Selling a business is a complex process that requires you to go through several stages of negotiating until you seal the deal. All of the phases require written communication. You’ll be writing all kinds of documents, emails, and contracts. These written documents are your main tool for closing that deal successfully. That’s why you need to know how to improve and polish your writing, to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Below, you’ll find a list of 10 proven tips that can help you improve your written communication and ensure you sell your business successfully. Keep reading to find out how to write better to achieve your goals.
Let’s take a look at each of the tips.
1. Write a Killer Ad
The first thing you need to do is get the word out and have people learn that you’re actually selling your business. That means you need to write an ad.
Here are the key elements you need to include in your ad for listing your business up for sale:
Attention-grabbing title
Make sure the title is working for you, not against you. Make it stand out and hit the bull’s eye with your potential buyers. Here’s an example:
Ice-Cream Shop For Sale - In Business for 15 Years!
vs.
Ice-Cream Shop For Sale
The first title is much more promising and shares relevant information that the company has been a success for years. The other one is just a plain statement.
Key business information
Share the story of your business and write about its history, journey, and current situation. Make it brief but highly informative.
Reason for selling
Nobody wants to buy a business that’s going down. Therefore, write a solid reason for selling your business, whether it’s your retirement, leaving the country, or something else.
This ad (see below) for a manufacturing business listed for sale is a good example of what a great ad looks like:
Your ad is the first thing a potential buyer will learn about your business, so make sure that it makes a great first impression.
2. Request Specific Inquiry Responses
You want to negotiate with the people who are worth your time and energy. This is why you need to be careful about defining the way you ask them to inquire about your business.
If you simply write "Contact the seller for further information", you’ll probably end up with hundreds of messages from God knows who, and waste your time trying to read them all.
Instead, you need to make the process of inquiry a bit more complex and demanding. Smart sellers require potential buyers to fill out a form with contact information and a mandatory message to the seller. Therefore, ask all potential buyers to share some of the following information with you.
- basic personal information
- contact information
- why they’re interested in buying your business
- what’s their business background and experience
- what is the timeframe they would be able to buy your business in
- are they financially capable of buying your business
This way, you’re making it easier for yourself to find the right match and focus your time on negotiating with the right potential buyers.
Make sure you clearly share these inquiry rules and thus collect the information about the buyers that you need.
3. Send Professional Emails
Once potential buyers start reaching out and asking additional questions about your business, you’ll have to develop further communication.
Email is among the most popular means of business communication since it is convenient, fast, allows attachments, and keeps a record of your entire communication.
Here are our top tips for writing incredibly effective and convincing emails:
- Respectful: Address the buyer by their name. Don’t send out a generic email that has zero personalization. Instead, make sure the potential buyers feel respected and appreciated.
- Simple formatting: Make all your emails easy to scan for certain information. This will save your potential buyers a lot of time and energy.
- CTA: Include a CTA (Call to Action) at the end of the email. Let your buyers know what you expect them to do next. This will encourage further communication and up your chances of closing the deal.
And, in case you don’t have that much experience in writing business proposals and business emails, you could find an academic writing service or a freelance writer and ask for their help. They could assist you in creating a template you will use for your further business communication.
Also, your emails will tell a lot about you, so make sure they’re perfectly polished.
4. Prepare a Business Selling Memorandum
A business selling memorandum is a document that helps you share more details about the business you're trying to sell. It's designed for prospective buyers only since it shares insight that you don't want just anyone.
Here’s what you have to include in it:
- a finalized sale proposition
- business summary
- terms & conditions
- business highlights
- the potential of further developing the business
The business sale memorandum needs to aim at answering as many questions a potential buyer could have and help remove any doubts or uncertainties.
It’s one of the most important documents in the business selling process and requires your full attention.
5. Write the Official Offer
Your business selling offer is the final element you’ll have to cover and the key to sealing the deal successfully. The official offer needs to have all the information gathered together and presented to the potential buyer.
Related: Letter of Intent Template
That includes answering the following questions:
- What does your business do?
- Where is it located?
- Where does it stand on the market?
- What are your biggest strengths?
- Who are your biggest competitors?
- Why are you selling it?
- What is the final price?
Your final offer needs to summarize everything you've covered in the negotiating process so far and give a final, determining offer to the potential buyers.
6. Set Clear Goals
Another important thing you need to cover when writing in the process of selling a business is your goal. There needs to be a clear goal for every message, email, or document that you write and send out.
If you don’t set goals prior to starting writing, you might end up sharing the wrong kind of information or having the potential buyer lose interest.
You could set goals such as:
- share details about the business
- get the buyer to sign the NDA
- defining the legal terms of the business sale agreement
- informing the buyer about receiving other offers you’ll consider
Whether it’s a simple email or a legally binding document, you need to know exactly what you want to accomplish with it. This way, you’re ensuring a steady communication flow with no bumps on the road.
7. Always Aim For Conciseness
When it comes to business writing, conciseness is key. Neither you nor your potential buyers should waste time on information that isn’t important for closing the deal.
And, if there’s a brief and concise way to say something, don’t make it any longer than necessary.
To put it simply, you should:
- deliver valuable information in every sentence
- be brief and concise
- be to the point
- avoid hesitation and sugar coding
Make sure you share all the necessary information in a summarized yet clear manner.
8. Lean on Simplicity
Simplicity in business writing implies making your goals, intentions, and point easy to understand and process. You need to ensure there's no confusion or misinterpretation of your words.
This is why simplicity matters.
To achieve simplicity in your business writing, apply these simple rules:
- use simple sentence structures
- write short sentences and short paragraphs
- avoid overly technical vocabulary (except for legal terms in legal documents)
- make sure even a layman can understand what you’re saying
That’s exactly what this dry-cleaning business (see below) did in their ad:
If you’re writing in an overly scholarly manner, the person reading the document may not quite understand what you’re saying. This could lead to further problems or even make the person give up on the process.
That's why you should always try and simplify things to ensure there's no ambiguity or misunderstandings.
9. No Fluff & Jargon
Business writing is a serious matter that needs to be considered as such, from the first email to signing the last document.
This is why you should know that there’s no room for:
- fluff words
- jargon & slang
- funny remarks
You need to write and act like a professional, to ensure our buyer trusts you and doesn’t change their mind about buying your business.
10. Proofread Everything
As a serious professional trying to sell a business, it’s important that your potential buyers trust you and see you as a trustworthy businessman.
And, if your written communication with them is sloppy and not polished enough, they’ll think the opposite of you.
Therefore, you need to make sure everything you write is polished and mistakes free. Proofread everything to remove:
- typos
- grammar mistakes
- spelling errors
- formatting issues
In case you need help with proofreading, check out the online writing service like Ratedbystudents.com that could give you a hand.
Make sure everything is perfectly written and edited before you decide to share it with anyone else. The key to good business communication is in the attention to detail and perfectionism, so make sure you have both of those.
Final Thoughts
When you’re selling a business, you have to pay attention to even the smallest details in your written communication.
Hopefully, the tips we’ve shared above will help you create a writing strategy that will ensure you succeed in selling your business to the right person. Use them to become a better negotiator, business communicator, and seller.
About the author: Jessica Fender is a copywriter and blogger at Alltopreviews.com with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services.
