Tips for Restaurant Sellers in Atlanta, Georgia asking the question, “How do I sell a restaurant?”

Selling a restaurant means finding expert help but the good news is that expert Atlanta restaurant brokers work for free.

With the current economic downturn, Atlanta restaurant owners may be wondering whether they should sell or wait to sell their Atlanta restaurant. The answer depends on whether you have the skill and services of a professional restaurant broker working on your behalf. What does a professional Atlanta restaurant broker do? He markets and promotes your listing to a database of prospects and seeks new buyers. He makes sure that anyone looking at your listing meets the criteria to purchase by having available funds or equity. He ensures that your restaurant name is not disclosed until a confidentiality agreement is in place.

While “for sale by owner” is a tactic sometimes used in residential listings, it is not advised for selling your Atlanta restaurant. Before you make the choice to sell single-handedly you should know this is a perilous process. The case for using an experienced Atlanta restaurant broker couldn’t be clearer and here’s why.

The favorite word in the English language is free and that’s what an Atlanta restaurant seller experiences with the services of a broker. They do the work up front to package and market the listing with no pay off until the closing takes place. Very few business models provide full value up front with no investment by the customer Another reason to use a professional on the job is to make sure you’re getting the most money for your business. The standard method to value you a business relies on knowledge and skills to take apart your profit and loss statement and re-state earnings to make sure you are compensated for every dollar of revenue. An expert Atlanta restaurant broker does this for a living.

Buyers for Atlanta restaurants for sale have to be bound by confidentiality and the broker ensures this as well as pre-qualifying them to buy. Legal documents are standard parts of their packages that are tried and true to protect sellers from buyers that want to look without buying or out of curiosity. Inexperienced brokers and owners trying to sell on their own are often tempted by those with a good story to provide the address before they are fully qualified. For the experienced broker, “no” is a way of life and that protects your business from countless damage.

Describing a restaurant in glowing terms and at the same time disguising its real name and address is the experienced Atlanta restaurant broker’s forte. For the inexperienced it’s a skill that takes time to develop and for the owner trying to sell an Atlanta restaurant, it doesn’t make sense to try. The marketing team at restaurant brokerage firms can write headlines to drive responses and phrase the ad to generate leads. They are a whiz at generating activity on restaurants. All of this is free of charge to the Atlanta restaurant owner looking to sell.

Unsuspecting sellers often rely on the world wide web to post their Atlanta restaurant for sale. This great resource is often used by brokers but inexperienced owners may have a more difficult time sifting through the inquiries to determine which are “real” versus the work of those who may have less than honest intentions. They may receive multiple inquiries from those who insist they have a buyer or others saying requesting financial statements. Before they know it they find their restaurant is the victim of financial identity theft. Few sellers realize how dangerous it is to put their financial information in the hands of others who may then borrow against your tax ID number or use an Atlanta restaurant’s identity get a loan against future credit card payments.

These are only a few of the reasons that selling your Atlanta restaurant should always involve the help of an expert restaurant broker. A broker represents your interest and guards your business as if it’s his own until the new owner is in place.

Eric Gagnon is a designated industry expert in restaurant sales and restaurant valuation. He specializes in leasing, restaurant sales and restaurant business brokerage. He is a frequent writer and speaker on the topic of restaurant sales and restaurant valuation. He is the president of We Sell Restaurants and www.wesellrestaurants.com an online resource for buying and selling restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia and across the southeast.


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