When Mark Carlson put Minnesota Mailing Solutions on the block, he got two offers for around $3 million, which represented about four times his pre tax profit – a respectable price for a postage meter reseller turning over $4.5 million in revenue.
But Carlson wasn’t satisfied, and in this week’s episode you’ll hear the one simple tactic he used to get the acquirer to boost their offer by 50%.
When the time comes, do you want to sell your business externally, or internally to your employees or family members?
Once you decide, a little piece of you may always wonder how the other option would have played out. That’s why the story of Barry Wood is such an interesting case study. Wood is a door guy, who started M&I Door Systems in 1995, sold M&I in 1998, and then started another – virtually identical – door business in 2003, only to sell it in 2013.
Wood sold his first door business externally and his second internally, so his two exits allow us to see clearly the differences between these two types of sale with an as close to apples-to-apples comparison as possible. The pros and cons of selling externally rather than internally may surprise you.
Mike McCarron sold MSM Transportation to the Wheels Group for $18.6 million. After receiving the letter of intent (LOI) he signed it immediately. If McCarron had the opportunity to do it all again he’d handle this request differently. Listen now and find out why.
For most of its 17 years, Imaging Path was a successful IT services contractor that peaked at more than $16 million in sales.
Imaging Path founder and CEO Corey Tansom kept a close eye on his business until, a few years prior to its sale, Tansom went through a divorce that caused him to spend a lot of time away from the office. Tansom was distracted, costs ballooned and margins shrank. Imaging Path started losing about $500,000 a year.
The situation at Imaging Path got worse when Tansom’s bank decided to pull its financing. Tansom decided his best option was to sell his business – but who would buy a money-losing company?
Carl Silbersky sold his facial recognition software company Polar Rose to Apple in 2010 for a reported $29 million. The negotiation was relatively smooth but Steve Jobs would not budge on one deal point. Learn how one of the savviest deal-makers of our time approached his strategic acquisition.