The email arrives, or the phone call comes, usually mid-week and always mid-everything-else and usually someone wants to talk about buying your business. Unsolicited approaches are flattering, occasionally genuine, and dangerous to handle casually.
Say little. Acknowledge, thank, and buy time. There is no obligation to respond substantively to an approach on the approacher’s schedule, and almost nothing good comes from an owner improvising answers about price expectations or willingness to sell in the first conversation. “We’re not actively for sale, but I’m always willing to hear a serious proposal” is a complete sentence.
Sign nothing yet. Confidentiality has to be mutual and properly documented before you disclose anything meaningful, and even an innocuous-looking preliminary document can shape the process later. Have anything you’re asked to sign reviewed first.
Qualify the approacher. Genuine strategic buyers and credible investors are specific, they can say why your business, why now, and how they would fund it. Vague approaches are often fishing competitors seeking intelligence, brokers building lists, or acquirers hoping to find an unadvised seller. The difference is usually apparent within two disciplined questions.
Understand the strategic position you’re in. One interested party is an offer it is not a market. The approacher knows that an exclusive, unprepared negotiation favours them it’s usually why they approached rather than waited for a process. Your leverage comes from optionality, the credible possibility of preparation, of other buyers, and of not selling at all.
Then decide the process, on your terms. Sometimes the right answer is a polite no. Sometimes it’s a controlled engagement with proper preparation compressed into a shorter runway. Sometimes the approach is the prompt to run the broader process you’d have run anyway with the approacher as one participant rather than the only one. Which answer fits depends on the buyer’s quality, your readiness, and what you actually want which is exactly the conversation to have with an adviser before you have it with the buyer.
Approaches are information, someone thinks your business is worth pursuing. Treat that as the beginning of a process you control, not one you’ve been invited into.
General information only
This material has been prepared by Daniel Jude Pty Ltd ABN 83 701 985 088 (‘Company’, ‘we’ or ‘us’). Daniel Jude is a corporate authorised representative (CAR No. 001323408) of Sandford Capital Pty Limited (‘FB Corp’) (ABN 82 600 590 887) (AFSL 461981). The material is for general information only and is not an offer for the purchase or sale of any financial product or service. The material has been prepared for investors who qualify as wholesale clients under sections 761G of the Corporations Act or to any other person who is not required to be given a regulated disclosure document under the Corporations Act. The material is not intended to provide you with financial or tax advice and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Although we believe that the material is correct, no warranty of accuracy, reliability or completeness is given, except for liability under statute which cannot be excluded. To the maximum extent possible, the Licensee, Daniel Jude Pty Ltd or any other person do not accept any liability for any statement in this material.