My press release on these reasons and reasons 11-15 was picked up by a number of sources including business.com. You can see it at: http://blogs.business.com/whatworks/2010/10-ways-boost-business/.
Special skills or license needed-about 2/3 of all small businesses need an owner with general business skills and business common sense. Those are the types buyers like the most. If you have to be a PhD in an advanced scientific field to own the business, well good luck finding a someone with money who wants to own a business.
Vendor concentration-don’t overlook this. The vendor(s) may not pull any tricks but what happens if your sole source has problems, goes out of business, etc.
Working capital needs-you pay your people this week. You pay your suppliers in 30 days, the rent and other overhead every month and your customers pay you in 90 days. That’s working capital and that’s why fast growth can be a problem. It takes cash to grow and if you don’t have access to enough cash you’ve hit a bottleneck (see the first reason on this list).
You have a job and it’s not as CEO-in other words, you work in the business not on the business. If the business can’t survive if you’re not on the shop floor you aren’t a manager you’re a working employee. This probably means growth is stagnant as you have no plan, leadership or management.
You’ve bled the business-every last cent goes into your take-home pay and the assets are in need of repair or replacement. This leads to lower profits. One owner was so cheap he wouldn’t buy a new printer. After the sale the buyer bought a new printer, the accounting department stopped having their systems freeze up when something printed and their efficiency soared.
