05 Feb Marketing Attracts Prospects
NOTE FROM TOM WEST:
Clyth lives and has his office in New Zealand, and some of the language, etc. may be different. But, if you read the following, you will see that business brokerage is not much different here in the states. Clyth has been in business brokerage for 50 years. Here is the latest from him along with an his take on New Year Resolutions.
….. Brokers sell businesses……
Ours is a simple business. List, appraise, market, and sell businesses. Simple, but not easy.
Our multi-pronged marketing programme aims to expose opportunities to the maximum number of prospective buyers.
Print advertising (e.g. daily newspapers) is declining in effectiveness, while costs are rising, but still play an important part in our marketing mix. However, ethnic newspapers (Mandarin Pages, Korea Town, and Indian Outlook) do produce a large response from the important immigrant market.
Internet is the first port of call for a high percentage of buyers. We feature all our listings on 9 specialist business sales sites.
Direct mail – our monthly newsletter and email alerts go out to a large number of professional advisors and qualified buyers as well as targeted mailings to certain industry sectors.
Database marketing – with over 10,000 investors in our database this is a constant focus.
Please note – all our marketing of businesses listed with us is at our expense, i.e. FREE to the client.
New Year Resolutions
At this time of the year we always labour over our business plans, goals, and budgets for the coming year – and consistently overshoot or undershoot our targets. NO more. What will be, will be. We cannot control the economy (only our attitude to it) and the experts are consistently wrong with their forecasts.
So our total strategic plan for 2013 is “sell businesses”. That’s it, that’s what we do.
And our New Year resolutions are nil. Our track record of keeping them is about the same as that of most people. Poor!
So a relaxed start for the year. No complex plans. No setting up for failure. “Simplify” is the catchcry for 2013.
Clyth MacLeod, Managing Director of Clyth MacLeod, Ltd., in New Zealand has over 40 year’s experience in business broking and business valuation. Clyth is also a director of Business Appraisals Ltd (business valuers), BizStats Ltd (a national database of business sales information) and Australasian Business Valuations Ltd (consultancy). The only business broker to be awarded a Life Membership by the Real Estate Institute of NZ and a Fellowship by the International Business Brokers Association he remains active in the industry and committed to leading a professional team.
