When it is time to sell your Seattle business you want to make sure that you hire the right business brokers to work with you and ensure that you get as much money as you can. Choosing the wrong brokers can result in loss of substantial amount of money.
How to Choose the Right Seattle Business Brokers
Just like all other aspects of life and business, there are good brokers and there are bad brokers in the business. Your job is to find the best broker you can to get the most out of your business. Here are questions that you can ask a potential broker to see if they are the right ones to work with you.
1. How Many Years Have You Been a Business Broker Selling Businesses?
You want to make sure that you hire a company that has a lot of experience in selling businesses. Some firms will have brokers with less experience but they are always directly supervised by more experienced brokers. Talk to as many of the brokers as possible to get a sense of how much experience they have.
2. Do You Work from Home or in an Office?
While there is nothing necessarily wrong with someone who works at home, this question helps you determine if the broker has the experience you need. If they are working from home it could be that they don’t have enough experience or capital to rent a nice office space. If this is the case, the broker is not someone that you want to hire.
3. How Many Brokerage Office Are You Affiliated With?
This will allow you to ascertain if the broker will work with other brokers during the sale of your business. Also find out if they are part of a national business brokers alliance so they can broker in their own organization without working with anyone else.
4. How Many Businesses Do You Sell Each Year?
Most brokers will sell an average of eight to ten businesses a year. If the broker you are talking to has a much lower number, like one or two, find out if that was because the business was very large and required more attention or if they were just not effective.
5. What is the Total Number of Businesses You Have Sold?
Brokers who have sold a lot of businesses will have more experience negotiating deals which will help you when you hire them to sell your business. The more business a broker does, they better they become at what they do.
