Where To Look:
There are numerous places that you can go and methods that you can utilize to identify a business to acquire or to find a business to make an investment in.
- Newspaper Classifieds
- Franchises
- Associations
- Board of Trade
- Internet
- Friends & Relatives
- Business Brokers
- Lawyers & Accountants
- Financiers
- Cold Calls
More likely than not before you go out looking for a business to acquire, become a partner in or make an investment in you will have some idea in the back of your mind about the type of business you are looking for, be it retail, manufacturing or service oriented. Do not rush to pick a business, make sure that you have researched all of the many types of businesses that are of interest to you.
Newspaper Classifieds:
Every city, large and small will have at least one local newspaper with a classified section offering businesses for sale, partnerships and investments. The larger the geographic reach of the newspaper the more businesses for sale, partnerships and investments that you will find being offered. Most newspapers now allow internet access to their classified advertising.
Newspaper classifieds also provide another method of acquiring, becoming a partner or investing in an existing business. Whereby there is no reason for you not to take an aggressive approach and you can easily advertise that you are interested in acquiring a business or becoming a partner in or investing in a business. If you utilize this avenue to find a potential candidate business be sure to indicate in your classified advertisement any and all specific criteria that you may have with respect to businesses, partnerships and/or investments that you would consider or in the reverse you can detail out what parameters you will not consider. Attempting to save a few dollars by keeping the word count in your classified ad to a minimum will be counter productive, as you will receive many responses from individuals with ideas and concepts that you are not interested in considering.
- As a note, I strongly suggest that if you do place a classified ad that you utilize a P.O. Box number, a generic email address such as offered by Hotmail, Yahoo or Excite and that you do not place any information within the ad which will personally identify you unless you want to be deluged with telemarketer phone calls and spam email throughout the next millennium.
Franchises:
Larger metropolitan areas will generally have franchise expositions at least once a year. A franchise exposition allows you to look at and compare numerous different types of franchise concepts all under one roof. If you live in a smaller community that does not have the demographics required to have a franchise exposition it would probably be worth the expense for you to visit a convention in another city. As a general statement companies that exhibit and present at franchise expositions are relatively new to the franchise world or are not a household name. If the possibility of acquiring a franchise intrigues you, then I would most strongly urge you attend a franchise exposition.