BizLink North provides an online avenue linking retiring business owners and prospective buyers. Potential buyers may include individuals that are either graduates of professional schools from the Upper Midwest or experienced managers within their respective fields.
The general steps in the BizLink North process are as follows:
1. Exiting business owners and prospective buyers will enter the BizLink North process through either discovering the website online or being led to connect with BizLink North partners in their local communities. If interested, participants will apply to the BizLink North program as well as a client of the South Central Minnesota Small Business Development Center.
2. To begin the application process, exiting business owner candidates are asked to provide summary financial histories of their companies, and prospective buyers are requested to self-evaluate their candidacy through a summary questionnaire and a personal financial statement.
3. Once a buyer or seller information is analyzed and approved, each party will be granted access to more information on the network of a possible counterpart for a transaction. If there are no matches available at this time, buyers and sellers will be kept within the BizLink North system and alerted when a prospective match is brought into the network.
4. If a match between a buyer and seller is achieved, the business owner will be asked to provide additional business financial data to generate a current estimate on the businesses value while BizLink North conducts market research.
5. Once the businesses financial and market/industry information is analyzed, BizLink North will present to the business owner a general range of value of the business. This estimate is based on generally accepted business valuation models. At this point, all negotiations between the business owner and potential buyer will be conducted privately between themselves with BizLink North acting as a venue for communication.
BizLink North will provide a guideline for valuation of the business to help begin the negotiation between the existing business owner and the potential buyer. In the transaction, BizLink North does not represent either party exclusively as it is a facilitator of the transaction.
6. BizLink North will shift post-transaction support of the new business owner to the South Central Minnesota Small Business Development Center.
All the BizLink North functions and activities are FREE, and there is no obligation for any payment whatsoever for any services provided. It is our sole purpose to facilitate the transition from retiring business owners to potential buyers.
No assurance, guarantee, or warrant of success is made by Bizlink North. BizLink North is a process, not a result.