The resources or strategies that are used on behalf of a given client will vary by their size, industry, location and other unique characteristics. Listed below is a ‘broad brush’ of those resources and strategies.
Buyer Data Bases: We receive numerous inquiries from individuals looking to buy a business and that continuously updated file averages about 200 people and contains their financial capacity, type of business they are interested in, their preferred geographic location, their business background and their contact information.
Larger Business Buyer Data Bases: We have built an impressive data base of regional, national and international Investment Groups that are searching for acquisition candidates in a wide range of different industries that typically include the market areas that we serve. Three subsections of this data base include (a) US corporations seeking acquisitions, (b) Private Equity firms seeking acquisitions for their corporate clients, and (c) International buyers.
Targeted Searches: While the above data bases are an effective resource, in most cases, we start the buyer search by determining who the most logical buyers might be that statistically should be willing to pay the greatest amount of money for a given company in a given industry and in a given market area. Those targeted buyers might be local, regional, national or international and we either have, or will buy/rent, the data bases necessary to identify them.
Blind Advertising: Subject to the size and nature of the client’s business we also post ‘blind listings’ on a number of websites and/or industry publications that people looking to buy businesses frequent. The listings are ‘blind’ in the sense that we never post enough information to allow someone to be able to accurately identify or even guess the identity of our client.
Industry Consultants: Subject to the size and nature of our client’s business and who the ideal targeted buyer might be we have on occasion hired industry specialists as consultants to help compile the targeted buyer data bases.
STARTING THE SEARCH: Once the targeted buyer data bases are created it is a matter of establishing contact and there is no substitute for direct person to person contact to identify the decision makers and also their degree of both interest and financial capacity.