Our business has been listed for about 7 months now. First couple months we had decent interest, maybe 8-10 inquiries. Now it's just crickets. The listing shows up in searches but I know buyers skip over anything older than 3-4 months. We've dropped the price once already. Broker keeps saying "be patient" but I'm starting to think the listing itself is the problem. Anyone dealt with this? What actually works to revive a dead listing without looking desperate?
Stale Listing
When your listing gets stale and nobody cares anymore
Seven months isn't that long honestly. Buyers who are serious will still look. The tire kickers are the ones who filter by listing date.
The listing date is less important than the photos and the first two lines of your description. If those are weak nothing else matters. I'd pull the listing for two weeks, redo the photos with better lighting, rewrite the opening paragraph to lead with your strongest number, then relist as new. Most platforms let you do that. Doesn't look desperate, it just looks like you refreshed the asset.
What's the actual reason buyers gave when they walked away? You said 8-10 inquiries. Did any get to due diligence?
Two got to LOI stage. One backed out over financing, the other wanted us to carrry a note we weren't comfortable with at the time. The rest just ghosted after the first call.
Ghosting after first call usually means your financials don't match the story in the listing. Not saying that's your situation but it's common. Buyers see a listed revenue figure, get a call, hear the add-backs, and the number shrinks. They fade.
That's a fair point. If the listing says one thing and the call reveals another, you're burning your own prospects.
Had a client with a listing up for 11 months. We didn't do anything fancy. We just started calling every inquiry that had gone cold and asked one question: what would have made this a yes for you? Three of them told us the price wasn't the issue, the seller's transition plan was. He wanted out in 60 days. Nobody wanted to buy a business where the owner vanishes. Once he agreed to 6 months of support the next listing sold in 9 weeks. Might not be your issue but worth asking.
Relisting is fine but if the underlying business doesn't have a compelling reason for someone to buy it right now, a fresh listing date won't fix that. What's your growth trajectory look like? Are Are you shrinking or flat? If the nymbers have been flat for a year buyers assume the best days are behind it.
I'll second the transition thing. Every buyer I've talked to in the last two years has been obsessed with seller financing and transition support. More than price. The market shifted.
Also what platform is it listed on. Some of the smaller ones get almost no traffic after the first 90 days. If you're not on the two or three that buyers actually watch, you're invisible regardless of how good the listing looks.
Didn't think about the add-back issue until now. My listing headline has an EBITDA number that includes a couple of one-time items but the broker told me to list it that way. Maybe that's why the calls go quiet. Also we're on two of the big platforms already but I'll check traffic on the second one.