A d d u c e n t

Before you read this make sure that you have established your acquisition criteria and know what kind of business you want to target. That is what you will use to stay focused while doing your seller searches.

Prior to the Internet business buyers worked with search firms and brokers or would buy direct mail lists from companies like Dun and Bradstreet or even use the Yellow Pages for ‘cold calling’ to see if they could find some acquisition candidates. While many buyers may still use these traditional methods, others are starting to use the resources of the Internet to find prospective acquisition candidates. To find businesses for sale you can use the Internet as your primary research tool and one or more search engines to help you find the businesses. One good free utility that allows you to get results from multiple search engines with a single search is “Web Ferret”; you can download it for free at:

http://www.WebFerret.com

Once you've downloaded and installed it, enter the search words “business for sale” or “businesses for sale”.

Review each web site the search engines find and ‘bookmark’ the ones you like in your Favorites Folder.  Use the ‘Favorites’ button on your web browser to put the different web pages into a folder you call, “Businesses For Sale”. Since they get new listings all the time, go back to your Favorites and re-visit the web sites every two weeks.  Be sure to hit the ‘refresh’ button on your web browser when you re-visit a site you have been to before. 

You can also use: http://www.google.com,  http://www.altavista.com, http://www.askjeeves.com, and any other search engines you are familiar with.

Remember different search engines will find different web sites, so don’t rely on just one search engine.

A Sample of “Businesses For Sale” Web Sites

http://www.bizbuysell.com/
http://www.bizquest.com/
http://www.biztrader.com
http://www.businessesforsale.com

You will soon notice that there are thousands of businesses for sale, so how do you select the ones that you want to look at? 

(1) You can pick businesses that seem interesting to you or that you know something about, or
(2) You can select businesses for sale in a particular industry, like software or financial services, or
(3) You can select businesses for sale by the selling price, or
(4) You can select businesses for sale in a geographic location you would like to live.
(5) You can do a combination of the above. 

It’s strictly your choice.  But we do recommend that you establish your criteria firmly in your mind before you start your searches. 

In my next article I'll give you tips and guidance on how to contact and communicate with business owners and business brokers.