When it comes to selling your dental practice you will
only get one shot to get it right so it really matters you are well informed
and prepared.
It is absolutely possible to sell your dental practice
yourself without the need for a sales agent, however, given the value of this
asset most tend to bring in some specialist help.
Based on our extensive experience here are the five most
common mistakes made by practice owners when they sell their practice privately:
1.
Allowing
the buyer to value your business – this is the first cardinal sin. Whether
the buyer is your friend down the road, an associate or corporate you must take
control of the valuation. It is vital to ensure it has been prepared on an
independent basis and reflect what your practice is worth in the open market. A
corporate that could own hundreds of practices offering to ‘value your practice
for free’ may have a vested interest in being less than generous with the
valuation as they will be the buyer.
2.
Keep
it confidential – selling your dental practice could take up to nine months
and during this process it is really important that you keep it private.
Without being able to present a full picture to your staff it could well cause
unrest to the point where someone leaves. Equally, you don’t want patients to
be disturbed and find another practice. Both of these factors impact on of the
goodwill value of your business if poorly managed.
3.
Sharing
too much information – a buyer will want financial and non-financial
information about your practice and the sharing of this needs to be carefully
managed to ensure that only truly interested parties get the nitty gritty
detail. You need to filter out those who are just searching for information
with no desire to buy – with over 4,500 dentists looking to buy a practice this
can be a daunting task.
4.
Negotiating
– this is core to getting a good deal. The overall deal isn’t just about
the price either. Some buyers will lead you to believe that part (could be 30%)
of the purchase price being deferred is normal – it isn’t. There could well be
restrictive covenants and you need to know what can be negotiated and those
that are non-negotiable (which is very few).
5.
The
power of the open market – when selling privately it can be difficult to
manage the expectations of different interested parties. However, this is vital
if you are to secure the best price for your practice. By starting with a wide
audience and filtering this down to the 2-10 who are seriously interested will
ensure the process remains competitive and provide a Plan B should things not
work out with the preferred buyer.
With careful management and a considerable investment of
time there is no doubt you can self-manage a sale. On the flip side, if you
would like to focus on doing what you do best (dentistry) and engage a team of
specialists to manage the end to end process we would love to hear from you.
You can speak to a member of our team by calling 0330 088 11 56 or have a look at our website for more details - www.ft-associates.com
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