Negotiating a Deal Means Asking Questions
Successful Deals Rely on Questions At the heart of any good deal is a series of questions. Selecting a business that is right for you is about asking the right questions and probing deeper when those answers seem problematic. Brokerage professionals are an essential ally in the negotiation process as they possess the skills necessary to complete complex deals. The Importance of Proper...Read More
What Are the Red Flags When Buying a Business?
By Troy Frank, Owner — Indiana Equity Brokers Estimated read time: 7 min The short answer: The most serious red flags when buying a business are owner dependency, customer concentration above 30% of revenue, financials that don’t reconcile to the tax returns, margins that have quietly declined for two or three years, and a seller who can’t give a straight answer about why...Read More
How Much Money Do You Need to Buy a Business?
By Troy Frank, Owner — Indiana Equity Brokers Estimated read time: 7 min The short answer: For most Main Street acquisitions using an SBA 7(a) loan, you need a minimum 10% equity injection of total project cost — and the SBA allows up to half of that to come from a seller note on full standby. That means a buyer with 5% in cash plus a 5% standby seller note can meet the requirement. On a...Read More
Is Owning a Business Right for You?
By Troy Frank, Owner, Indiana Equity Brokers Estimated read time: 6 min The short answer: Owning a business is right for you if you want to control your income, you can handle uncertainty, and you’re willing to earn autonomy through responsibility. It isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine. One thing the data makes clear: buying an established business is far safer than...Read More
How to Evaluate a Business Before You Buy It
The short answer: Evaluating a business before buying it means digging into five core areas: the financials, the seller’s motivation, operational risks, customer concentration, and whether the asking price is grounded in reality. Most Main Street businesses in Indiana sell for 2–3x seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE), and due diligence typically takes 30 to 90 days. A deal that...Read More
How to Negotiate the Sale of Your Business
The short answer: Skilled negotiation typically moves the final sale price of a business by 8–15% above what a seller would achieve without it — and on terms like deal structure, earn-outs, and tax allocation, the variance can be even higher. On a $2M Indiana business, that’s $160K to $300K decided at the negotiating table, not in the marketing phase. The seven strategies below are the...Read More
How to Buy a Business in Indiana and Actually Close: A Buyer’s Guide to High Success Rates
About 60% to 70% of would-be business buyers never close on a transaction. They make it to a signed NDA, sometimes even to a letter of intent, and then the deal collapses — usually for reasons the buyer didn’t see coming. After two-plus decades and 871+ closed transactions in the Indiana market, I can tell you the buyers who actually finish the process and own a business at the end of it...Read More
What to Know Before Buying an Indiana Business for the First Time
The short answer: Buying an existing business in Indiana is one of the fastest paths to business ownership, but most first-time buyers underestimate how different the process is from anything they’ve done before. The deals that close tend to follow the same pattern: a buyer who defined their target clearly before they started looking, got their financing in order early, understood what...Read More
How to Buy a Business in Indiana
Most first-time buyers I talk to in Indiana fall into one of two camps. The first group has been thinking about it for years, has a 401(k) to roll over, and wants to know what’s actually for sale in Central Indiana right now. The second group spotted a listing on a Saturday, called me on Monday, and is already mentally drafting an offer. Both groups skip the same three things — and those...Read More
