July 12, 2021 //
Steps to Selling your Business Part 20.
Getting the attention of prospective buyers isn’t easy. Once we have the ear of decision-makers, we have a small window of time to pique their interest.
We’re careful not to waste those moments; we have our “A” Game ready to deploy while that window is open.
The way Stillwater designs and formats a Sale Book is one part of our “A” Game. A decade ago, a typical Sale Book was an unwieldy beast, more like a phone book than a pitch. There were 300 words of text on every page, with tiny, inscrutable charts and graphs peppered liberally throughout the many pages. No one could question the thoroughness of the document, but it didn’t scream, “I need this company.”
At Stillwater, we asked ourselves: what do we do with material like this when it crosses our desks? We didn’t read it, and we knew nobody else did, either. As such, we redesigned our approach to the Sale Book to ensure that potential buyers would see the value in reading them.
We take great care in crafting our Sale Books. We minimize the words on a page, and what is there is included on purpose. We use visual representation and infographics to encode as much information as possible for easy intake and memorability.
Our slide decks use the same carefully calibrated design approach as the Sale Book – highly comprehensible, information-dense visuals, and high-impact messaging to get our point across.
We capitalize on a buyer’s attention and offer a straightforward summary of each information point at a glance.
Our “A” Game is compelling information about our client’s business that is highly understandable and built to grab attention quickly. It is concise communication from Advisors who know their client’s story intimately and can extract and deliver the right parts, at the right time, for maximum effect.
When you are selling your business you have to be ready. When you have gained that fleeting moment of a buyer’s attention, you have to capitalize on the opportunity to make that buyer stop for a moment and say, “Wait… tell me more.”
And then, tell them more.
If you are planning to divest your business or have questions for one of our Advisors, please contact our team today.
Written by: Douglas Nix