smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

The advice to contact your accountant is only partially helpful. We are Business Brokers who advise and sell SME businesses. Most Business Brokers (including ourselves) or Business Transfer Agents will not charge any fee for an initial appraisal and valuation. Most accountants do not sell businesses so will not generally be able to provide any realistic indication of the business' market value or saleability, which is why we receive referrals from accountants, Business Link etc. If you do engage a broker beware of their terms and conditions. Some will charge a huge up-front fee. Others will want a 12 month or more agreement, others will want to charge an exit fee (even for an unsold business) if you terminate their agreement. Our fees and terms are very fair. We are at www.andersonmoore.co.uk and you can find other brokers by looking on yell.com under Business Transfer Agents.

Accountants can have people who specialise and know how to advise on selling a business - it varies from firm to firm. Whoever you ask to help you, you will need to try and negotiate that any payment is on a contingency basis, ie no deal done, no fee is paid. To be honest for the amount of money that you are looking for (£50k) it will be hard to get sensible advice as the amount you could afford to pay any adviser is rather small. In any case, you are likely to know from your own industry knowledge who are the likely purchasers, and so it's worth considering whether you could do the deal yourself to maximise the amount you can get from it.

If your accountant is able to advise you on the sale of your business he/she may make a charge and will almost certainly not want to work on a no sale/no fee basis. There are agents/brokers who work this way - in fact most do. You should seek advice from at least 3 brokers and go with the one who seems most able to understand your business. £50k is not a lot of money but anyone operating in this market will have a fee structure to suit. If you prefer to go your own way you could go to www.daltonsbusiness.com or www.businessesforsale.com - bear in mind though that these are purely advertising outlets and you will not get individual advice nor any significant pro-active marketing.