any kind of venture money or angel investment — most small business owners probably don’t even know any venture capitalists. Owning a small business is tough.
TechCrunch

Make Sure Your Tweets Are Being Seen!
Getting information and ideas out to the masses is what social media and networking is all about, particularly if you are in business, but is anyone reading what you have to say?
FamousBloggers.net

Do Small Businesses Really Need the SBA’s Help?
I’ve sometimes heard from business owners that “nobody” uses the SBA’s 900 field offices known as small business development centers or SBDCs. Turns out that’s just not true.
Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur Relationships With Technology Can Damage Productivity And Personal Lives
Business expert says that small changes in the use of common technologies can make entrepreneurs more productive and sane.
Gaebler.com

Ask an Expert: Content is king, entrepreneurs
Oh, how some small business owners long for the days when all they had to do was run their business and not worry about their computers, systems, mobile technology and Internet presence.
USA TODAY

Sick Days as a Home Business Owner
It’s really hard to take a sick day when you own a business. Sometimes, though, you have no choice.
PlantingMoneySeeds.com

BUSINESS TIPS: Don’t quit amid fear on plans of success
This seems to happen often in a small business. It’s easier and feels better to deal with the urgent tasks that can be done today, rather than the bigger important issues that don’t give us immediate gratification.
San Angelo Standard Times

10 Tips For Starting a Service Business
You can see the request here on the right, posted to me on Twitter. I decided it’s a good subject for a blog post here, and I went on my own first as a service business and survived that way for 12 years before Palo Alto Software finally established itself as a product company.
Bplans.com

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Paul Spiegelman often refers to his company as his “baby,” and he becomes emotional when he talks about issues relating to succession or the sale of all or part of his company — an opportunity he recently sought out.

In January 2010, Mr. Spiegelman signed a letter of intent to sell a majority interest in the company to a private equity firm. But after considering the risks of letting someone else control his company, which has 350 employees and annual revenue of $35 million, he decided to walk away from the deal.

Source/Read More: NYTimes.com

You negotiated a well-deserved price for your successful business and have signed on the dotted line. The time has come to hand the business off to its new owners. But how exactly do you do that?

The market for small businesses sales is slowly improving this year, particularly as financing becomes more available to would-be buyers.

As of March 31, there were 1,172 business-for-sale transactions completed, up 2% from that time last year, according to BizBuySell.com, an online marketplace for buying and selling small businesses.

Source/Read More: NuWire Investor

Buyers dislike seeing a small number of key customers accounting for the bulk of sales. Work to diversify your customer base. You should also know that if you have a highly concentrated customer list when your business sells, you may be asked to include a so-called “erosion clause” in the deal that lowers the price if a top customer leaves.

Click the link below for the complete article!

10 Ways to Boost Business Value

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brad Bottoset, founder of business brokerage The Liberty Group of Nevada, says owners in a small town face distinctive obstacles when it comes to selling. Mr. Bottoset, who grew up in Windsor and now lives in Reno, explains: “In a small city, there is often only one or two businesses in a certain industry. If I was representing a Ford dealership in Toronto, I’d describe it as a ‘car dealership’ in the marketing materials.

“If I was selling a Ford dealership in Sarnia, I’d describe it as ‘a retailer.’ You need to be vague in describing a small-town business in the marketing materials to avoid the entire town finding out your business is for sale.”

It’s a short article courtesy of The Globe and Mail, but one covering an area that you might not have pondered before, and definitely worth a read.

Among the many great tips here:

What advice do you have for handling the entire process of selling a business, from due diligence through closing?

Preparation is the key factor. Using the team approach described above will help prevent surprises in the due-diligence phase. Before the business is offered for sale, the seller should have a prototype stock purchase agreement or an asset purchase agreement, with all exhibits in place, which can be finalized without a great deal of investigation. The negotiation process can be focused on the price and financing rather than the buyer’s effort to extract critical information from the seller, which damages the level of trust between buyer and seller.

Factors that will help are having good financial statements, inventories, asset lists, surveys of real estate, operation and maintenance manuals and records for equipment, well-organized files, and employees who are prepared for the transition.

Source: NYTimes.com

At which point, you’re probably staring at your monitor and going whaaaa?? But it actually makes a lot of sense. The American Express OPEN Forum explains why and touches on five steps you’ll need to take to turn your services into marketable, and valuable, products, including the first step:

1. Identify something you can replicate repeatedly – The idea behind a product is that you want to be able to get paid for selling a “thing” and not selling your time.  Also, you want to sell the “same” thing over and over if you are to achieve operational efficiencies and decent profits. Look around at what you do.  Chances are, if you’ve been in business for a while, you have developed a process you follow closely for at least one service.  You may not even realize you have a distinct process until you set out to identify it – but you have something.  If that something is in reasonable demand, you have the start of a “product.”

Source: American Express OPEN Forum