Nicola Lomas explains why it’s important to schedule time away from patients when selling your practice.
In my previous article in this series, I outlined the importance of planning when looking to keep the timeframe of your practice sale to a minimum.
Early in the process, it’s likely that you’ll be working out the intentions of prospective buyers and establishing who might make a serious offer. Once that period is over and you are into the detail of negotiating a deal, it’s time for the unavoidable task of dealing with the volumes of paperwork that, unfortunately, come with selling your practice.
My key piece of advice at this point is to set management time aside from your daily practice, more so than ever before. While the majority of the legwork will be done by your solicitor, there will be paperwork for you to digest on a regular basis, so it’s worth having a dedicated hour every week for reading documents and responding to emails.
Like selling a house, picking up the phone is normally the most time-efficient way forward, and many of the parties in your transaction may only be available in regular office hours, so some patient-free time will likely be necessary.
Understanding the process
As the time for exchanging contracts and completion approaches, it’s also worth keeping a trusted colleague on hand to witness the signing of any documents and having your printer/scanner in good working order. Whilst you don’t need to be present on the day of exchange or on completion, the load of documents will increase in the run up and it pays not to be held up by technology.
Having supported practice owners for more than 10 years, I would always recommend developing an in-depth understanding of the full process as early as possible. To that end, Brabners provides a full guide to the buying and selling process, which is available free of charge and with no obligation when you contact us for a consultation.
In the final article in this series, I’ll look at what your prospective buyer will need to have in place to ensure the sale process runs as smoothly as possible.
For more information visit brabners.com, call 0151 600 3321 or email [email protected].