Cómo vender su negocio

Al enviar este formulario, acepto la Política de privacidad y doy mi consentimiento para el procesamiento de mis datos personales como se describe en ella.

Cómo vender su negocio

Al enviar este formulario, acepto la Política de privacidad y doy mi consentimiento para el procesamiento de mis datos personales como se describe en ella.

Lograr el éxito mediante el trabajo en equipo y el liderazgo

Somos su especialista líder mundial en ventas comerciales y continuaremos liderando el camino con sistemas innovadores y creativos para permitir que cada persona con mentalidad emprendedora cree y construya su futuro a través de los negocios.


  1. Programe una cita para reunirse con un profesional de ventas comerciales de First Choice.
  2. Reúna los documentos solicitados por su Broker de Negocios FCBB para su reunión.
  3. Durante su reunión, se le harán una serie de preguntas exhaustivas para ayudarnos a desarrollar una imagen más clara de su negocio y el enfoque que adoptaremos para obtener el interés del comprador en SU negocio.
  4. Determine la valoración/precio de mercado de su negocio utilizando los métodos de valoración probados de FCBB, incluidos ingresos y gastos discrecionales.
  5. Acuerdo de cotización que autoriza a FCBB a representarlo en la venta de su negocio.
  6. Aprobación previa del vendedor del listado de marketing/publicidad y posibles términos ofrecidos.
  7. Agente comercial de FCBB para gestionar las consultas de los compradores y el proceso de precalificación de los compradores, incluida la firma del NDA (acuerdo de confidencialidad) por parte del comprador.
  8. FCBB Business Broker para organizar reunión entre comprador y vendedor.
  9. Broker de Negocios FCBB para ayudar en la redacción y/o presentación de ofertas y posteriores negociaciones contractuales.
  10. FCBB Business Broker para gestionar el cronograma desde la aceptación de la oferta hasta el cierre (transferencia de propiedad al Comprador)

Lograr el éxito mediante el trabajo en equipo y el liderazgo

Somos el especialista líder mundial en ventas comerciales y continuaremos liderando el camino con sistemas innovadores y creativos para permitir que cada persona con mentalidad emprendedora cree y construya el futuro a través de los negocios.


  1. Programe una cita para reunirse con un profesional de ventas comerciales de First Choice.
  2. Reúna los documentos solicitados por su Broker de Negocios FCBB para su reunión.
  3. Durante su reunión, se le harán una serie de preguntas exhaustivas para ayudarnos a desarrollar una imagen más clara de su negocio y el enfoque que adoptaremos para obtener el interés del comprador en SU negocio.
  4. Determine la valoración/precio de mercado de su negocio utilizando los métodos de valoración probados de FCBB, incluidos ingresos y gastos discrecionales.
  5. Acuerdo de cotización que autoriza a FCBB a representarlo en la venta de su negocio.
  6. Aprobación previa del vendedor del listado de marketing/publicidad y posibles términos ofrecidos.
  7. Agente comercial de FCBB para gestionar las consultas de los compradores y el proceso de precalificación de los compradores, incluida la firma del NDA (acuerdo de confidencialidad) por parte del comprador.
  8. FCBB Business Broker para organizar reunión entre comprador y vendedor.
  9. Broker de Negocios FCBB para ayudar en la redacción y/o presentación de ofertas y posteriores negociaciones contractuales.
  10. FCBB Business Broker para gestionar el cronograma desde la aceptación de la oferta hasta el cierre (transferencia de propiedad al Comprador)

Preguntas frecuentes de los vendedores

¿Por qué debería utilizar un Business Broker para vender mi negocio?


Los propietarios de empresas que han vendido una empresa en el pasado probablemente le dirán que es un proceso largo y estresante. Vender su propia empresa puede dañar el valor de la misma, ya que le quita la atención de la operación diaria de la misma en un momento crítico en el que debería estar aumentando o al menos manteniendo su negocio actual. Cuando un corredor de negocios lo ayuda en el proceso, puede obtener más beneficios que solo por el precio obtenido. Los corredores de negocios lo ayudarán a valorar adecuadamente su empresa, llegar a los compradores que ya tienen, llegar a una mayor cantidad de nuevos compradores, permitirle continuar administrando su empresa en lugar de quitarle la atención, mantener la confidencialidad y, lo más importante, ayudarlo con el cierre de su transacción en función de su experiencia y capacitación. El error más común que cometen los vendedores potenciales es comparar la venta de su empresa con la venta de una casa. A diferencia de los agentes inmobiliarios, mantenemos su listado completamente confidencial y trabajamos con usted en cada paso del camino hasta que vendemos su empresa.



¿Por qué First Choice Business Brokers (FCBB)?


Con una experiencia inigualable desde 1994, oficinas en todo Estados Unidos y algunos de los corredores de negocios más capacitados de la industria, First Choice es la "opción clara" cuando se trata de elegir un corredor de negocios para que lo represente. Nuestros corredores de negocios son expertos en el campo de la valoración de empresas, ventas de empresas, marketing de empresas y negociaciones de compra/venta para satisfacer tanto a compradores como a vendedores.



¿Cómo se mantiene confidencial mi negocio en venta?


A diferencia de la venta de una casa o incluso de un edificio comercial, las empresas no tienen un cartel de "se vende". Las ventas de empresas deben mantenerse confidenciales; todos los compradores deben firmar un acuerdo de confidencialidad del comprador (NDA) antes de que se proporcione información detallada sobre su empresa. Esto ayuda a evitar que los empleados, proveedores, clientes y competidores descubran que está vendiendo su empresa.



¿Cómo se publicitará mi negocio?

Con First Choice Business Brokers, su empresa aparecerá en los sitios web mejor calificados específicamente para su área, así como en sitios nacionales e internacionales. Se pueden emplear otros medios publicitarios según el tipo de negocio.



¿Cómo sé cuánto vale mi negocio?

Los métodos probados de valoración y comercialización de FCBB colocarán a su empresa en la mejor posición posible para vender. Los profesionales de ventas de First Choice Business son algunos de los profesionales más capacitados de la industria.



¿Cuánto tiempo tardaré en vender mi negocio?

Una empresa con un precio adecuado suele venderse en aproximadamente 90 días, pero este plazo puede variar en gran medida en función de los ingresos de su empresa (y de lo fácil que sea demostrarlos), el tipo de empresa, las condiciones ofrecidas y la zona en la que se encuentra su empresa. Su profesional de ventas de empresas local de First Choice le proporcionará más información sobre su mercado local.



¿Los compradores visitarán mi negocio?

Después de que un comprador haya firmado un NDA (confidencialidad del comprador), revisado la información inicial y expresado un mayor interés en su negocio, su profesional de ventas comerciales de FCBB programará una reunión para que el comprador vea su negocio en un momento que sea apropiado para su tipo de negocio.



¿Cómo escriben los compradores las ofertas para comprar mi negocio?

La mayoría de los compradores que estén interesados en su negocio estarán representados por un agente comercial profesional que los ayudará a redactar una oferta que exprese su precio, términos, contingencias (si las hubiera) y solicite documentación adicional (si la hubiera). Luego, su agente comercial de FCBB y/o el agente del comprador le presentarán la oferta para su aprobación.



¿Quién atenderá todas las llamadas de consulta sobre la venta de mi negocio?

Su profesional de ventas comerciales de primera elección está capacitado para tratar con consultas entrantes (a menudo de personas que solo buscan información) y ayudar a determinar cuáles de esos compradores podrían estar listos para pasar al siguiente nivel.



¿Quién se encargará de las negociaciones sobre la venta de mi negocio?

Su profesional de ventas comerciales de First Choice está capacitado para ocuparse de las negociaciones de venta de su empresa. Su agente comercial de FCBB lo ayudará a navegar por todo el proceso; lo acompañaremos en cada paso del camino.



¿Cuánto tiempo tendré que capacitar a la persona que compre mi negocio?

Este es un punto negociable, pero hemos descubierto que la mayoría de los compradores piden 30 días. Algunos tipos de empresas solo requieren una o dos semanas de capacitación, mientras que otras empresas más complicadas pueden requerir un período de familiarización más prolongado. Si se requiere un período más largo, a menudo descubrimos que los vendedores negocian una tarifa de consultoría por períodos de capacitación más prolongados.



Después de vender mi negocio ¿puedo abrir otro en algún momento en el futuro?

Todos los compradores le pedirán que firme un compromiso de no competir dentro de un área y/o período de tiempo determinado.



¿Necesitaré financiar parte del precio de compra del negocio?

No existe ningún requisito de que usted "lleve papeles" en su negocio, sin embargo, en el mercado actual es muy común que los compradores soliciten algún tipo de Nota de Transporte del Vendedor que en realidad abre su negocio a un grupo más grande de compradores.



¿Cuándo debo notificar a mis empleados que estoy vendiendo el negocio?

Si bien es posible que tenga una relación cercana con sus empleados, se ha demostrado una y otra vez que el mejor momento para informarles a sus empleados es cuando los presenta a los nuevos propietarios. Esto puede resultarle difícil emocionalmente, pero la experiencia dicta que el silencio es la mejor práctica. La excepción a esta regla sería si un empleado "clave" forma parte de la negociación para que el comprador lo mantenga en su puesto después de que se complete la venta. En este caso, es posible que se requiera un aviso previo a esta persona y solo a ella. Su agente comercial de First Choice lo guiará a través del momento adecuado para esta parte tan importante del negocio. ¡El momento lo es todo!



¿Mi agente comercial de primera elección calificará al comprador verificando su crédito?

First Choice no verifica el crédito de los compradores; sin embargo, durante el proceso de oferta y aceptación, usted puede solicitar que el comprador le proporcione una copia de su informe crediticio. Esto no se le pide al comprador con frecuencia, ya que el propietario o arrendador probablemente obtendrá un informe crediticio para su revisión.

Entradas recientes

THE DANGER OF MARKET TIMING THE SALE OF YOUR BUSINESS

Por Kim Santos • 21 de febrero de 2025
The other day I was speaking with a successful CEO in his fifties who runs a heating and air conditioning company generating eight million dollars in revenue and over one million dollars in profit before tax. Even though he was tired and nearing burnout, he was planning to wait another five to seven years before selling his business because he “wanted to sell at the peak of the next economic cycle.” On the surface, his rationale seems to make sense. If you speak with mergers and acquisitions professionals, they’ll tell you that an economic cycle can impact valuations by up to “two turns,” which means that a business selling for five times earnings at the peak of an economic cycle may go for as low as three times earnings at a low point in the economy. The problem is, when you sell your business, you have to do something with the money you receive, which usually means buying into another asset class that is being affected by the same economy. Let’s say, for example, you had a business generating $100,000 in pre-tax profit in an industry that trades between three times earnings and five times earnings, depending on the point in the economic cycle. Furthermore, let’s imagine you sat stealthy on the sideline until the economy reached the absolute peak and sold your business for $500,000 (five times your pre-tax profit) in October 2007. You took your $500,000 and bought into a Dow Jones index fund when it was trading above 14,000. Eighteen months later – after the Dow Jones had dropped to 6,547.05– you’d be left with less than half of your money. Even though you cleverly waited till the economic peak, by March 9, 2009, you would have effectively sold your business for less than 2.5 times earnings. The inverse is also true. Let’s say you waited “too long” and sold the same business in March 2009. And because you were at the lowest possible point in the economic cycle, you only got three times earnings: $300,000. Notice that’s 20% more than if you’d sold at the peak and bought an index fund at the top of the market. Just like when you sell your house in a good real estate market, unless you’re downsizing, you usually buy into an equally frothy market. Which is why timing the sale of your business on external economic cycles is usually a waste of energy. External vs. internal economic cycles Instead, I’d recommend timing the sale of your business when internal economic factors are all pointing in the right direction: employees are happy, revenue and profits are on an upward trend, and there is still lots of market share for an acquirer to capture. When internal economic factors are pointing up, you’ll fetch a price at the top end of what the market is paying for businesses like yours right now, which means that – for good or bad – you get to use your newfound cash and buy into the same economic market you’re selling out of.

WHAT YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE SAYS ABOUT YOUR EXIT PLAN

Por Kim Santos • 20 de febrero de 2025
In our experience, your age has a big effect on your attitude towards your business and how you feel about one day getting out. Here's what we have found: Business owners between 25 and 46 years old Twenty- and thirty-something business owners grew up in an age where job security did not exist. They watched as their parents got downsized or packaged off into early retirement, and that caused a somewhat jaded attitude towards the role of a business in society. Business owners in their 20’s and 30’s generally see their companies as means to an end and most expect to sell in the next five to ten years. Similar to their employed classmates who have a new job every three to five years; business owners in this age group often expect to start a few companies in their lifetime. Business owners between 47 and 65 years old Baby Boomers came of age in a time where the social contract between company and employee was sacrosanct. An employee agreed to be loyal to the company, and in return, the company agreed to provide a decent living and a pension for a few golden years. Many of the business owners we speak with in this generation think of their company as more than a profit center. They see their business as part of a community and, by extension, themselves as a community leader. To many boomers, the idea of selling their company feels like selling out their employees and their community, which is why so many CEO’s in their fifties and sixties are torn. They know they need to sell to fund their retirement, but they agonize over where that will leave their loyal employees. Business owners who are 65+ Older business owners grew up in a time when hobbies were impractical or discouraged. You went to work while your wife tended to the kids (today, more than half of businesses are started by women, but those were different times), you ate dinner, you watched the news and you went to bed. With few hobbies and nothing other than work to define them, business owners in their late sixties, seventies and eighties feel lost without their business, which is why so many refuse to sell or experience depression after they do. Of course, there will always be exceptions to general rules of thumb but we have found that – more than your industry, nationality, marital status or educational background – your birth certificate defines your exit plan.

SEVEN POWERFUL RATIOS TO START TRACKING NOW

Por Kim Santos • 19 de febrero de 2025
Doctors in the developing world measure their progress not by the aggregate number of children who die in childbirth but by the infant mortality rate, a ratio of the number of births to deaths. Similarly, baseball’s leadoff batters measure their “on-base percentage” – the number of times they get on base as a percentage of the number of times they get the chance to try. Acquirers also like tracking ratios and the more ratios you can provide a potential buyer, the more comfortable they will get with the idea of buying your business. Better than the blunt measuring stick of an aggregate number, a ratio expresses the relationship between two numbers, which gives them their power. If you’re planning to sell your company one day, here’s a list of seven ratios to start tracking in your business now: 1. Employees per square foot By calculating the number of square feet of office space you rent and dividing it by the number of employees you have, you can judge how efficiently you have designed your space. Commercial real estate agents use a general rule of 175–250 square feet of usable office space per employee. 2. Ratio of promoters and detractors Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at Bain & Company and Satmetrix, developed the Net Promoter Score® methodology, which is based around asking customers a single question that is predictive of both repurchase and referral. Here’s how it works: survey your customers and ask them the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?” Figure out what percentage of the people surveyed give you a 9 or 10 and label that your ratio of “promoters.” Calculate your ratio of detractors by figuring out the percentage of people surveyed who gave you a 0–6 score. Then calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters. The average company in the United States has a Net Promoter Score of between 10 and 15 percent. According to Satmetrix’s 2011 study, the U.S. companies with the highest Net Promoter Score are: USAA Banking 87% Trader Joe’s 82% Wegmans 78% USAA Homeowner’s Insurance 78% Costco 77% USAA Auto Insurance 73% Apple 72% Publix 72% Amazon.com 70% Kohl’s 70% 3. Sales per square foot By measuring your annual sales per square foot, you can get a sense of how efficiently you are translating your real estate into sales. Most industry associations have a benchmark. For example, annual sales per square foot for a respectable retailer might be $300. With real estate usually ranking just behind payroll as a business’s largest expenses, the more sales you can generate per square foot of real estate, the more profitable you are likely to be. Specialty food retailer Trader Joe’s ranks among companies with the highest sales per square foot; Business Week estimates it at $1,750 – more than double that of Whole Foods. 4. Revenue per employee Payroll is the number-one expense of most businesses, which explains why maximizing your revenue per employee can translate quickly to the bottom line. In a 2010 report, Business Insider estimated that Craigslist enjoys one of the highest revenue-per-employee ratios, at $3,300,000 per employee, followed by Google at $1,190,000 per bum in a seat. Amazon was at $1,010,000, Facebook at $920,000, and eBay rounded out the top five at $530,000. More traditional people-dependent companies may struggle to surpass $100,000 per employee. 5. Customers per account manager How many customers do you ask your account managers to manage? Finding a balance can be tricky. Some bankers are forced to juggle more than 400 accounts and therefore do not know each of their customers, whereas some high-end wealth managers may have just 50 clients to stay in contact with. It’s hard to say what the right ratio is because it is so highly dependent on your industry. Slowly increase your ratio of customers per account manager until you see the first signs of deterioration (slowing sales, drop in customer satisfaction). That’s when you know you have probably pushed it a little too far. 6. Prospects per visitor What proportion of your website’s visitors “opt in” by giving you permission to e-mail them in the future? Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson are the cofounders of Conversion Rate Experts, which advises companies like Google, Apple and Sony how to convert more of their website traffic into customers. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson state that there is no such thing as a typical opt-in rate, because so much depends on the source of traffic. They recommend that rather than benchmarking yourself against a competitor, you benchmark against yourself by carrying out tests to beat your site’s current opt-in rate. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson suggest the easiest way of increasing opt-in rate is to reward visitors for submitting their e-mail addresses by offering them a gift they’d find valuable. Information products – such as online white papers, videos and calculators – make ideal gifts, because their cost per unit can be almost zero. Using this technique and a few others, Conversion Rate Experts achieved a 66 percent increase in the prospects-per-visitor rate for SOS Worldwide, a broker of office space. 7. Prospects to customers Similar to prospects per visitor, another metric to keep an eye on is the efficiency with which you convert prospects – people who have opted in or expressed an interest in what you sell – into customers. Conversion Rate Experts’ Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson recommend you monitor the rate at which you are converting qualified prospects into customers, and then carry out tests to identify factors that improve that ratio. Conversion Rate Experts more than doubled the revenues of SEOBook.com , the leading community for search marketers, by converting many of SEOBook’s free subscribers into customers. Techniques that were found to be effective included (perhaps counter intuitively) restricting the number of places available; allowing easier comparison between SEOBook and the alternatives; communicating the company’s value proposition more effectively; and simplifying its sign-up process. The trick is to establish your benchmark and tinker until you can improve it. Acquirers have a healthy appetite for data. The more data you can give them – in the ratio format they’re used to examining – the more attractive your business will be in their eyes.

THE DANGER OF MARKET TIMING THE SALE OF YOUR BUSINESS

Por Kim Santos • 21 de febrero de 2025
The other day I was speaking with a successful CEO in his fifties who runs a heating and air conditioning company generating eight million dollars in revenue and over one million dollars in profit before tax. Even though he was tired and nearing burnout, he was planning to wait another five to seven years before selling his business because he “wanted to sell at the peak of the next economic cycle.” On the surface, his rationale seems to make sense. If you speak with mergers and acquisitions professionals, they’ll tell you that an economic cycle can impact valuations by up to “two turns,” which means that a business selling for five times earnings at the peak of an economic cycle may go for as low as three times earnings at a low point in the economy. The problem is, when you sell your business, you have to do something with the money you receive, which usually means buying into another asset class that is being affected by the same economy. Let’s say, for example, you had a business generating $100,000 in pre-tax profit in an industry that trades between three times earnings and five times earnings, depending on the point in the economic cycle. Furthermore, let’s imagine you sat stealthy on the sideline until the economy reached the absolute peak and sold your business for $500,000 (five times your pre-tax profit) in October 2007. You took your $500,000 and bought into a Dow Jones index fund when it was trading above 14,000. Eighteen months later – after the Dow Jones had dropped to 6,547.05– you’d be left with less than half of your money. Even though you cleverly waited till the economic peak, by March 9, 2009, you would have effectively sold your business for less than 2.5 times earnings. The inverse is also true. Let’s say you waited “too long” and sold the same business in March 2009. And because you were at the lowest possible point in the economic cycle, you only got three times earnings: $300,000. Notice that’s 20% more than if you’d sold at the peak and bought an index fund at the top of the market. Just like when you sell your house in a good real estate market, unless you’re downsizing, you usually buy into an equally frothy market. Which is why timing the sale of your business on external economic cycles is usually a waste of energy. External vs. internal economic cycles Instead, I’d recommend timing the sale of your business when internal economic factors are all pointing in the right direction: employees are happy, revenue and profits are on an upward trend, and there is still lots of market share for an acquirer to capture. When internal economic factors are pointing up, you’ll fetch a price at the top end of what the market is paying for businesses like yours right now, which means that – for good or bad – you get to use your newfound cash and buy into the same economic market you’re selling out of.

WHAT YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE SAYS ABOUT YOUR EXIT PLAN

Por Kim Santos • 20 de febrero de 2025
In our experience, your age has a big effect on your attitude towards your business and how you feel about one day getting out. Here's what we have found: Business owners between 25 and 46 years old Twenty- and thirty-something business owners grew up in an age where job security did not exist. They watched as their parents got downsized or packaged off into early retirement, and that caused a somewhat jaded attitude towards the role of a business in society. Business owners in their 20’s and 30’s generally see their companies as means to an end and most expect to sell in the next five to ten years. Similar to their employed classmates who have a new job every three to five years; business owners in this age group often expect to start a few companies in their lifetime. Business owners between 47 and 65 years old Baby Boomers came of age in a time where the social contract between company and employee was sacrosanct. An employee agreed to be loyal to the company, and in return, the company agreed to provide a decent living and a pension for a few golden years. Many of the business owners we speak with in this generation think of their company as more than a profit center. They see their business as part of a community and, by extension, themselves as a community leader. To many boomers, the idea of selling their company feels like selling out their employees and their community, which is why so many CEO’s in their fifties and sixties are torn. They know they need to sell to fund their retirement, but they agonize over where that will leave their loyal employees. Business owners who are 65+ Older business owners grew up in a time when hobbies were impractical or discouraged. You went to work while your wife tended to the kids (today, more than half of businesses are started by women, but those were different times), you ate dinner, you watched the news and you went to bed. With few hobbies and nothing other than work to define them, business owners in their late sixties, seventies and eighties feel lost without their business, which is why so many refuse to sell or experience depression after they do. Of course, there will always be exceptions to general rules of thumb but we have found that – more than your industry, nationality, marital status or educational background – your birth certificate defines your exit plan.

SEVEN POWERFUL RATIOS TO START TRACKING NOW

Por Kim Santos • 19 de febrero de 2025
Doctors in the developing world measure their progress not by the aggregate number of children who die in childbirth but by the infant mortality rate, a ratio of the number of births to deaths. Similarly, baseball’s leadoff batters measure their “on-base percentage” – the number of times they get on base as a percentage of the number of times they get the chance to try. Acquirers also like tracking ratios and the more ratios you can provide a potential buyer, the more comfortable they will get with the idea of buying your business. Better than the blunt measuring stick of an aggregate number, a ratio expresses the relationship between two numbers, which gives them their power. If you’re planning to sell your company one day, here’s a list of seven ratios to start tracking in your business now: 1. Employees per square foot By calculating the number of square feet of office space you rent and dividing it by the number of employees you have, you can judge how efficiently you have designed your space. Commercial real estate agents use a general rule of 175–250 square feet of usable office space per employee. 2. Ratio of promoters and detractors Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at Bain & Company and Satmetrix, developed the Net Promoter Score® methodology, which is based around asking customers a single question that is predictive of both repurchase and referral. Here’s how it works: survey your customers and ask them the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?” Figure out what percentage of the people surveyed give you a 9 or 10 and label that your ratio of “promoters.” Calculate your ratio of detractors by figuring out the percentage of people surveyed who gave you a 0–6 score. Then calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters. The average company in the United States has a Net Promoter Score of between 10 and 15 percent. According to Satmetrix’s 2011 study, the U.S. companies with the highest Net Promoter Score are: USAA Banking 87% Trader Joe’s 82% Wegmans 78% USAA Homeowner’s Insurance 78% Costco 77% USAA Auto Insurance 73% Apple 72% Publix 72% Amazon.com 70% Kohl’s 70% 3. Sales per square foot By measuring your annual sales per square foot, you can get a sense of how efficiently you are translating your real estate into sales. Most industry associations have a benchmark. For example, annual sales per square foot for a respectable retailer might be $300. With real estate usually ranking just behind payroll as a business’s largest expenses, the more sales you can generate per square foot of real estate, the more profitable you are likely to be. Specialty food retailer Trader Joe’s ranks among companies with the highest sales per square foot; Business Week estimates it at $1,750 – more than double that of Whole Foods. 4. Revenue per employee Payroll is the number-one expense of most businesses, which explains why maximizing your revenue per employee can translate quickly to the bottom line. In a 2010 report, Business Insider estimated that Craigslist enjoys one of the highest revenue-per-employee ratios, at $3,300,000 per employee, followed by Google at $1,190,000 per bum in a seat. Amazon was at $1,010,000, Facebook at $920,000, and eBay rounded out the top five at $530,000. More traditional people-dependent companies may struggle to surpass $100,000 per employee. 5. Customers per account manager How many customers do you ask your account managers to manage? Finding a balance can be tricky. Some bankers are forced to juggle more than 400 accounts and therefore do not know each of their customers, whereas some high-end wealth managers may have just 50 clients to stay in contact with. It’s hard to say what the right ratio is because it is so highly dependent on your industry. Slowly increase your ratio of customers per account manager until you see the first signs of deterioration (slowing sales, drop in customer satisfaction). That’s when you know you have probably pushed it a little too far. 6. Prospects per visitor What proportion of your website’s visitors “opt in” by giving you permission to e-mail them in the future? Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson are the cofounders of Conversion Rate Experts, which advises companies like Google, Apple and Sony how to convert more of their website traffic into customers. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson state that there is no such thing as a typical opt-in rate, because so much depends on the source of traffic. They recommend that rather than benchmarking yourself against a competitor, you benchmark against yourself by carrying out tests to beat your site’s current opt-in rate. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson suggest the easiest way of increasing opt-in rate is to reward visitors for submitting their e-mail addresses by offering them a gift they’d find valuable. Information products – such as online white papers, videos and calculators – make ideal gifts, because their cost per unit can be almost zero. Using this technique and a few others, Conversion Rate Experts achieved a 66 percent increase in the prospects-per-visitor rate for SOS Worldwide, a broker of office space. 7. Prospects to customers Similar to prospects per visitor, another metric to keep an eye on is the efficiency with which you convert prospects – people who have opted in or expressed an interest in what you sell – into customers. Conversion Rate Experts’ Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson recommend you monitor the rate at which you are converting qualified prospects into customers, and then carry out tests to identify factors that improve that ratio. Conversion Rate Experts more than doubled the revenues of SEOBook.com , the leading community for search marketers, by converting many of SEOBook’s free subscribers into customers. Techniques that were found to be effective included (perhaps counter intuitively) restricting the number of places available; allowing easier comparison between SEOBook and the alternatives; communicating the company’s value proposition more effectively; and simplifying its sign-up process. The trick is to establish your benchmark and tinker until you can improve it. Acquirers have a healthy appetite for data. The more data you can give them – in the ratio format they’re used to examining – the more attractive your business will be in their eyes.

THE DANGER OF MARKET TIMING THE SALE OF YOUR BUSINESS

Por Kim Santos • 21 de febrero de 2025
The other day I was speaking with a successful CEO in his fifties who runs a heating and air conditioning company generating eight million dollars in revenue and over one million dollars in profit before tax. Even though he was tired and nearing burnout, he was planning to wait another five to seven years before selling his business because he “wanted to sell at the peak of the next economic cycle.” On the surface, his rationale seems to make sense. If you speak with mergers and acquisitions professionals, they’ll tell you that an economic cycle can impact valuations by up to “two turns,” which means that a business selling for five times earnings at the peak of an economic cycle may go for as low as three times earnings at a low point in the economy. The problem is, when you sell your business, you have to do something with the money you receive, which usually means buying into another asset class that is being affected by the same economy. Let’s say, for example, you had a business generating $100,000 in pre-tax profit in an industry that trades between three times earnings and five times earnings, depending on the point in the economic cycle. Furthermore, let’s imagine you sat stealthy on the sideline until the economy reached the absolute peak and sold your business for $500,000 (five times your pre-tax profit) in October 2007. You took your $500,000 and bought into a Dow Jones index fund when it was trading above 14,000. Eighteen months later – after the Dow Jones had dropped to 6,547.05– you’d be left with less than half of your money. Even though you cleverly waited till the economic peak, by March 9, 2009, you would have effectively sold your business for less than 2.5 times earnings. The inverse is also true. Let’s say you waited “too long” and sold the same business in March 2009. And because you were at the lowest possible point in the economic cycle, you only got three times earnings: $300,000. Notice that’s 20% more than if you’d sold at the peak and bought an index fund at the top of the market. Just like when you sell your house in a good real estate market, unless you’re downsizing, you usually buy into an equally frothy market. Which is why timing the sale of your business on external economic cycles is usually a waste of energy. External vs. internal economic cycles Instead, I’d recommend timing the sale of your business when internal economic factors are all pointing in the right direction: employees are happy, revenue and profits are on an upward trend, and there is still lots of market share for an acquirer to capture. When internal economic factors are pointing up, you’ll fetch a price at the top end of what the market is paying for businesses like yours right now, which means that – for good or bad – you get to use your newfound cash and buy into the same economic market you’re selling out of.

WHAT YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE SAYS ABOUT YOUR EXIT PLAN

Por Kim Santos • 20 de febrero de 2025
In our experience, your age has a big effect on your attitude towards your business and how you feel about one day getting out. Here's what we have found: Business owners between 25 and 46 years old Twenty- and thirty-something business owners grew up in an age where job security did not exist. They watched as their parents got downsized or packaged off into early retirement, and that caused a somewhat jaded attitude towards the role of a business in society. Business owners in their 20’s and 30’s generally see their companies as means to an end and most expect to sell in the next five to ten years. Similar to their employed classmates who have a new job every three to five years; business owners in this age group often expect to start a few companies in their lifetime. Business owners between 47 and 65 years old Baby Boomers came of age in a time where the social contract between company and employee was sacrosanct. An employee agreed to be loyal to the company, and in return, the company agreed to provide a decent living and a pension for a few golden years. Many of the business owners we speak with in this generation think of their company as more than a profit center. They see their business as part of a community and, by extension, themselves as a community leader. To many boomers, the idea of selling their company feels like selling out their employees and their community, which is why so many CEO’s in their fifties and sixties are torn. They know they need to sell to fund their retirement, but they agonize over where that will leave their loyal employees. Business owners who are 65+ Older business owners grew up in a time when hobbies were impractical or discouraged. You went to work while your wife tended to the kids (today, more than half of businesses are started by women, but those were different times), you ate dinner, you watched the news and you went to bed. With few hobbies and nothing other than work to define them, business owners in their late sixties, seventies and eighties feel lost without their business, which is why so many refuse to sell or experience depression after they do. Of course, there will always be exceptions to general rules of thumb but we have found that – more than your industry, nationality, marital status or educational background – your birth certificate defines your exit plan.

SEVEN POWERFUL RATIOS TO START TRACKING NOW

Por Kim Santos • 19 de febrero de 2025
Doctors in the developing world measure their progress not by the aggregate number of children who die in childbirth but by the infant mortality rate, a ratio of the number of births to deaths. Similarly, baseball’s leadoff batters measure their “on-base percentage” – the number of times they get on base as a percentage of the number of times they get the chance to try. Acquirers also like tracking ratios and the more ratios you can provide a potential buyer, the more comfortable they will get with the idea of buying your business. Better than the blunt measuring stick of an aggregate number, a ratio expresses the relationship between two numbers, which gives them their power. If you’re planning to sell your company one day, here’s a list of seven ratios to start tracking in your business now: 1. Employees per square foot By calculating the number of square feet of office space you rent and dividing it by the number of employees you have, you can judge how efficiently you have designed your space. Commercial real estate agents use a general rule of 175–250 square feet of usable office space per employee. 2. Ratio of promoters and detractors Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at Bain & Company and Satmetrix, developed the Net Promoter Score® methodology, which is based around asking customers a single question that is predictive of both repurchase and referral. Here’s how it works: survey your customers and ask them the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?” Figure out what percentage of the people surveyed give you a 9 or 10 and label that your ratio of “promoters.” Calculate your ratio of detractors by figuring out the percentage of people surveyed who gave you a 0–6 score. Then calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters. The average company in the United States has a Net Promoter Score of between 10 and 15 percent. According to Satmetrix’s 2011 study, the U.S. companies with the highest Net Promoter Score are: USAA Banking 87% Trader Joe’s 82% Wegmans 78% USAA Homeowner’s Insurance 78% Costco 77% USAA Auto Insurance 73% Apple 72% Publix 72% Amazon.com 70% Kohl’s 70% 3. Sales per square foot By measuring your annual sales per square foot, you can get a sense of how efficiently you are translating your real estate into sales. Most industry associations have a benchmark. For example, annual sales per square foot for a respectable retailer might be $300. With real estate usually ranking just behind payroll as a business’s largest expenses, the more sales you can generate per square foot of real estate, the more profitable you are likely to be. Specialty food retailer Trader Joe’s ranks among companies with the highest sales per square foot; Business Week estimates it at $1,750 – more than double that of Whole Foods. 4. Revenue per employee Payroll is the number-one expense of most businesses, which explains why maximizing your revenue per employee can translate quickly to the bottom line. In a 2010 report, Business Insider estimated that Craigslist enjoys one of the highest revenue-per-employee ratios, at $3,300,000 per employee, followed by Google at $1,190,000 per bum in a seat. Amazon was at $1,010,000, Facebook at $920,000, and eBay rounded out the top five at $530,000. More traditional people-dependent companies may struggle to surpass $100,000 per employee. 5. Customers per account manager How many customers do you ask your account managers to manage? Finding a balance can be tricky. Some bankers are forced to juggle more than 400 accounts and therefore do not know each of their customers, whereas some high-end wealth managers may have just 50 clients to stay in contact with. It’s hard to say what the right ratio is because it is so highly dependent on your industry. Slowly increase your ratio of customers per account manager until you see the first signs of deterioration (slowing sales, drop in customer satisfaction). That’s when you know you have probably pushed it a little too far. 6. Prospects per visitor What proportion of your website’s visitors “opt in” by giving you permission to e-mail them in the future? Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson are the cofounders of Conversion Rate Experts, which advises companies like Google, Apple and Sony how to convert more of their website traffic into customers. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson state that there is no such thing as a typical opt-in rate, because so much depends on the source of traffic. They recommend that rather than benchmarking yourself against a competitor, you benchmark against yourself by carrying out tests to beat your site’s current opt-in rate. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson suggest the easiest way of increasing opt-in rate is to reward visitors for submitting their e-mail addresses by offering them a gift they’d find valuable. Information products – such as online white papers, videos and calculators – make ideal gifts, because their cost per unit can be almost zero. Using this technique and a few others, Conversion Rate Experts achieved a 66 percent increase in the prospects-per-visitor rate for SOS Worldwide, a broker of office space. 7. Prospects to customers Similar to prospects per visitor, another metric to keep an eye on is the efficiency with which you convert prospects – people who have opted in or expressed an interest in what you sell – into customers. Conversion Rate Experts’ Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson recommend you monitor the rate at which you are converting qualified prospects into customers, and then carry out tests to identify factors that improve that ratio. Conversion Rate Experts more than doubled the revenues of SEOBook.com , the leading community for search marketers, by converting many of SEOBook’s free subscribers into customers. Techniques that were found to be effective included (perhaps counter intuitively) restricting the number of places available; allowing easier comparison between SEOBook and the alternatives; communicating the company’s value proposition more effectively; and simplifying its sign-up process. The trick is to establish your benchmark and tinker until you can improve it. Acquirers have a healthy appetite for data. The more data you can give them – in the ratio format they’re used to examining – the more attractive your business will be in their eyes.

Preguntas frecuentes de los vendedores

¿Por qué debería utilizar un Business Broker para vender mi negocio?


Los propietarios de empresas que han vendido una empresa en el pasado probablemente le dirán que es un proceso largo y estresante. Vender su propia empresa puede dañar el valor de la misma, ya que le quita la atención de la operación diaria de la misma en un momento crítico en el que debería estar aumentando o al menos manteniendo su negocio actual. Cuando un corredor de negocios lo ayuda en el proceso, puede obtener más beneficios que solo por el precio obtenido. Los corredores de negocios lo ayudarán a valorar adecuadamente su empresa, llegar a los compradores que ya tienen, llegar a una mayor cantidad de nuevos compradores, permitirle continuar administrando su empresa en lugar de quitarle la atención, mantener la confidencialidad y, lo más importante, ayudarlo con el cierre de su transacción en función de su experiencia y capacitación. El error más común que cometen los vendedores potenciales es comparar la venta de su empresa con la venta de una casa. A diferencia de los agentes inmobiliarios, mantenemos su listado completamente confidencial y trabajamos con usted en cada paso del camino hasta que vendemos su empresa.



¿Por qué First Choice Business Brokers (FCBB)?


Con una experiencia inigualable desde 1994, oficinas en todo Estados Unidos y algunos de los corredores de negocios más capacitados de la industria, First Choice es la "opción clara" cuando se trata de elegir un corredor de negocios para que lo represente. Nuestros corredores de negocios son expertos en el campo de la evaluación de negocios, ventas de negocios, marketing de negocios y negociaciones de compra/venta para satisfacer tanto a compradores como a vendedores.



¿Cómo se mantiene confidencial mi negocio en venta?


A diferencia de la venta de una casa o incluso de un edificio comercial, las empresas no tienen un cartel de "se vende". Las ventas de empresas deben mantenerse confidenciales; todos los compradores deben firmar un acuerdo de confidencialidad del comprador (NDA) antes de que se proporcione información detallada sobre su empresa. Esto ayuda a evitar que los empleados, proveedores, clientes y competidores descubran que está vendiendo su empresa.



¿Cómo se publicitará mi negocio?

Con First Choice Business Brokers, su empresa aparecerá en los sitios web mejor calificados específicamente para su área, así como en sitios nacionales e internacionales. Se pueden emplear otros medios publicitarios según el tipo de negocio.



¿Cómo sé cuánto vale mi negocio?

Los métodos probados de valoración y comercialización de FCBB colocarán a su empresa en la mejor posición posible para vender. Los profesionales de ventas de First Choice Business son algunos de los profesionales más capacitados de la industria.



¿Cuánto tiempo tardaré en vender mi negocio?

Una empresa con un precio adecuado suele venderse en aproximadamente 90 días, pero este plazo puede variar en gran medida en función de los ingresos de su empresa (y de lo fácil que sea demostrarlos), el tipo de empresa, las condiciones ofrecidas y la zona en la que se encuentra su empresa. Su profesional de ventas de empresas local de First Choice le proporcionará más información sobre su mercado local.



¿Los compradores visitarán mi negocio?

Después de que un comprador haya firmado un NDA (confidencialidad del comprador), revisado la información inicial y expresado un mayor interés en su negocio, su profesional de ventas comerciales de FCBB programará una reunión para que el comprador vea su negocio en un momento que sea apropiado para su tipo de negocio.



¿Cómo escriben los compradores las ofertas para comprar mi negocio?

La mayoría de los compradores que estén interesados en su negocio estarán representados por un agente comercial profesional que los ayudará a redactar una oferta que exprese su precio, términos, contingencias (si las hubiera) y solicite documentación adicional (si la hubiera). Luego, su agente comercial de FCBB y/o el agente del comprador le presentarán la oferta para su aprobación.



¿Quién atenderá todas las llamadas de consulta sobre la venta de mi negocio?

Su profesional de ventas comerciales de primera elección está capacitado para tratar con consultas entrantes (a menudo de personas que solo buscan información) y ayudar a determinar cuáles de esos compradores podrían estar listos para pasar al siguiente nivel.



¿Quién se encargará de las negociaciones sobre la venta de mi negocio?

Su profesional de ventas comerciales de First Choice está capacitado para ocuparse de las negociaciones de venta de su empresa. Su agente comercial de FCBB lo ayudará a navegar por todo el proceso; lo acompañaremos en cada paso del camino.



¿Cuánto tiempo tendré que capacitar a la persona que compre mi negocio?

Este es un punto negociable, pero hemos descubierto que la mayoría de los compradores piden 30 días. Algunos tipos de empresas solo requieren una o dos semanas de capacitación, mientras que otras empresas más complicadas pueden requerir un período de familiarización más prolongado. Si se requiere un período más largo, a menudo descubrimos que los vendedores negocian una tarifa de consultoría por períodos de capacitación más prolongados.



Después de vender mi negocio ¿puedo abrir otro en algún momento en el futuro?

Todos los compradores le pedirán que firme un compromiso de no competir dentro de un área y/o período de tiempo determinado.



¿Necesitaré financiar parte del precio de compra del negocio?

No existe ningún requisito de que usted "lleve papeles" en su negocio, sin embargo, en el mercado actual es muy común que los compradores soliciten algún tipo de Nota de Transporte del Vendedor que en realidad abre su negocio a un grupo más grande de compradores.



¿Cuándo debo notificar a mis empleados que estoy vendiendo el negocio?

Si bien es posible que tenga una relación cercana con sus empleados, se ha demostrado una y otra vez que el mejor momento para informarles a sus empleados es cuando los presenta a los nuevos propietarios. Esto puede resultarle difícil emocionalmente, pero la experiencia dicta que el silencio es la mejor práctica. La excepción a esta regla sería si un empleado "clave" es parte de la negociación para que el Comprador lo mantenga en su puesto después de que se complete la venta. En este caso, es posible que se requiera un aviso previo a esta persona y solo a ella. Su agente comercial de First Choice lo guiará a través del momento adecuado para esta parte tan importante de la venta comercial: ¡el momento lo es todo!



¿Mi agente comercial de primera elección calificará al comprador verificando su crédito?

First Choice no verifica el crédito de los compradores; sin embargo, durante el proceso de oferta y aceptación, usted puede solicitar que el comprador le proporcione una copia de su informe crediticio. Esto no se le pide al comprador con frecuencia, ya que el propietario o arrendador probablemente obtendrá un informe crediticio para su revisión.

Entradas recientes

THE DANGER OF MARKET TIMING THE SALE OF YOUR BUSINESS

Por Kim Santos • 21 de febrero de 2025
The other day I was speaking with a successful CEO in his fifties who runs a heating and air conditioning company generating eight million dollars in revenue and over one million dollars in profit before tax. Even though he was tired and nearing burnout, he was planning to wait another five to seven years before selling his business because he “wanted to sell at the peak of the next economic cycle.” On the surface, his rationale seems to make sense. If you speak with mergers and acquisitions professionals, they’ll tell you that an economic cycle can impact valuations by up to “two turns,” which means that a business selling for five times earnings at the peak of an economic cycle may go for as low as three times earnings at a low point in the economy. The problem is, when you sell your business, you have to do something with the money you receive, which usually means buying into another asset class that is being affected by the same economy. Let’s say, for example, you had a business generating $100,000 in pre-tax profit in an industry that trades between three times earnings and five times earnings, depending on the point in the economic cycle. Furthermore, let’s imagine you sat stealthy on the sideline until the economy reached the absolute peak and sold your business for $500,000 (five times your pre-tax profit) in October 2007. You took your $500,000 and bought into a Dow Jones index fund when it was trading above 14,000. Eighteen months later – after the Dow Jones had dropped to 6,547.05– you’d be left with less than half of your money. Even though you cleverly waited till the economic peak, by March 9, 2009, you would have effectively sold your business for less than 2.5 times earnings. The inverse is also true. Let’s say you waited “too long” and sold the same business in March 2009. And because you were at the lowest possible point in the economic cycle, you only got three times earnings: $300,000. Notice that’s 20% more than if you’d sold at the peak and bought an index fund at the top of the market. Just like when you sell your house in a good real estate market, unless you’re downsizing, you usually buy into an equally frothy market. Which is why timing the sale of your business on external economic cycles is usually a waste of energy. External vs. internal economic cycles Instead, I’d recommend timing the sale of your business when internal economic factors are all pointing in the right direction: employees are happy, revenue and profits are on an upward trend, and there is still lots of market share for an acquirer to capture. When internal economic factors are pointing up, you’ll fetch a price at the top end of what the market is paying for businesses like yours right now, which means that – for good or bad – you get to use your newfound cash and buy into the same economic market you’re selling out of.

WHAT YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE SAYS ABOUT YOUR EXIT PLAN

Por Kim Santos • 20 de febrero de 2025
In our experience, your age has a big effect on your attitude towards your business and how you feel about one day getting out. Here's what we have found: Business owners between 25 and 46 years old Twenty- and thirty-something business owners grew up in an age where job security did not exist. They watched as their parents got downsized or packaged off into early retirement, and that caused a somewhat jaded attitude towards the role of a business in society. Business owners in their 20’s and 30’s generally see their companies as means to an end and most expect to sell in the next five to ten years. Similar to their employed classmates who have a new job every three to five years; business owners in this age group often expect to start a few companies in their lifetime. Business owners between 47 and 65 years old Baby Boomers came of age in a time where the social contract between company and employee was sacrosanct. An employee agreed to be loyal to the company, and in return, the company agreed to provide a decent living and a pension for a few golden years. Many of the business owners we speak with in this generation think of their company as more than a profit center. They see their business as part of a community and, by extension, themselves as a community leader. To many boomers, the idea of selling their company feels like selling out their employees and their community, which is why so many CEO’s in their fifties and sixties are torn. They know they need to sell to fund their retirement, but they agonize over where that will leave their loyal employees. Business owners who are 65+ Older business owners grew up in a time when hobbies were impractical or discouraged. You went to work while your wife tended to the kids (today, more than half of businesses are started by women, but those were different times), you ate dinner, you watched the news and you went to bed. With few hobbies and nothing other than work to define them, business owners in their late sixties, seventies and eighties feel lost without their business, which is why so many refuse to sell or experience depression after they do. Of course, there will always be exceptions to general rules of thumb but we have found that – more than your industry, nationality, marital status or educational background – your birth certificate defines your exit plan.

SEVEN POWERFUL RATIOS TO START TRACKING NOW

Por Kim Santos • 19 de febrero de 2025
Doctors in the developing world measure their progress not by the aggregate number of children who die in childbirth but by the infant mortality rate, a ratio of the number of births to deaths. Similarly, baseball’s leadoff batters measure their “on-base percentage” – the number of times they get on base as a percentage of the number of times they get the chance to try. Acquirers also like tracking ratios and the more ratios you can provide a potential buyer, the more comfortable they will get with the idea of buying your business. Better than the blunt measuring stick of an aggregate number, a ratio expresses the relationship between two numbers, which gives them their power. If you’re planning to sell your company one day, here’s a list of seven ratios to start tracking in your business now: 1. Employees per square foot By calculating the number of square feet of office space you rent and dividing it by the number of employees you have, you can judge how efficiently you have designed your space. Commercial real estate agents use a general rule of 175–250 square feet of usable office space per employee. 2. Ratio of promoters and detractors Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at Bain & Company and Satmetrix, developed the Net Promoter Score® methodology, which is based around asking customers a single question that is predictive of both repurchase and referral. Here’s how it works: survey your customers and ask them the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?” Figure out what percentage of the people surveyed give you a 9 or 10 and label that your ratio of “promoters.” Calculate your ratio of detractors by figuring out the percentage of people surveyed who gave you a 0–6 score. Then calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters. The average company in the United States has a Net Promoter Score of between 10 and 15 percent. According to Satmetrix’s 2011 study, the U.S. companies with the highest Net Promoter Score are: USAA Banking 87% Trader Joe’s 82% Wegmans 78% USAA Homeowner’s Insurance 78% Costco 77% USAA Auto Insurance 73% Apple 72% Publix 72% Amazon.com 70% Kohl’s 70% 3. Sales per square foot By measuring your annual sales per square foot, you can get a sense of how efficiently you are translating your real estate into sales. Most industry associations have a benchmark. For example, annual sales per square foot for a respectable retailer might be $300. With real estate usually ranking just behind payroll as a business’s largest expenses, the more sales you can generate per square foot of real estate, the more profitable you are likely to be. Specialty food retailer Trader Joe’s ranks among companies with the highest sales per square foot; Business Week estimates it at $1,750 – more than double that of Whole Foods. 4. Revenue per employee Payroll is the number-one expense of most businesses, which explains why maximizing your revenue per employee can translate quickly to the bottom line. In a 2010 report, Business Insider estimated that Craigslist enjoys one of the highest revenue-per-employee ratios, at $3,300,000 per employee, followed by Google at $1,190,000 per bum in a seat. Amazon was at $1,010,000, Facebook at $920,000, and eBay rounded out the top five at $530,000. More traditional people-dependent companies may struggle to surpass $100,000 per employee. 5. Customers per account manager How many customers do you ask your account managers to manage? Finding a balance can be tricky. Some bankers are forced to juggle more than 400 accounts and therefore do not know each of their customers, whereas some high-end wealth managers may have just 50 clients to stay in contact with. It’s hard to say what the right ratio is because it is so highly dependent on your industry. Slowly increase your ratio of customers per account manager until you see the first signs of deterioration (slowing sales, drop in customer satisfaction). That’s when you know you have probably pushed it a little too far. 6. Prospects per visitor What proportion of your website’s visitors “opt in” by giving you permission to e-mail them in the future? Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson are the cofounders of Conversion Rate Experts, which advises companies like Google, Apple and Sony how to convert more of their website traffic into customers. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson state that there is no such thing as a typical opt-in rate, because so much depends on the source of traffic. They recommend that rather than benchmarking yourself against a competitor, you benchmark against yourself by carrying out tests to beat your site’s current opt-in rate. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson suggest the easiest way of increasing opt-in rate is to reward visitors for submitting their e-mail addresses by offering them a gift they’d find valuable. Information products – such as online white papers, videos and calculators – make ideal gifts, because their cost per unit can be almost zero. Using this technique and a few others, Conversion Rate Experts achieved a 66 percent increase in the prospects-per-visitor rate for SOS Worldwide, a broker of office space. 7. Prospects to customers Similar to prospects per visitor, another metric to keep an eye on is the efficiency with which you convert prospects – people who have opted in or expressed an interest in what you sell – into customers. Conversion Rate Experts’ Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson recommend you monitor the rate at which you are converting qualified prospects into customers, and then carry out tests to identify factors that improve that ratio. Conversion Rate Experts more than doubled the revenues of SEOBook.com , the leading community for search marketers, by converting many of SEOBook’s free subscribers into customers. Techniques that were found to be effective included (perhaps counter intuitively) restricting the number of places available; allowing easier comparison between SEOBook and the alternatives; communicating the company’s value proposition more effectively; and simplifying its sign-up process. The trick is to establish your benchmark and tinker until you can improve it. Acquirers have a healthy appetite for data. The more data you can give them – in the ratio format they’re used to examining – the more attractive your business will be in their eyes.
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