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Selling your business? Find the emotional buyer

Berkonomics

Most investment bankers will coach you into helping them find you a strategic buyer, knowing that such sales are quicker, often less focused upon the small warts of a business, and yield higher prices than financial sales. The price negotiated is not at all the critical factor in the emotional sale. And the emotional buyer.

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Why not share your liquidity success with those who got you there?

Berkonomics

Some companies, especially those financed by angel or VC investors, have good, formal stock option plans with properly priced options set to reward all employees and managers in the event of a corporate sale. I found myself in such a situation upon a sale of my computer software company. And a lack of plans for others.

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Take advantage of the good times to build stakeholder loyalty.

Berkonomics

And I have seen good offers from buyers of a company blocked by investors whose vote is needed to enable any such transaction, usually because these later investors would have a less-than-stellar exit with the sale, even if the founders would make out extremely well. Simple building blocks for difficult times.

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Defend you pricing against the competition!    

Berkonomics

There are exceptions, based upon cost of sales. They are: Price Quality Service Innovation Elegance Your challenge: to find, position, and defend your niche Think about your positioning. Companies that compete on price rarely compete against others who emphasize service or quality.

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“Where there’s mystery, there’s margin.”   

Berkonomics

Here’s a phrase I created in the early 1980’s to describe what I clearly saw as the last chance to make high margins on the sale of computer hardware to businesses. Even with the usual discount of 10%, the margins on hardware were high, especially when applied to prices that exceeded $30,000 per sale.

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The Berkus Method: Valuing an Early-Stage Investment

Berkonomics

million), but certainly also allowing the investor to put much lower values into each test, resulting in valuations well below that amount.

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Three magic questions to increase your sales:   

Berkonomics

These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. It would pay you to work over this set of questions in a special session with sales, marketing and senior management in the room at once. Why buy IT?