When selling your video or alarm monitoring business, determining a sale price and sale timing has financial, logistical, and emotional ramifications. Without question, having an experienced broker on your side, one who understands the security industry and business finance, will help you carefully assess your options and make informed decisions.

Business owners should have an experienced security industry broker evaluate the estimated value of their business. However, selling your business as a going concern is potentially the most complicated and consequential transaction of your career, and you definitely don’t want to leave any money on the table.

What you need is an informed opinion on calculating a sale price, insights into the sale process, and the support of an experienced, knowledgeable broker who specializes in your industry. After working so hard to help your video or alarm monitoring company grow and succeed for so many years, you don’t want to sell it (or yourself) short. Seller’s remorse can be a painful and lasting experience.

Business brokers bring a sophisticated knowledge of the prevailing mergers and acquisitions marketplace, the current operating metrics and financial multiples used to value video and alarm monitoring companies, the landscape of prospective buyers, and the firms that would be the best to approach first about purchasing your company.

Business owners selling their companies sometimes take the first offer without doing the necessary homework and market research. You definitely don’t want to get outsmarted by a private equity-backed buyer who understands prevailing issues in the video and alarm monitoring industry like the impact of new security technology, emerging options for Software-as-a-Service and Cloud data storage, hybrid remote/on-site operations at your clients’ workplaces, and other considerations that affect the value of your business. A broker can help protect you from this risk.

It’s also important when selling any business to have a buffer between you as the seller and potential buyers. Sharing of confidential, proprietary information like commercial accounts and profitability is crucial to any purchase and sale of a business. An experienced broker knows which cards to put on the table on your behalf and which ones to hold close to their chest in order to lay out a clear and compelling picture to potential buyers.

Beyond the financial aspect, an experienced broker is also an intermediary on behalf of a seller, who often, understandably, has an emotional connection to their company. If you’ve grown your video or alarm monitoring business over a period of years, you’ve no doubt established personal connections with long-term clients, business partners, and employees. So, it’s not unusual, when selling the business to act with emotion and irrationality and end up not receiving fair value. An objective, third-party, can will help you avoid an outcome you may regret.

When choosing a business broker for the sale of a video or alarm monitoring company, it’s important to find one who’s seasoned in the security industry and has expertise in valuations and the sales process. Brokers with experience in manufacturing, shipping, or hospitality might have well-honed negotiating skills and understand how to sell a business, but they’re not going to have specific security industry knowledge required to get you the best value. They don’t know the buyers and they don’t know how much video and alarm monitoring companies are worth.

You should hire a broker who has not only worked with a range of clients in the security industry, but who has also managed a large security operation, represented sellers and buyers on both sides of the acquisition process, and, ideally, is a trained financial professional such as a certified public accountant.

Rest assured that the fee you pay a broker is going to be recouped many times over – it’s small compared to the additional value you’ll gain. Experience has shown that business owners who represent themselves in a sale transaction leave a lot of money on the table. A broker with security industry experience and financial expertise knows how to get you the best possible sales price, one likely much higher than you would if you go for it on your own.