Selling a business is often compared to selling a house. Many people believe it’s mostly the market that drives the prices up and down, and little to nothing can be done to increase the value of a business yourself. This can't be further from the truth. Here we'll work through the 8 main things you can do to increase the value and the "sellability" of your Amazon FBA business right now to put more money in your pocket.

1. 8 Tips for Selling Your
Amazon FBA Business
in 2019
Bryan O’Neil
TheFBAGuys.com

2. How do we know this stuff?
 24 years of combined experience in Online Business Valuations and
Business Brokerage.
 In 2018, launched an Amazon FBA Business Valuation tool
 First-hand data of over 3,400 Amazon businesses
 The largest and most accurate data set that anyone has

3. Overview
 #1 - Make Sure Your Business is Growing
 #2 - Avoid Going Out of Stock
 #3 - Don’t Over-Optimize Your Taxes
 #4 - Clean Up Your Books
 #5 - Don’t Launch New SKUs
 #6 - Avoid Big Changes
 #7 - Know What Your Business is Worth

4. Make Sure Your Business is Growing
 When selling your business, timing is everything!
 Sell too early and you’ll give it away too cheaply
 Leave it for too late and you’ll risk going into a decline
 In the perfect world, you would sell when the business is at its peak
 In reality, it’s very difficult to determine this point until it’s too late
 A lot depends on your level of confidence and your risk tolerance
 Always try to capitalize on “quick and easy” growth opportunities, leaving the bigger
and more time-consuming things for the buyer of the business.

5. Avoid Going Out of Stock
 Going out of stock is the #1 reason why otherwise great businesses sell for
pennies on the dollar!
 A dip in sales over the last 12 months always has a negative impact on the
valuation
 This is true even if it’s truly a one-time event or the result of a mishap
 Some sellers and brokers try to “model this back” but it never works in the full extent
 The actual loss of revenue is only half of the picture
 One needs to look two levels deeper: the knock-on effect (often significant) and the
effect on the valuation (measured in a multiple) can exceed the direct loss of revenue
many times!
 It’s always better to risk buying too much inventory than to risk going out of stock

6. Don’t Over-Optimize Your Taxes
 Tax-Optimization is an everyday part of each business, but leading up to the
sale, you have to be conservative.
 Current and previous financial years are the most important periods.
 Avoid tax write-offs and add-backs that are not 100% clear and explainable
 Travel & Accommodation
 Failed Marketing Campaigns
 Launching other businesses
 Unrelated Legal Costs
 Etc.

7. Clean Up Your Books
 Messy Books are the main reason deals get delayed in due diligence. Often,
they fall through entirely.
 Take care to avoid the following:
 Not using proper accounting software
 Having your accounting cash-based, not accrual
 Counting all Amazon payments as “gross income” without a breakdown
 Lumping too many items together in a single line-item
 Co-mingling different business’s income or expenses
 P&Ls and Tax Returns not adding up

8. Don’t Launch New SKUs
 NOT black-and-white advice
 You should keep launching new SKUs if that’s what you’ve been doing so far.
 If you’ve launched 10 new SKUs each year, keep the same pace
 Otherwise, avoid launching new products 6-12 months before selling the
business
 Buyers dislike any changes
 It takes time for new products to start generating revenue. You won’t realize the
full potential until more than a year after the launch.
 Launch costs, however, are immediate and will hurt your valuation.

9. Avoid Big Changes
 Avoid making any big changes to the business 6-12 months before the sale
 You should still:
 Keep ordering inventory
 Manage your ad campaigns
 Run the day-to-day
 But try to avoid
 Changing vendors
 Hiring or firing employees
 Making big investments
 Entering new markets
 Buyers appreciate and value stability over everything else!!!

10. Don’t Neglect The Business
 Neglecting your business is one of the biggest mistakes one can make
 Buyers want continuity and can “smell” a neglected business from miles away
 The “shiny object syndrome” is real and worth fighting against, as the
difference between the price of a healthy business and that of a neglected
one can be enormous.
 It often takes just 3 months to sell a business. Is the extra few hours a day for
3 months really worth putting a successful exit in jeopardy?

11. Know What Your Business is Worth
 Brokers routinely over-value and under-value businesses
 Over- and under-valuations can be caused either by ignorance or by a malicious
intent – both are very common!
 In both cases, you will end up selling for a price lower than the true market value
 Protect yourself by comparing options
 Talk to 3 different brokers and obtain valuations from all three. It usually takes
only a few calls and no reputable broker will charge you for a valuation.
 Use a tool like TheFBAGuys’ Valuation Tool (if you have an FBA business) to get an
idea of a rough market value first. It helps put things into perspective.

12. Give our Valuation Tool a try:
https://TheFBAGuys.com
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More information:
Bryan O’Neil
Founder & CEO
E-mail: bryan@bryanoneil.com
Web: https://TheFBAGuys.com