Understanding Business Valuation: An Owner's Guide to the Business Appraisal Process

The process of having your business valued can be daunting for the small business owner. And it can be invasive, to say the least. A complete stranger asks for – and expects to get – documents that you as an owner don’t even share with most employees, and with a level of depth that makes you wonder whether you ever even had that sort of document. And then, the appraiser wants to follow the request for documents with an interview in which that same stranger (and sometimes her assistant) asks questions that can seem more personal than those asked by your doctor. Then when you get the finished product, the words come across as complete mumbo-jumbo, a blur of jargon that leaves you feeling like you got taken for a ride; not to mention if you have a reason to want the value to be either high or low, it can never be high enough or low enough.
The point of this book is to help you, as a small business owner, understand what the appraiser is trying to accomplish, why she does the things she does and why she asks for the information she asks for. This will help you communicate effectively with the appraiser so that she addresses issues and concerns that arise during the process.