Comments on: When is the Right Time to Sell? http://www.awakeat2oclock.com/2011/11/when-is-the-right-time-to-sell.html/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=when-is-the-right-time-to-sell A Blog for Business Owners Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:57:07 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: Oswald Viva http://www.awakeat2oclock.com/2011/11/when-is-the-right-time-to-sell.html/#comment-3689 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:26:50 +0000 http://www.awakeat2oclock.com/?p=876#comment-3689 The right time is NOT when you are down because the business is down. Case in point: a few years ago Mr. X was suffering through a low point in the business because of poor market conditions. He was so affected by it that was seriously thinking about selling (obviously at a very low price because of the down turn in the business). I knew the business had a lot of potential and that the down cycle would be reversed, so I wanted to change his mind. Rather than trying to convince him I decided to talk with his wife who was also very active in the business. I asked her: “What would you and Mr. X do after you sell?” She replied: “I guess we would start another business”. So I asked her: “Tell me, how were the beginnings of this company?” She said: “Oh my God, they were terribly challenging and not much fun”. I said: “So, do you really want to go through all that again?”. She looked at me with puzzled eyes and said: “I never thought about it that way; you are right I don’t want us to have to go through that again”. So they decided to keep the company and work to return it to its rightful place. Today the company is four times the size and they get unsolicited offers for many times the price they would have had to sell at the low point. The moral of the story then is: sell when business is doing well, never when it is down.

I cover this subject in detail in my book “Its Lonely at the Top”; “A Practical Guide to Help You Become a Better Leader of Your Small Company”.

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