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Buy, Grow, Sell.

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The Buying Process

Our promise is to deliver the highest quality deals of any business for sale platform. What does this mean? Complete information, reasonable valuations, and a painless buying experience. We are also not a business brokerage, which allows us to provide buyers with unbiased feedback and support throughout the purchase process.

Below is an overview of the buying process - from registration to submission of an offer.

Free access to deals
Narrow your search with specific deal criteria
Submit offers directly on the platform
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Register for free

It is free to access and receive deals as a DealBuilder buyer.

Build your profile

Build credibility with sellers by writing a bio that showcases your expertise. You can also define specific deal criteria (such as geography or industry) to filter out deals that don’t interest you (don’t worry we won’t hold it against you).

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Submit our one-click NDA

Pen & paper NDAs are so pre-2020. With DealBuilder, all NDAs are submitted digitally and automatically pre-populate with your information, allowing for a seamless NDA process.

Review the buyer presentation

After submitting your NDA you will receive access to the buyer presentation. The digital buyer presentation will contain the company financial statements and a comprehensive overview of the business operations. It will also include financial analysis tools such as a Return on Invested Calculator (ROIC) and more. This will give you all the information you need to make an informed decision of whether to move forward or not.

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Connect directly with sellers

Deal seems like a good fit? The next step is to either schedule a meeting with the owner to answer any final questions or submit an offer directly through the platform. Your Deal Manager will be able to assist you during this process.

Submit an offer directly on the platform

Ready to move forward? DealBuilder makes it easy to negotiate and submit offers right on the platform. Leverage templates and examples to draft a deal that makes the most sense for you.

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Close the deal!

Congratulations, you have an accepted offer. Your Deal Manager will help coordinate due diligence amongst the seller, you, and any lawyers or accountants involved in the deal. Our goal is to make due diligence seamless and to limit any surprises.

Grow Before You Sell

The best exit-plan is being proactive. By joining our free and private exit-planning Community, you can start implementing strategies that will make your business both more valuable and easier to sell.

Want to jump right in? Take a look for yourself here.

Free annual valuation for all members
Access exclusive resources and videos
Get strategies and tips from industry experts
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Start with a free valuation

Every Community member is eligible for a free annual valuation of their business. Why free? Because we believe that owners can’t realistically determine whether they are ready to sell unless they know how much their business is worth.

Analyze industry benchmark data

Every DealBuilder valuation includes benchmarking data from businesses operating in your industry. For example, did you know that the average restaurant pays 9% of their revenues towards rent? Well, we didn’t either - until we checked the report for this example. The point is that this type of analysis is especially useful if you want to identify ‘low-hanging fruit’ to decrease expenses in your business and improve profitability.

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Ask an anonymous question to the group

Having a question you have been dying to get advice on but don’t feel comfortable sharing it with other business owners you know? Feel free to send the question to our team and we will anonymously post it to our Community for feedback and advice. You can think of the group as the world’s least expensive business coach.

Watch our library of industry expert interviews

Our team is regularly interviewing industry experts from various industries (legal, accounting, bookkeeping, and more) to help answer common questions and share unique insights.

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Read our exit-plan guidebook

By joining our Community you also get free access to our Urgent Exit-Plan Guidebook. This is an in-depth guidebook covering all the steps you need to prepare your business to sell within 12 months.

Build your exit-plan

At this point you should have a pretty strong understanding of what it takes to sell your business. This is also the ideal time to write your exit-plan! Utilizing the resources referenced above this plan will outline what objectives you want your company to achieve prior to selling it (with DealBuilder of course).

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The Selling Process

We match you with qualified Business Brokers to help you sell your business.

How does this work? Well, we understand that selecting the right professional to sell your business is difficult. You don't know who you can trust, their track record, or fees. So we made it easy.

Starting with a free valuation, our team will match you with a qualified Business Broker to help you through every step of the process - all the way to closing! This work includes your business valuation, buyer presentation, and support during due diligence.

Below is a breakdown of all those steps and the work required along the way.

Market to millions of potential buyers
Access a dedicated Business Broker
Block spam and unqualified buyers
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On-boarding call

Speak to our team about the DealBuilder process and tell us a bit about your business. If you find us to be reasonable human beings, our next step is a complimentary business valuation.

Financial upload

After our call we will send you a link with a secure upload portal. We are looking for your previous 3-5 years financial statements from your accountant. Don’t worry, you will also receive a copy of our confidentiality covenant which is our statement in writing that everything you share with us remains confidential.

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Valuation calculation

Using our proprietary software, we will calculate an accurate market-based valuation of your business. Developed using the International Business Brokerage Association’s methodology, our valuation software is ideal for owner-operated businesses.

Sign agreement

If you still find us reasonable enough our next step is to sign our Engagement Agreement. Our agreements are month-to-month and our platform fee is only payable if your business sells.

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Complete on-boarding questionnaire

With the formalities out of the way, we now get started on building the presentation that will be accessible to approved buyers. The point of the buyer presentation is to paint a complete picture of your business to a buyer. Seems like a lot of work? Well, our experience has shown that not only does it dramatically increase the chance of successful sale - it also saves your future self a lot of time by not answering repetitive questions.

You can find an example buyer presentation here.

Finalize buyer presentation

We think we do a pretty good job of creating buyer presentations but we realize we aren’t perfect. The result is usually a back-and-forth process of getting your feedback to ensure we aren’t missing any key information from the buyer presentation. Once we get the greenlight from you - we’re ready to send the business out to buyers.

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Go to market

DealBuilder utilizes our internal buyer list + the largest business-for-sale sites in the world (BizBuySell and BusinessesForSale.com) to market the sale of your business. The result is that most clients receive 25 to 100+ buyer inquiries during the duration of the sale.

Meet with buyers

"100 inquiries? I don’t have enough time to meet with that many people." Don’t worry, you won’t have to. Most buyers will respect your time and/or conclude after reading the buyer presentation your business isn’t the best fit for them. More often you will have a few buyer-seller meetings (and as long as you don’t scare them) will result in them submitting an offer.

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Negotiate deal

Once you receive an offer, you’ll either think it is perfect and accept it, or in the more likely scenario, you will want to counter-offer. This is when you can bounce ideas off your Deal Manager who will also explain what is typically included in a deal and what is more egregious. They can also help decipher confusing finance terminology - like what’s the difference between an Earn-out and a Vendor Takeback Note.

The fun part: Closing!

After you’ve successfully negotiated and accepted an offer, you enter what is referred to as ‘Due Diligence’. This is typically 4-8 weeks of answering questions from the buyer and fulfilling documentation requests with the help of your Deal Manager. This step is a lot of work but the prize at the end makes it all worthwhile - money in your bank account!

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Are you a Business Broker?

DealBuilder is the most cost-effective back-office solution for your business brokerage. From client on-boarding, writing buyer presentations, financial data entry, to marketing your listing to buyers - DealBuilder has you covered.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the on-boarding process take?

Sellers: it depends on how motivated you are to sell! We aren’t going to lie, we require some work from you before we can put your business in-front of buyers. If you’re motivated and organized, we can have your business on the market in 1-2 weeks.

Buyers: on-boarding takes as little as 30 seconds!

Who helps me with the sale of my business?

When you on-board with DealBuilder you are matched with one of our trusted Business Broker partners to assist you throughout the process. These are qualified Business Brokers that have partnered with DealBuilder's valuation & writing teams, which help them calculate your valuation and write your buyer presentation.

Yes, you get to review the profiles of our recommended Business Brokers before moving forward.

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