Business Owners: You Can Sell Your Business Yourself

We’re so excited to develop a platform where entrepreneurs and small business owners can list, manage and control the sale of their business. Through our new guided and automated purchase and sale process, we empower our users to chat, exchange documents and transfer all deal funds while saving them time, money and emotional energy.

The process is as follows:

1. Create an account for free at BuyAndSellABusiness.com.

2. Once verified, you can login and start creating your listing for free by selecting “Create” within the “Full Serve” option found on the sell page.

3. Once you submit your listing, our team will review and approve it.

4. You’ll be notified once your listing is approved and visible to interested buyers who can send you offers, which are viewable and managed through your own Deal Room.

Once an offer is secured, both the buyer and seller must go through the necessary phases to complete a transaction. This includes, the due diligence phase, exchanging important documents and gathering signatures within our protected and easy-to-use system.

BuyAndSellABusiness.com will also handle deposits and closing funds, which are held and released once the sale is finalized. This is done in order to protect the integrity of the deal and ensure all who are involved are kept safe.

While the process is largely automated, BuyAndSellABusiness.com offers hands-on deal support for legal, accounting, and financing throughout the entire process from reputable national firms such as CIBC, KPMG Enterprise, and LegalShield who can provide all the necessary professional guidance if need be.

Our hands-on model is intended for small business sellers who need guidance during the sale process, but do not require the extensive individualized attention that most larger deals involve. The most complex micro transactions (deals under $5m) are typically just a series of simple phases applied over-and-over, which we’ve broken down for you. Once an offer is negotiated, the deal can be completed by anyone with patience, diligence and attention to detail.

With that said, let’s quickly address the elephant in the room! Having a broker represent deals in the micro market, which we define as businesses with a valuation of under $5mm, is overkill. Most brokers don’t want to service these micro businesses because the deals are time consuming, and the commissions don’t make up for the amount of time and effort.

Nevertheless, we think the best option for small business owners – whether selling a SaaS, eCommerce or Main Street business, is to sell the business on their own. The reality of business brokerages is that those who succeed move upstream as soon as possible. This leaves an underserved micro market, a pain our founder, Nunzio Presta, felt when trying to sell his small business while in University. Those pains were the starting point for where we are today and it came down to two: brokers would rather sell a bigger business and realtors would rather sell a house.

For us, it makes sense to service our users directly as we’ll be able to add more value and truly push our goal of ensuring small businesses change hands and local jobs are saved. Moreover, by going direct with our sellers we will also be able to offer lower fees.

We’re excited to lean on our technology in order to provide our users with the best possible purchase and sale experience. Our new Full Serve solution offers distinctive benefits:

1. We offer a wide range of business opportunities - Other platforms either lean towards strictly startups/digital (SaaS/eCommerce) or strictly main street, whereas we are uniquely positioned to help entrepreneurs and business owners buy and sell all types of businesses – whether it’s a Main Street, SaaS or eCommerce business. An agnostic approach attracts a diverse set of informed users.

2. We do not monetize the buyers - We believe adding friction to buyers limits meaningful business conversations and not monetizing sellers attracts a ton of poor listings. The combination, in our opinion, equals a negative experience.

3. We offer a digitized and automated purchase and sale experience – Our Full Serve solution helps guide buyers and sellers through the offer, due diligence and closing phase. They’ll have the ability to chat, exchange documents, and request and accept all necessary funds. They will also have access to deal support throughout the experience, giving both parties full control from start to finish, while saving sellers on commission (our take rate is as low as 1%). If sellers aren’t looking for a guided experience and want to save on the commission, they can join our subscription solution which offers unlimited listings and buyer introductions for a low monthly fee.

4. Smart Internal Retargeting – From the moment a user joins our platform, to the moment they list or connect with a buyer, our platform does a terrific job at ensuring conversations take place and deals happen. Through our tech, conversations or deals never go cold and are top of mind for both parties.

5. We are not a “viral” platform – Sounds like a disadvantage, however, it isn’t. We don’t want volumes of tire kickers. We want focused, serious conversations that lead to a successful purchase and sale. In a nutshell, we’ve created a community filled with missionaries, not mercenaries. The goal is not for a quick start and exit or for a quick buy and flip. Our goal is to help sellers exit and buyers find lifestyle businesses that they are passionate about.

6. History - We’ve been around the block, and we’ve seen a lot of companies come and go. Since 2012, we’ve worked hard to earn the trust of thousands of users and partners in 20 different countries. We’ll continue to work hard every day to maintain that trust. Trust, support and reliability is at the core of our guiding principles at BuyAndSellABusiness.com.

For the past 8 years we’ve been on a constant journey of learning and improving - connecting over $2b in transactions and growing our community to over 40,000 users. One thing that has always stuck out is that our audience is always craving innovation, which drives us to build better technology and tools.

A better future and stronger economy starts and finishes with the transition of businesses, and our new Full Serve solution has been a well thought out effort to advance that goal.

We’re looking forward to seeing you join our growing community.

Opinions expressed here by contributors are their own.

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