SELLING YOUR PRACTICE – using Jobtel as your agent

Jobtel have carried out the sales of many sole practitioners (see “successes” for some of these). These have covered almost every size from about £10K to around £450K.

We specialise in this work.

We can and have covered almost the entire Country from The South-West, London, South East, Anglia, East & West Midlands, Yorkshire and the North East and North West.

So wherever you are in England and Whatever size as Sole Practitioner from £10K to £1M we can assist you..

HOW DO WE WORK?

1) First we assess the position and look at the key features of your practice, generally we ask you to complete a questionnaire and provide us with the last three years accounts. We insist on meeting with you and will not undertake work “sight unseen” as some brokers do.

2) In this way we get a picture of your practice and will be prepared to give an outline valuation to use both as a budget figure to use and a target figure for us to achieve for you.. This is based on our very extensive experience in actually doing the deals.

3) We market extensively through “Accountancy Age” and “Accountancy” and if necessary other similar magazines and newspapers – then we also prepare a mailshot. This is done through checking our own massive internal database against other external databases to make sure we have all known contacts who call themselves accountants. We use a carefully drafted “use or throw” letter designed to appeal to the widest audience and responses of over 5% are not uncommon.

4) We register interested parties in order to gain some idea of their reasons for buying, size in fees and staffing, and ensure that they sign a letter of confidentiality to keep secure information insofar as is possible

5) We then send these potential buyers a pack which you have provided us the basic information and ask them if they wish to continue? If they do they have to confirm their interest.

6) We then prepare a list of interested parties and discuss these with the seller who being local might have views on specific practices. We select those whom we wish to meet and invite them to an initial meeting.

7) This initial meeting is usually very brief and lasts only 50 minutes or so – its designed to see if there is interest on either side. At the end, if the buyer is interested he is asked to offer an outline bid.

8) These outline bids are compared and the leading bids are potentially massaged and leading candidates are asked to carry out due diligence.

9) After Due Diligence the buyer is asked to put in his “best & final” offer based on the practice that he has now seen in detail sent to Jobtel. Final negotiations take place.

10) Heads of terms are prepared by Jobtel and agreed by both parties who then sign them. Jobtel have several special clauses which are interested to protect the seller.

11) Jobtel assist on converting these Heads of Terms into a legal document, we have several blanks used in the past but we ALWAYS strongly recommend that the seller sees his lawyer with it.

12) Jobtel also assist at the handover providing sample letter to be used in sending to clients to advise them of the change – this must be done thoughtfully

13) You may think that this is the end? But if often is not – many deals use a Claw back such that if the fees in the first year do not come over to the buyer the capital sum is reduced pro rata. So at the end of that term there is often considerable discussion about this Claw back Calculation. Jobtel is on hand to assist the seller interpreting the contract in order to protect his position.

SO THAT’S WHAT WE DO. It’s a process with proven success.

BUT OUR FEES AND COSTS ARE ENTIRELY SUCCESS RELATED,

So if we don’t succeed you don’t pay anything. That’s why we take a good look at the situation before taking on any job, always insisting on meeting the seller before proceeding.

We cannot prove that we cover our fees by improved marketing and a resulting higher price but our clients believe that we get the best deals – see the references for yourself!

ALSO we act through out as the agent for the seller YOU, some brokers claim to be able to work for both sides in our view that’s impossible a slight bias either way and that “objective agent beholden to neither buyer nor seller” collapses – we prefer to be openly biased towards the seller.

Tell me what you would prefer? OK so you are having problems, retirement pending (some of our client look for an early retirement), wanting to sell up and do something different (many of our clients in fact emigrate!) winding down (many clients sell their practice and still carry on working but for their largest client as FD for example) or simply ill and no longer able to carry on..? If this is you then why not call us for clear and confidential advice!