You can never really know whether or not you’re ready to sell your independent pawn business unless you know how much your business is worth—from the buyer’s point of view.
The reason buyers typically have the upper hand is because they have more experience with the sale process. They’re in the buying business, whereas most pawn shop owners may only sell their businesses once or twice in a lifetime. Unless you’ve worked for a major pawn company and actually walked in the buyer’s shoes, it is nearly impossible to pinpoint all of the pros on cons that a buyer will take into consideration when looking at your business as a potential acquisition. Without that knowledge, you’re stuck relying on what the buyer tells you your business worth to their company, which puts you in no position to negotiate the ideal price.
Just as you would never purchase a piece of jewelry at a high price without first appraising it and determining its resale value, you should never sell your pawn business without first analyzing its unique characteristics and determining how much value it could potentially bring to your buyer.
What are your tangible and intangible assets? How valuable or unique is your geographical location? What about your physical property? Do you get a significant amount of foot traffic? Can drivers easily navigate to your parking lot? Do you have adequate parking? What about demographics? Who are your customers? What is their rate of growth?
If you’re unable to answer these types of questions and prove your answers are accurate with hard data, or simply don’t have time and resources to perform all of the analyses you need to perform in order to determine the true value of your independent pawn business, you need representation. By working with pawn shop exit strategy specialists who have as much experience with the selling and buying process as your buyers, you will not only save yourself the trouble of having to come up with hard data and perform financial and other analyses yourself, but have a crystal clear idea of what your business is worth from the buyer’s perspective.
You would never sell your home, car, or other big-ticket item without first putting an accurate value on it. Why wouldn’t you put an accurate value on your independent pawn business before you sell it?
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