Analyzing Your Brand in Preparation for a Business Sale

When preparing your business for sale, it’s important to demonstrate that it has value in “the name”. It’s not just people, inventory and equipment. You establish brand value by demonstrating the reputation your business has earned and showing that you have a loyal and growing customer base.

These days that is largely demonstrated by online reputation, customer records, and financial statements. You want to show where your customers come from. It’s important to demonstrate that your revenue is not derived mostly from personal relationships or from the reputation of the owner. Remember, the new owner will want to feel confident that they can continue, and even expand, the current success of the business.

Brand value can be established by looking at your online reputation and your customer records. Do you get a lot of website traffic? What about your customer reviews? Do you have consistently high ratings across multiple platforms? These will be different depending on the type of business, but some common ones are Google, BBB, Yelp, ANGI, etc. What are people saying about your business? How do your customers find you? What percentage of your customers are repeat customers?

Now obviously you aren’t going to have complete control of all of these matters. However one area you can control is your profile as it appears on places like your Google Business Profile, the BBB website, Yelp, ANGI, etc. This not only helps your brand but could also help increase traffic to your website. Highlight your skills and professionalism. Back that up with pictures of your work and/or case studies and client references. You want to show a potential buyer that the business has a good reputation and has laid the groundwork to grow, or at least maintain, the business.

Depending on your industry, different review sites will be more important. But you should always strive to get more customer reviews. They can help your business in a number of ways and are also important when selling your business. One thing to remember though is that reviews are hard to get. I have owned several companies myself and no matter how good the work you do, far more often than not, satisfied (or even ecstatic) customers don’t leave reviews. There’s an old business maxim that says if you have a happy customer they tell no one; but if you have an unhappy customer they tell everyone!

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at some of these sites, especially Yelp! The internet has become a place for people to vent and complain. Fortunately, Google Business Profile reviews are better than most, and it often gives you a more accurate picture of the business. It’s also the one that most people rely on across every industry, so focus on that one.

You need to create a plan to get reviews from your happy customers. Make the initial request and the follow up efforts part of the routine sales process. You should also reach out to old customers and send them review links to build business credibility. Lastly, make sure you respond to all customer reviews. This not only shows customer engagement, but it will help your SEO and drive more traffic to your website.

Jeff Brown is a Business Broker with Business Acquisitions, Ltd. in Denver, CO. He is also a former M&A Attorney and Entrepreneur who has owned, operated and sold five successful businesses of his own. Jeff can be reached at 720-989-4121 or Jbrown@Baltd.com.