“Buy low, sell high” is probably the most universally accepted investment principle. It may seem simple, but finding the best time to buy or sell often takes strategic planning and analysis coupled with a heavy dose of good luck. Whether your investment is in the form of stock or a trucking business, identifying the optimal time to sell can be complicated. Of course, when business is going well, the owner probably doesn’t want to sell; the thought may not even cross his or her mind. During a slump, many assume they should wait to sell until business improves. If that doesn’t happen, the inevitable result is listing a business when it’s least likely to give a good return on the initial investment.
If you find yourself fearing that it’s too late for you to sell your trucking business, your fears may be misplaced. Especially in a generally challenging economy, your business’s liabilities may actually increase its chances of selling, at all. Below are some reasons your business may bring more than you’ve dared to hope.
Understanding Buyers’ Goals
We’ve all heard the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Even though your trucking business may not be achieving what you need right now, it may well meet different needs of particular buyers. While some buyers are more concerned with your business’s current performance, others may see it as a means to achieving specific goals. Perhaps a larger trucking company wants to use your already established locale to jump-start their presence in a new part of the country or state. Maybe a company outside the transportation industry wants to implement a delivery service of their own, and your fleet of vehicles and already trained drivers can put them on the road to implementing this new facet of their business.
Offering Financing Options
Maybe you thought that offering a rock-bottom price for your struggling trucking business would be the only way to get it off your hands; if so, think again. The right price coupled with the right terms of sale can attract entrepreneurs who lack extensive funding. In fact, many successful transportation business sales today do include seller financing. At a time when loans carry high interest rates and are increasingly difficult to secure, offering partial financing to prospective buyers can make your business much more attainable and attractive to them.
Targeting the Right Buyers
If you simply list your business locally, you may miss out on some ideal opportunities. Waiting for the right buyer to find your ad amid the sea of other businesses for sale, especially when many of them are probably more successful than your own, is clearly a long shot. Instead, you need to be aggressive enough to find the right buyer. The best way to do that is to hire a business brokerage service, particularly one an industry-specific group like The Tenney Group.
Our experience in helping unite buyers and sellers within the transportation industry since 1973 makes us uniquely qualified to help you find the perfect buyer for your struggling trucking business.
If you really want to make a fast buck (as in double the expected rate in a typical State), then haul the entire trucking fleet up to Alaska and sell the company there. I wouldn’t be surprised if it sold like wildfire, with all the expansion and construction activity taking place. Probably would be tricking getting all the paperwork in order to do that, but just thinking out loud.