I understand that in my past not everyone I requested advice from I really listened to but generally, if I was going to have to pay for it, I think I should have.   If you are a business owner trying to sell your business and have asked for professional help, and are paying for it, then listen to what we are telling you!!  There is a signficant difference between hearing what they say and listening with an open mind and I often get extremely frustrated when business owners don’t do either.  Why interview, research, and hire us and then not listen to the exact steps we tell you to do?   We are paid to assist you so why not listen and do what we say? Baffling.

I can promise you that if you hire a qualified advisor that has been through the selling experience more than once and… ask them to assist you in your process then shut up, don’t ignore them, and do what they say to do.  Let me try this with a real life example.  The reason kids take the SAT prep course for the college entrance exam is that the parents pay people that are trained to assist your child to do better on the test.  You pay them money, give up time, and they teach your child how and what are the best ways to increase their test scores.  So, the same applies to advisors in selling your business.  When we tell you to stay focused and keep working, that means do it.  No vacations, short days or time off, work!  When we say answer your phone/emails that means do it, we need communication.  Why don’t you listen?

Let me tell you that I know how to sell your business, I have done it numerous times before and there are steps and processes that should be followed in order to maximize the sale price.  We don’t explain everything to you, just the facts so you can stay focused on running the business.  Please do what we tell you to do or don’t hire us.   If you want to do it yourself then go for it.  Send your child in to the SAT without a prep course and see how they do.  I’m sure they will survive but I can promise that they won’t do as well as if they had specific training.  There is nothing more frustrating than having a plan that we all agree on and then the owner starts to make changes.  We are a team, it’s your company, but we are in charge of the transaction.  We take pride and invest emotional energy in the deal so don’t blow it up.  Follow the steps, listen to your advisors and, again, I say, LISTEN.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Professional Advice, Exit and Answers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.