What is the best venue to sell my business?


business broker
Joseph R asked:


I own a pool hall that I want to sell. I have already tried a business broker who just put it on all the business for sale websites, with no luck. I have also tried craigslist, but no serious potential buyers came from there.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Small 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.

5 Responses to “What is the best venue to sell my business?”

  1. Jim L Says:
    February 17th, 2010 at 10:05 am

    I assume you have all of your financial records in order, since you had a business broker. Was your business profitable? If not, it will be much less attractive to potential buyers. Also, in today’s economy you need to be willing to provide some amount of owner financing - in other words you lend the money to the buyer. Banks aren’t lending, people’s investment accounts are down, people have less home equity to borrow against and there isn’t a lot of cash floating around.

    I am also going to assume your asking price is in the range to appeal more to local buyers. Web advertising wastes a lot of your money because you are paying to advertise to the whole world when you are looking for a local buyer.Also, a business broker won’t give you the attention you deserve.

    I suggest that you advertise in the classifieds of your local paper. Make it as large an ad as you can reasonably afford and run it for 2 or 3 consecutive weekends. Work on the wording of the ad to make it interesting and enticing to buyers.

    Also, it probably would not hurt your business to put a sign up in your pool hall. Your customers are obviously pool players and a pool player is who is going to buy your business.

    Keep your ad fresh on Craig’s List, delete it once a week and post a new ad to keep you at the top of the list. Jim L

  2. I.T. Says:
    February 20th, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    First of all, the idea of placing the ads online is cool, but there’s more to it. For instance, how search-able is the ad? What keywords were used? This is crucial if you want people looking for a pool would find your ads ahead of the others. You can also post ads in business ad sites that are localized to cater to your neighborhood or city. That should help filter results better.

    Other useful tips on how to be competitive in ads can be found in I.T.

  3. Rendra Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 9:52 am

    you can see read article in for this I hope this will be resolving your problem. Rendra

  4. Solution Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Hi Joseph,

    Its not just easy to sell things online. It needs patience and endurance. Since you have it on some websites and even try craiglist, you should try amazon and ebay too. Spread your tentacles and you hardly can tell where it will come from.

    I assure that the best to have anything sold is the internet because it works 24/7 and round the clock. Be patient you will sell since you have all the documents with you.

    Solution Solution

  5. Teresa Says:
    February 25th, 2010 at 10:49 am

    Have you tried to sell it yourself through the websites? There are several very good websites to list your business online. Businessbroker.net is a good example. They are one of the oldest websites of their kind and have a high search rating. You have control over the contents of the listing and all interested parties respond directly to you. You might check them out and other sites like them. Good luck in selling your business. Teresa

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