Prospective business buyers find it hard to believe that 90% of the people who begin the search to buy a business never complete a transaction. After all, you're probably very enthusiastic about buying a business, how could this zeal wane so quickly? There are a lot of reasons I'll discuss in coming posts, but one thing I want to talk about today is when buyers do their searching. I find it amazing that the majority of purchases made for our program are done during the week, mostly during the day. I also know through surveys we've done over the years, that most prospective business buyers are currently employed. It doesn't take a genius to realize most people are searching while they're at work, getting paid by someone. Using work time for personal matters is not right, and probably grounds for termination, it's also a terrible strategy for buying a business altogether (by the way, once you own a business how will you feel if your employees are online for personal things when you're paying them???).
In any case, you can't be effective searching when you can only steal a few minutes here and there. Finding the right business is the most critical step in the entire process of buying a business. Instead, set aside at least one hour three times a week away from work when you can go through listings effectively, make proper notes, compare various businesses for sale, note follow up, list your specific questions about each listing and simply do a better job in the initial analysis. Don't rush. This is important. If you don't address the business buying process properly you'll either going to be a 90%er, or you're going to make a huge mistake.
Since the growth of the internet it turns out that less than 1% of the customers who make an initial contact ever become buyers. A major number of them drop out when we send back a message to go to our web site and do an NDA. We find a really low response rate from initial inquiries over holiday periods or weekends.
At the same time the rest of your comments hold true for our brokerage. And if the customers would spend a little more time getting educated and thinking about what they really want to spend their life doing it would save them and us a lot of time.
Leon Parker, President, New Hampshire Business Sales, inc.
Posted by: Leon Parker | July 24, 2007 at 01:42 PM