Selling your business is not an easy process. No owner can go through an insurance agency sale on his or her own. To complete a successful sale, you need help. You need a team around you who can help you make the big decisions and identify the goals of the sale. At a minimum, you need four different types of advisors to get you through the sale.
Financial Expert
If you are like most owners, you are an insurance agent who happens to run a business, rather than an entrepreneur who happens to run an insurance agency. In truth, over the years you will have become a mix of the two. In order to complete a successful insurance agency sale, you need real financial expertise. You need to bring in someone who can help to assess the business on its merits. You need an advisor who can breakdown the business and build a financial picture for a buyer. The sale of an agency is a specialized skill that requires experience in these types of transactions.
Salesperson
Once you have developed a cold, clinical financial overview of the business; you need someone who can sell it to a buyer. The financial guy paints the picture and the sales guy finds a buyer for it. You have insurance sales skills yourself, but this requires a different kind of sales expertise. The sale of an insurance agency isn’t just about selling the numbers or selling the benefits. It’s selling the future of both agencies.
Counselor
Throughout the process, you will encounter a rollercoaster of emotions. You will be reminded of the joyful parts of your business and you will learn the painful factors in any merger. You will be forced to consider your own future and be asked to decide the future of close friends. Most counselors suggest that everyone would benefit from some counseling. Owners certainly fall into that category during an insurance agency sale. We can’t emphasis enough the emotional hurdles that you will have to overcome.
Negotiator
When you finally settle on a buyer, you need to negotiate price and process. You need to agree on the futures of your staff, your buildings and your client book. To ensure you achieve the goals you set at the beginning of the process, you need a skilled negotiator on your side. You need someone who will fight your corner over some issues, relent over others and know which issue needs which response. The skill is knowing when to push and when to relent. Experience is critical in knowing how to negotiate.
Completing a successful insurance agency sale will require the input of each of the experts listed above. However, it doesn’t require four different people. A good financial advisor will fulfill each of these roles throughout the process. Your advisor will become the person you go to for advice, they will provide financial expertise, sales know how and negotiating skill. A successful insurance agency sale relies on having the best team around you, even if it is just a team of one.
If you are preparing to sell your agency, or planning for the future, read our free whitepaper which looks at three different perpetuation situations HERE.
