It Should Never Take More Than 6 Months To Buy A Business

Member resources:

Frequent asked questions:

What is Searchfunder.com?

Searchfunder.com is an online community of searchers, investors, lenders, brokers and other professionals. Over 80% of those involved in searchfunds maintain a Searchfunder account to help them network, hire, and mentor others.

What are the benefits of membership?

In addition to accessing the most active online network of business buyers, Searchfunder licenses research that is simply not cost effective for individuals. Access over 15,000 industry reports and 50,000 transaction financials. You also get monthly credits for contact information for your company sourcing campaign with the option to purchase more at drastically discounted rates. Searchfunder has pre-purchased access from these data providers in order to empower individual buyers and to help searchers level the playing field versus private equity.

Do you have deals?

While we are primarily a buy-side network, we do have hundreds of brokers that regularly post deals to the community.

Can I find an internship on Searchfunder?

Absolutely! We have the industry's largest intern job board. If you are considering a search, the first step is to help another business buyer so you can hit the ground running.

What does it cost?

Searchfunder is a subscription service. We offer flexible monthly, annual and lifetime memberships.

Monthly

$79 / month

Annual

$19 / month

Lifetime

$432 / once

Those who maintain an account with us for over 4 continuous years are permanently added to the community without the need for a membership.

Do I need an MBA to join?

While a large number of our members come from dedicated programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, and other top programs, searching is no longer reserved for the elite. With the current abundance of dry powder in private equity, and an increasing number of business owners reaching retirement age, good deals rarely go unfunded.

Post a question, deal, job, etc...

Make a post...

Complete registration to post.

by a professional
in Boca Raton, FL, USA

1yr ago

It Should Never Take More Than 6 Months To Buy A Business

I've been part of the Searchfunder.com community for over one year - it's a terrific platform and I enjoy reading all the posts. I am however, completely baffled by reading comments from so many people who have been trying unsuccessfully to buy a business for a ridiculous amount of time.

Barring extenuating circumstances with delays in financing or surprises in due diligence, the timeline should never be more than 6 months to find a good business, negotiate the deal terms, complete the due diligence, and close the transaction.

In the 30 plus years I've been in M & A, our firm has dealt with over 100,000 individual buyers like the members on this platform. I have also purchased 13 of my companies plus one co-investment, so I have gone through exactly what you are trying to accomplish.

We have incredible data sets and KPIs on the business buying process. Here's some for you based on tens of thousands successful transactions:

- You need to meet with 10 sellers/month - minimum. Not phone calls or calls with brokers. Face-to-face seller meetings (virtual meetings if there is a geographical issue).
- If you are looking part-time, you must devote a minimum ofredactedhours/week to this project
- The average time to find the business you will acquire is 4 months
- You need to meet with 40 sellers over that period
- You have to average submitting 4 LOIs to get one signed and closed
- You should have no more than 4 target categories of business types you want to pursue

That's the formula.

One of the biggest mistakes we see repeatedly from people who have never bought a business is their approach. Most people spend countless hours searching endless business for sale listings, or sending out a ton of ineffective emails trying to figure out which, if any business is right for them. It's the complete ass-backward approach. FIRST - you need to determine what type of business is right for you, then, it is so easy to find and buy it. We have a video that will help you - go to redacted and watch the one: 'What's the Right Business for You to Buy and How to Find It!' This was an educational webinar we did with a bunch of members from the Searchfunder.com community.

We have a proven methodology to successfully and effectively navigate the business-buying process, and we know it works because 82% of our clients buy a good business within 6 months.

Richard Parker

12 Likes

1,409 Views

reply by a professional 1yr ago
in Boca Raton, FL, USA

Man on a mission - the sense of urgency and focus that Marcus possesses and the know-how he has acquired is the exact formula every searcher should copy. If they did that, they wouldn't be 'searchers', they'd be finders!!!

reply by a searcher 1yr ago
from Columbia University in Jacksonville, FL, USA

^redacted‌, I somewhat disagree with your thesis. I do the following for myself as well as clients (AlphaSearch): 1. Make a few investment theses around industries 2. Identify a region 3. Use data that I have scraped from LinkedIn, Google Maps, YellowPages.com to get company name, address, phone, # of employees, description 4. Enrich the emails with ZeroBounce 5. Send hundreds of emails using Instantly from multiple domains 6. Send mass direct mail campaigns with Post Pilot 7. Make countless phone calls 8. Sign tens of NDA's each day from both listed and proprietary deals. I have seen even the best Rock star in Business Development in the Lower Middle Market, where they get paid bonuses or get carry based on $ deployed in a year, take 2 years to close on something. Add to the fact that many of these deals are smaller and that some brokers work on sheer volume and will add-back everything under the sun, I think it is incredibly hard to close on something that is of high quality and good value.