Restaurant owners across the country may be wondering whether they should sell or wait to sell their business. The answer depends on whether you have the skill and services of a professional restaurant broker working on your behalf. What does a professional restaurant broker do? He markets and promotes your listing to a database of prospects and seeks new buyers. He makes sure that anyone looking at your restaurant for sale meets the criteria to purchase by having available funds or equity. He ensures that your restaurant for sale name is not disclosed until a confidentiality agreement is in place.
The favorite word in the English language is free and that’s what a seller experiences with the services of a broker. They do the work up front to package and market the restaurant for sale with no pay off until the closing takes place. Very few business models provide full value up front with no investment by the customer. Another reason to use a professional on the job is to make sure you’re getting the most money for your business. The standard method to value your restaurant for sale relies on knowledge and skills to take apart your profit and loss statement and re-state earnings to make sure you are compensated for every dollar of revenue. An expert restaurant broker does this for a living.
Buyers looking for a restaurant for sale have to be bound by confidentiality and the broker ensures this as well as pre-qualifying them to buy. Legal documents are standard parts of their packages that are tried and true to protect sellers from buyers that want to look without buying or out of curiosity. Inexperienced brokers and owners trying to sell on their own are often tempted by those with a good story to provide the address before they are fully qualified. For the experienced broker, “no” is a way of life and that protects your business from countless damage.
Describing a restaurant for sale in glowing terms and at the same time disguising its real name and address is the experienced restaurant broker’s forte. For the inexperienced, it’s a skill that takes time to develop and for the owner trying to get their restaurant for sale sold, it doesn’t make sense to try. The marketing team at restaurant brokerage firms can write headlines to drive responses and phrase the ad to generate leads. They are a whiz at generating activity on restaurant for sale listings. All of this is free of charge to the business owner looking to sell their restaurant for sale.
Unsuspecting sellers often rely on the World Wide Web to post their restaurant for sale. This great resource is often used by brokers but inexperienced owners may have a more difficult time sifting through the inquiries to determine which are “real” versus the work of those who may have less than honest intentions. They may receive multiple inquiries from those who insist they have a buyer or others requesting financial statements. Before they know it they find their restaurant for sale is the victim of financial identity theft. Few sellers realize how dangerous it is to put their financial information in the hands of others who may then borrow against your tax ID number or use a business’s identity to get a loan against future credit card payments.
These are only a few of the reasons that listing your restaurant for sale should always involve the help of an expert restaurant broker. A broker represents your interest and guards your business as if it’s his own until the new owner is in place.
Are you interested in listing your restaurant for sale? The expert restaurant brokers at We Sell Restaurants are ready to get your business sold. Check out our website, www.wesellrestaurants.com, or click the image below to receive a free valuation of your business.