When business owners come to see us, wanting to sell their business, we often get involved in providing what we term ‘vendor due diligence’.
When conducting vendor due diligence for clients, our role is basically to ‘pretend’ we are the buyer.
We look at a range of business health factors including:
- financial performance
- business performance
- staff and organisational aspects
- contracts, systems and suppliers
- how the business creates and drives value in terms of its point of difference in the market
- forward order book i.e. the pipeline, to understand the true nature of the business as a going concern
- how exposed the business might be to individuals or particular customers or suppliers.
These are all things we have talked about in our Due Diligence Checklist for business buyers.
The Vendor Due Diligence Checklist is similar, but it’s coming from a different angle.
It’s about doing preparation to make sure that when a purchaser ‘opens the bonnet’ on your business, they’re able to easily see how the business is performing.
Vendor due diligence critical component of business sale preparation
We created the Vendor Due Diligence Checklist as part of our free ebook: How to Prepare Your Business for Sale.
If you are a vendor looking to maximise value from your sale, it's important to do the preparation early, so the transaction process can be as streamlined and effective as possible.
Conducting vendor due diligence with an independent advisor’s support will ensure critical information about your business opportunity is gathered, collated and clearly presented long before purchasers come knocking.
JPAbusiness offers a wide range of services for business buyers and sellers. If you are considering buying or selling a business, contact the team on 02 6360 0360 or 02 9893 1803 for a confidential, initial discussion.
