BBP Blog

Serious About Success (Part 2 of 2)

YOUR OWN PERSONAL TIME BANK

Think of the 24 hours all of us have each day as a TIME “BANK”. And, if you “borrow” any hours from PRIME TIME for activities better suited for FLEX TIME, you need to “pay back your TIME BANK”.

In other words, if you play golf for 8 hours on Tuesday, you should “self manage” and promise yourself that you will devote 8 FLEX TIME hours to marketing, to pay back the 8 PRIME TIME hours you borrowed. Better yet, play golf after 5pm. You absolutely can get in 9 holes (or more), easily, before dark, after 5pm, in the summer time (playing 9 holes, each of 2 weekdays after 5 pm, still gives you 18 holes, right?). So, (if you owed yourself 8 Prime Time hours you “borrowed”), you could devote 1 ½ hours per night, for a week, to phoning buyers you couldn’t reach during the day (a brilliant idea, anyway, as many buyers can’t be easily reached during the day, anyway). Or, you could devote 2 Saturdays, of 4 hours each, to “blitz”...

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Posted on 6/30/2011 12:00 AM By Bill Martin
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

Serious About Success (Part 1 of 2)

The following are opinions. But, they are based on almost 30 years experience in listing and selling businesses, and, during that time, training literally hundreds of agents in offices nationwide, then being able to observe the practices of the successful, and the not so successful, agents. These are a few of the reliable “truths” I’ve observed, along with my theory about “Prime Time” and “Flex Time”.

PRIME TIME

This is Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. These are the days and hours most buyers, sellers, bankers, lawyers, accountants and landlords are easiest to make appointments with. This represents 40 hours per week, 172 hours per month (with 5 days times 4.3 weeks average per month), and about 2,054 hours per year, of PRIME TIME, available to each of us.

FLEX TIME

Weekends anytime, and weekdays after 5pm and before 9am. Some of these hours, also, are times when you can

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Posted on 6/29/2011 11:49 AM By Bill Martin
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

Business Brokers Must Adapt to Survive the Nation’s Long-Term Small Business Credit Crisis

“For mankind and animals alike, it is not the strongest who survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one who best adapts to change." – Charles Darwin

I was honored to be one of the 200 or so people invited by the International Franchise Association (IFA) to attend their April 7, 2011 Small Business Finance Summit. This event was co-produced by Consumer Bankers Association, the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, and the National Restaurant association. The purpose of this Summit – and its follow-up working group – was to start collaboration between government, bank lenders, and small business advocacy groups, searching for new and better ways to improve credit access and thereby spur business growth nationwide.

By no means was this event limited to focusing on the multi-billion dollar franchising industry, where I have served as an in house attorney (e.g., McDonald’s Corporation, UPS) for 22 years. During this event, we examined the nation’s ongoing small business credit crisis under a microscope...

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Posted on 6/27/2011 2:57 PM By Richard L. Kolman
In: [Financing] | No Comments »

Broker Guidelines (Part 2 of 2)

The following broker guidelines come from the second half of a memo Bill Martin recently emailed to the 22 agents that work at American Business Masters, Inc (ABMI), a Kansas City business brokerage firm. Due to the length of the memo, we posted the first five yesterday and the remaining five below.

Each Main Street agent should work to make the following a reality:

(1) through (5) listed in yesterday's posting.

(6) Listing pricings/evaluations are generated by (a) your working the telemarketing seller leads ABMI provides ample quantities of (generated by ABMI’s on staff telemarketing opeators), and your contacting 100% of those, setting appointments to do pricings/evaluations, or to “get acquainted”, and/or (b) by your contacting the ample quantities of “reassigned” seller leads ABMI provides you (aged leads that are still suspects), and your contacting 100% of those, and/or (c) your developing your own seller leads through personal production, and/or (d) you canvassing business owners, either in person, or by phone, and/or (e) you sending direct mail or emails to business owners.

(7) Each Main Street agent should be spending at least

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Posted on 6/23/2011 11:10 AM By Bill Martin
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

Broker Guidelines (Part 1 of 2)

The following broker guidelines come from a memo Bill Martin recently emailed to the 22 agents that work at American Business Masters, Inc (ABMI), a Kansas City business brokerage firm. Due to the length of the memo, we are posting the first five guidelines today and the remaining five tomorrow.

We’re doing great.

Over the last 12 months, during what was supposed to be a “recovering” economy, we have made sure ABMI is practicing, with even more energy, the “basics” we’ve learned over the last 30 years of listing and selling small businesses.

ABMI has become the “New ABMI”, with dramatically increased buyer lead flow, improved listing quality, a doubled agent sales force (now totaling 22 business brokers/agents, working the 10 counties of metro Kansas City), recruiting and training of an exceptional administrative staff, the development of state of the art internet marketing and improved advertising, the writing of a new agency web site (www.abmi.net), totaling hundreds of pages of new content that’s unique to our site, the development of an in house commercial real estate agency with an ultra talented managing real estate broker, the recruiting/development of talented sales management, and lots of agent training and re-training, resulting in sales and commission income that doubled in 2010 over 2009, and, in 2011, commission income that is headed for record setting by doubling again over 2010.

Everyone at ABMI will benefit from these improvements. At least, everyone that does their part to be involved in taking advantage of the opportunities created by ABMI’s owners. Here are the guidelines that each Main Street agent should use as your personal goals, so you can generate your share of these exciting opportunities.

Each Main Street agent should work to make the following a reality:

(1) You should have no less than 10 personal listings/seller engagements at all times. If you are a new agent, or one that’s been on staff less than 6 months, you should...

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Posted on 6/22/2011 10:22 AM By Bill Martin
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

5 Positive Signs for Restaurants

Nation's Restaurant News recently posted an article that outlines five reasons why things are looking up for restaurant operators this year. The reasons come from a research note by Brad Ludington, a restaurant securities analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Read the article.

Posted on 6/20/2011 7:15 AM By Ron
In: [State of Industry] | No Comments »

Franchised Sandwich Shops

It seems like every time we visit our son Ron in Wilmington, NC, there is a new franchised sandwich shop that has opened in the area. In gathering data for our 2012 Business Reference Guide (it is hard to believe that this will be the 22nd edition), we began playing with some of the figures. Following is an update on some of the shops. The listing of the various franchises has the rule of thumb for pricing them along with the average annual sales figures that we have so far. The rest of the data is just our rough calculations.

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Posted on 6/16/2011 6:30 AM By Tom West
In: [Franchises], [Pricing & Valuation] | No Comments »

Visual for Selling a Business

Contactme.com recently posted a visual summary on their blog covering some basics of selling a business. We thought it was an interesting way of presenting the information. It included the costs, benefits and steps of selling a business.

Of course, we can't help but comment on something you've heard us say over and over. While sellers are fond of the idea of receiving all the cash up front in the sale of their business (a possibility listed in the first benefit of the contactme.com visual), it is the job of business brokers to remind sellers of the benefits of offering seller financing. These benefits include increased sales price, additional funds received over time in interest, and even an increased chance of selling the business in today's climate of scarce business financing.

Posted on 6/14/2011 11:47 AM By Ron
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

Business Broker vs. M&A Intermediary

The following is taken from the preface of Selling Middle Market Businesses: Guide Book for intermediaries by Russell Robb.

There is a movement afoot whereby business brokers are moving up-market from selling Main Street businesses to selling companies in the lower-end of the middle market, previously the exclusive domain of the M&A intermediary. There is no precise definition of lower-end of the middle market as some people would clarify companies with sales between $5 to $100 million, while others would classify this category as companies with sales between $3 to $50 million.

There is a natural tendency for business brokers selling Main Street companies to...

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Posted on 6/13/2011 10:57 AM By Russell Robb
In: [General Business Brokerage] | No Comments »

Len Krick: Some Good News

Below you will find Len Krick's latest update to me regarding his issue with the State of Nevada's Securities Division. If you are not yet familiar with what is going on, you will want to read theprevious postings regarding Len Krick's case. Certainly the information from Len concerning this issue is good news. The fact that the lawsuit goes on as does the federal inquiry, doesn’t lessen the attorney fees or the time it must take for Len to deal with this issue. If you would like to contribute to Len’s legal fees, as many already have, just email me and I will follow up with instructions on what to do.

The fact that Nevada has seen fit to issue a “no action” letter may inspire other states to follow suit.

COMMENT FROM TOM WEST:

And the saga continues...

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Posted on 6/2/2011 6:00 AM By Len Krick
In: [Legal & Tax Issues] | No Comments »

Hot Business List -- May 2011

COMMENTS FROM TOM WEST:

This is the third instance where I have seen that E-Commerce is the top business of interest on the current “hot” business list courtesy of data from Businesses For Sale (www.businessesforsale.com). The other two instances occurred April 2011 and November 2010. Join a discussion on LinkedIn about e-commerce businesses staying on the top of the lists of searched businesses.

Food type businesses take up 8 spots on the top 10. Nothing has changed. It’s reassuring to an old industry veteran that some things do stay the same. Food and Drink related businesses are still the main staple of businesses that buyers are looking for.

The below lists are a monthly ranking of business types based on the number of “hits” on the BusinessesForSale.com site. This ranking is not based on the actual sale of businesses.

Top Ten Main Street Businesses for May 2011:

1. E-Commerce Businesses
2. Miscellaneous Restaurants

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Posted on 6/1/2011 11:12 AM By businessesforsale.com
In: [Hot Business Lists] | No Comments »