Maintaining Confidentiality

By By Glen Cooper, CBI, CBA, BVAL

Maintaining confidentiality is a key concern for business sellers and prospective buyers. It should be.

Knowledge that a business is for sale can damage its reputation in the eyes of clients, customers, creditors, vendors and employees. Knowledge of a buyer’s business search can compromise his/her current employment. As business brokers, we are especially sensitive to these issues.

The ads we run for the businesses we list are always ‘blind,’ or camouflaged, to protect the identity of our seller clients. We write these business descriptions by providing enough specific information to generate potential buyer prospect interest without identifying the businesses.

Buyer Registration

To protect sellers, we require buyer prospects to register with us. It doesn’t cost anything to register. There is no commitment to use our services. Our short registration form and confidentiality agreement are straightforward and simple.

After registration, the next step is either a meeting or a phone call to verify the information provided and further understand a buyer’s unique needs. We prefer a meeting, but many prospects will agree to meet only after they identify an interesting opportunity.

Buyer Qualification

There are many types of buyer prospects – companies, investor groups, families and individuals. Qualifying a prospect can be complicated. It is much more than a matter of who has money.

A buyer prospect’s qualifications are never purely financial. As brokers, we also assess a buyer’s ability to move forward based upon the prospect’s skills, character, personality, and timing needs. Some of our seller clients even place restrictions on what types of buyer prospects they will consider.

We are gatekeepers for our sellers. We must protect their information from needless disclosure. We appreciate all those who are sensitive to our needs to be responsible and accountable as we do our qualifying and screening jobs.