The Importance of Due Diligence in Business Sales
10
Nov

The Importance of Due Diligence in Business Sales

When you sell your business, it is likely that you will inherit a range of emotions few people will ever experience.

As Brisbane business brokers, we collaborate with sellers and buyers to eradicate the emotional rollercoaster to the best of our ability and ultimately achieve a great outcome for all parties.

It goes without saying that, as a Business Owner, by offering open access to information you will achieve a quicker and more desirable result than those offering limited access. It has the desired flow on effect of a smoother transaction with less stress, expense and emotion.

When contracts are signed, it is not unusual for the sellers to feel a sense of relief and excitement, and starting to think how they are going to spend their money.  In reality, the transaction is far from over.  At this stage of the contract proceedings, the buyers will have their professional advisors lined up to pull the business apart, in their search for anomalies in the due diligence (DD) process.

Sellers often refuse to co-operate with such due diligence requests and show some reluctantance to provide the necessary information.  This in turn only limits advisors with the ability to confirm the business is actually what we have portrayed. This lack of cooperation typically results in a terminated contract. 

The Buyers have every right to investigate all facets of the business, including facts and figures, as part of the purchase.  It is a strongly held belief that an uncooperative seller is hiding something which is certainly not the message a nervous buyer wants!

In our experience it is often the case whereby the sellers are just emotional and not hiding anything, and they don’t understand the importance and/or relevance of the requests and are keen to move on with the next phase of their lives.

The due dligence process is a critical one; don’t assume buyers will turn a blind eye.

We see the clever sellers who understand this and work with the us as their Broker to ensure all information is available prior to the business actually hitting the market.

We cannot stress the importance of this enough, and as they say “proper preparation prevents poor performance”.