Do You Want An All-Cash Offer?

Most sellers want to be paid all of their money up front, and most buyers want to avoid paying anything up front. For example, when Eric Weiner wanted out of All Occasion Transportation he found a buyer and agreed to accept half of his money in a five-year consulting contract, which sounded great in theory.

Most sellers want to be paid all of their money up front, and most buyers want to avoid paying anything up front. Deals usually get done somewhere in the middle, where the seller agrees to accept some cash and to be paid some of their proceeds over time. 

Eric Weiner, for example, started All Occasion Transportation in college and by the time he turned 35, his company was grossing more than $3MM a year. That’s when Weiner decided he wanted out.

Weiner found a buyer and agreed to accept half of his money in a five-year consulting contract, which sounded great in theory but ended up becoming hard to enforce. In this cautionary episode, you’ll learn:

• How to structure a vendor take back
• How to market your business for sale without competitors finding out
• How to create sticks and carrots to ensure your deal is honored
• The definition of recourse and why you need some in any non-cash offer
• How to pick a walk-away number and use it to accelerate your negotiation
• The biggest blooper in structuring a consulting contract with an acquirer

How to get an all-cash offer

During the interview, Weiner also reveals his principal mistake in selling: not running his business like a company that could be acquired. Maximize the cash you get at closing by creating a business that would be attractive to a buyer. See how an acquirer would evaluate your business by getting your Value Builder Score now.

Our guest

Eric loves being at the intersection of small business, logistics, and great food! He has been accused of being a serial entrepreneur since he started a lemonade stand in front of his childhood home in New Jersey at 10 years old. During the summer of 1990 he started a small limousine and corporate transportation company while in college in Providence RI. He built the business over 20 years and was named the RI Small Business Person of the Year in 2008. In 2010 he sold the business. Over the past few years Eric has been energized and focused by the mobile food industry. As the founder of www.FoodTrucksIn.com he is committed to helping people locate food trucks from coast to coast and border to border, and has built tools to help food trucks better communicate where they are Serving Now.