What you need to know about selling your business

As a business broker of eight years, Jeannie Randolph has warnings about the pitfalls most businesses fall into when selling.

Randolph owns Brio Brokers Group. Before she was a broker, she owned a manufacturing business.

“I understand the emotions and anxieties of somebody trying to sell their business but also understand the emotions and anxiety of somebody about to sign their life away,” said Randolph.

The most common hitch to selling a business? Financials not being clean, Rudolph said.

“A seller runs too many personal expenses through the business, buries them and makes the books messy for the buyer,” said Randolph.

Her advice to avoid messy books is to start organizing earlier. She recommended doing a business evaluation five or six years before starting the process of selling.

When it comes to buyers, she said nerves are typically the problem.

“The buyer being afraid of what they’re getting into,” said Randolph.

As a broker, she said, she has to wear many hats: therapist, parent and the bearer of bad news.

Sometimes buyers and sellers can't deal with the negative and she has to “tiptoe through the daisies,” said Randolph.

She said typically when she hears of a business deal going bad, it's buyers defaulting on payments after the purchase.

She explained a lot of mom-and-pop shops make personal deals and don't vet the buyers.

Rudolph said if more people knew about business brokers and reached out, “then we could help avoid some of the pitfalls along the way."