Today's episode of the podcast, Robert Hirsch from Freedom Factory talks about "How do I Approach a Competitor to Buy My Business?." Listen to the podcast, watch the video http://freedomfactory.libsyn.com/how-do-i-approach-a-competitor-to-buy-my-business or read the transcript below. Hi, it's Robert from Freedom Factory. And I wish to talk with you about something pretty brand-new ones today, which is how to approach a competitor to buy your business or how to offer your organisation to a rival. And it's a question that a lot of business owners have, but it's truly hard and it depends on a great deal of factors, right? Are they larger or are they smaller sized? Rivals or what I call coopetition or friendly rivals. Do you have an existing relationship or when you're both speaking at the trade convention, do you stroll by each other with a search your face? These are the little complicated pieces to be able to do it since what every business owner fears, I know what I fear. If I went to among my rivals and said, Hey, are you interested in purchasing from me? They're going to use that in the market to sell against me. Well, I mean, who understands how long they're going to be in business. They approached to me to offer. That's the last thing that I want out there. So here at Freedom Factory, one of the big things is to utilize an intermediary. When you're selling your service, a broker is terrific, to be able to approach a competitor and still keep you anonymous. Using an expert is great if it's a competitors type of an internal type piece. But there are particular things that you actually want to prevent when approaching rival. One thing that can make it truly digestible is put yourself in that competitor's shoes and consider why they would wish to buy your organisation since if you can make the best case to them on why it makes sense to buy your company, naturally they're going to fall in and it's going to make a lot of sense. Hi, I'm Robert Hirsch and I've been an entrepreneur for more than 25 years. I'm the CEO of Freedom Factory, and all we do is assist our fellow entrepreneurs sell their business. The one key takeaway that I would think of when you're taking a look at how to approach a competitor is never ever approach a rival and use that as your only sales option because if you do, one of two things is going to occur. One, a few of the important things that we talked about and a few of your fears come true or a 2nd, it's a pretty uncompetitive environment and you do not sell your company for maximum value. You have actually worked, in some cases, two, 5, 10, twenty years on your company, you want to make the most of the worth from it. So when I take a look at a competitive sale, even if I believe that's going to pay and probable, I constantly do it as a part of a bigger sales process. Implying I'm always looking to increase the deal tension. So I still market it in 27 various locations. I still go out to personal equity companies and venture capital companies and entrepreneurial companies, even if I think a competitor is likely to buy it. And the reason that we do that is we wish to optimize the deal stress. So what I indicate by maximize offer tension is you want several people that are interested in your organisation, but not simply numerous people that are interested. So when you're thinking of offering it to a rival, and possibly that's a method to take an easier sales procedure, I would really warn you to do so, because if so, there's truly 2 options and neither of them benefit you or the entrepreneur.