It is important for business sellers to provide certain important information to prospective  business buyers.  As mentioned in a previous blog post, this is done for them to get a comprehensive overview of the seller’s business.  Thus, proper preparation is necessary for the best presentation of your business and is required in order to provide meaningful insight to prospective purchasers.  To accomplish this, the business must be properly packaged with all applicable records and facts organized and documented in the most strategic way to maximize potential value. This ensures a presentation of our client’s business in the best light, while providing the purchaser with a solid audit trail to corroborate the seller’s representations of value.  In this post, we examine the need for the seller to provide the business with certain legal and marketing information.

The legal information provided will enable the buyer to ensure that the business is operating in compliance with laws governing the particular industry.

The marketing information provided will allow the buyer to assess existing marketing/advertising efforts of the seller and determine additional avenues to pursue ion order to further grow the business.

Therefore, the following  legal and marketing checklist items, if applicable,  should be provided by the seller to the buyer:

Marketing Information:

• Sales catalogs, brochures, fliers, etc.
• Advertising examples
• Overview of web site
• Product specification sheets
• Marketing plans

Legal Information:

• If incorporated, copy of Articles of Incorporation
• If incorporated, copy of By-laws
• If incorporated, copy of organizational Minutes
• If Limited Liability Company, copy of Operating Agreement and LLC organizational Minutes
• If partnership, a copy of the partnership agreement
• A copy of any joint-venture agreements
• A copy of any fictitious business name filings
• A copy of any sales and use permits
• A copy of any real estate deeds and/or leases for real property available as part of the sale of the business
• Any zoning approvals
• Any state or federal licenses
• Any franchise agreement if the business offered for sale is a franchise
• A copy of the complaint for any pending litigation
• Copies of all documentation related to the ownership of intellectual property including the establishment of all copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade names and patents.

Including the above mentioned information in your checklist will enable the buyer to assess your business and decide it viability as a valuable business opportunity.

Keep visiting Quantum™ Blog for more updates.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Selling a business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.