Business has been good for your private practice for the past few years, but now you feel it’s time to sell it and move on to other profitable ventures. The only hurdle is that finding a buyer is not as easy as it seems. No matter how lucrative your practice is, you need to attract serious potential buyers to have any chance of selling it for top dollar. Fortunately, we have great ideas to make it work. Please read on to find out more.

Whether you’re ready to retire, make a career change, or downsize your responsibilities from owner to employee, now may be the time to ready your practice for market. Irrespective of the reason for selling your business, the goal is that you sell it for the highest profit. When selling a home, you repair damages and boost its curb appeal to attract the best buyers and receive the highest offers. Below are the steps you should take to make your business show-ready for a sale.

If you are in the process of selling or acquiring a small company, you have probably come across the term “Seller's Discretionary Earnings” or SDE. In essence, SDE is the foundation of business valuation for small businesses. It is a crucial concept that enables savvy buyers to gain a deeper understanding of a business’s story.  

Selling your accounting practice is something most business owners do only once. Due to the fact that most accounting practice owners have never embarked on such an experience, knowing what to expect can cause fear and skepticism in moving forward with a transaction. Fear and skepticism, in turn, can hinder the selling process and make it much more difficult to agree on terms.

With that in mind, if you are about to sell your accounting firm, there are many myths you may hear or read about that you should ignore. These misconceptions can slow down the process and even harm your practice’s value on the market. Below, we’ve debunked some of the most common accounting practice misconceptions associated with firm sales and why sellers should ignore them.

A quick look at the statistics shows just how many accounting practices are going to be for sale in the next few years. In the United States, 10,000 people will be turning 65 every day for approximately the next 20 years. Additionally, approximately 60% of all CPA firm owners are over the age of 50 and therefore are starting to think about retirement and perhaps selling their firms. This means the competition for CPA firms is going to be aggressive in the coming years. Anyone thinking about selling an accounting practice must avoid certain pitfalls to give them the edge and sell their practice faster.

As experts in private practice sales, we’re intimately familiar with the many accounting practice sale mistakes sellers tend to make. Keep reading to learn the private practice sale mistakes you must avoid for a satisfactory transaction.

Valuing a physical therapy practice is part art, part science, and part math. Generally, the math and science, which we discuss below, is more easily calculated. It is the art – knowing how to sell a business and to whom – where true value is realized. For purposes of this article, we will discuss how to value a physical therapy practice where a controlling interest and/or 100% of assets are sold.

In speaking to countless business owners, we know that making the decision to sell your business is difficult. In large part, fear of the unknown can create analysis paralysis and, ultimately, lead to inaction. Yes, there is much that goes into selling a physical therapy practice, but with proper planning, and the right team, most of the heavy lifting will be done for you. With that in mind, we’ll explain two key steps when selling a physical therapy practice: how to value a physical therapy practice and how to identify qualified buyers.

For years lawyers could not sell their law practices because it was considered unethical. The prevailing theory behind deeming the sale of a law practice unethical was tied, in large part, to the client’s right to choose a lawyer. While well-meaning, these ethical rules left smaller and single-owner firms with an asset they could not sell—their client list. Meanwhile large firms were merging, acquiring books of business, etc. Luckily, that’s no longer the case.

Today, it is both ethical and common to sell a law practice, but you must still consider some rules when selling a law practice, and the law firm documents you prepare must take the ethical rules into account. Below are some of the most important documents to have on hand once you decide to start the process of transferring your firm to a new owner. 

One of the most common questions we get from clients or potential clients is: When is the best time to sell a business? Before I can answer that question, I need more information from you, as choosing when to sell a business primarily comes down to the individual. There are three questions I have for my clients in return:

1. How much longer do you want to work?