At WeSellOpticians we understand that selling a optician practice can be an incredibly stressful and lengthy process. There is an ocean of information out there on selling a business online, through personal connections or through a broker. You may be feeling overwhelmed, with no clear starting point.

We have put together this guide that we hope will give you simple and helpful guidance on selling your optician practice so you can close this chapter and begin a new one.

The time has come to sell your optician practice, you could be sole trader, partnership, or limited company. You may have more questions than answers. How do you value your optician practice, and where do you start in your preparations to sell? In this guide we will run through the following 8 essential steps to answer your questions:

1. Right time to sell your optician practice
2. How to prepare your optician practice for a sale
3. Elements you need to improve
4. How to value your optician practice
5. Going to market and finding the right buyer
6. Due diligence when selling your optician practice
7. Negotiation advice
8. Closing the deal and post-sale considerations

Remember, selling your optician practice will take up a lot of your time, and the profits you receive will be impacted by the reason you want to sell, when you decide to sell, and the efficiency of your business operations.

1: RIGHT TIME TO SELL YOUR OPTICIAN PRACTICE

Deciding when to sell your optician practice is one of the hardest decisions you’ll make as a owner, and it will be motivated by a range of factors that are either out of your control or voluntary.

Regardless of your motivation, the timing of your sale can have considerable influence on its selling price. Sale price typically reflects past performance and profits, so taking this into account may help you reach a decision on when to put your optician practice on the market.

Here are some examples of when the right time to sell your optician practice will be:

Declining profits and performance
This is a challenging time for any optician practice owner, but it is possible to sell a business as a going concern. You may be experiencing a slump in performance, demotivation, falling profits or a competitive threat that you cannot overtake. If your optician practice can continue operating without a threat of liquidation, it is still possible to sell it to a buyer that can attempt to improve it. If your optician practice has become insolvent, you need to be aware that your sale price will be significantly lower.

Rising profits and performance
Why would you want to sell your optician practice if it is experiencing rising profits? Because a growing business will always sell quickly at a better price, and investors will be keen to take advantage of future market success. Periods of growth and success are always a suitable time to sell, but this circumstance will require a lot of thought and decision-making.

You’re no longer motivated to run the optician practice
As a optician practice grows, entrepreneurial challenges that were once exciting motivators can turn into mundane tasks. If this is something you’re feeling, then it may be time to sell your optician practice.

Your optician practice has outgrown your skills
This is a tough circumstance to face, but business ownership and leadership also require humility. If your skills no longer match the growth of your optician practice, you should consider selling it to someone who can take it to new heights.

Other reasons to sell your optician practice include:

• Competitive threats you cannot overcome
• A larger firm wants to acquire your optician practice
• You want to release capital so you can retire or start something new

Regardless of your reason for selling your small or large optician practice, you should always have an exit strategy in place. This will allow you to refer to objectives, manage your expectations and remain focused throughout the selling process. So, let’s run through how to prepare this Exit Strategy.

2: HOW TO PREPARE YOUR OPTICIAN PRACTICE FOR SALE

Preparing your optician practice for sale is a crucial task, as it will emphasize attractive opportunities, highlight its value drivers, and uncover risks or threats that potential buyers will want to know.

Before we get into the details, it’s important to note that the average time it takes to sell a optician practice is 1-3 months, but this could take longer depending on the deal structure, legal issues and parties involved. It’s worth mentioning this, so you can manage your expectations on how long it will take to sell your optician practice.

There are some questions you should ask yourself regarding your optician practice. This will help you determine if your optician practice is in a strong position to attract quality buyers.

• Do you have a large market share?
• Do you have valuable intellectual property?
• Does your optician practice have potential to expand?
• Is your customer base loyal and growing?
• Do you have a strong and reliable team to carry the optician practice business when you’re gone?
• Are your optician practice business operations efficient?
• Does your optician practice model work?

If your answer to all these questions is no, then you need to work on them before you put your optician practice on the market to sell. Even if your answers are yes, you need to make sure that you take certain actions to improve and prepare your optician practice for sale.

3: ELEMENTS YOU NEED TO IMPROVE

Your optician practice needs to be attractive to buyers, so ensure that any overdue contracts are signed, employee disputes are settled, and new leases (if applicable) are agreed. You should think about the following elements before you sell your optician practice:

• Employment contracts
• Updating (or creating) a staff handbook
• Streamlining your financials
• Keep your records up to date
• Consider investing in an audit to reassure buyers that your optician practice business has a solid profit history
• Protect your valuable assets (like trademarks or patents)
• Prepare your management team to take over responsibilities
• Get expert advice on what deal structure suits you

Some other elements you’ll want to think about when selling your optician practice are the handover period and payment options. Will you want to leave the business immediately, or stay on for a transition period? Regarding payment plans between a you and the buyer, you could consider the following:

• Share sale
• Asset sale
• Merger and acquisition
• A management buyout
• Earn-out agreement
• Seller financing
• Paying in instalments

Paying tax when selling your optician practice
In most cases, optician practice owners will make a profit when selling their business. This means that you’ll make monetary gains on the value of your assets. If you’ve held these assets for more than one year (and you’ve sold them for a profit), you will owe the government capital gains tax. Depending on certain circumstances, you could be eligible for tax relief through Business Asset Disposal Relief.

This is a very simple explanation of paying capital gains tax when selling your optician practice, so we recommend visiting the UK Government website for more information on allowances, reporting your capital gains, and other helpful resources.

If you’re a sole trader and you want to sell your optician practice, you’ll need to inform HMRC and complete a self-assessment tax return.

Once you are confident that you’ve improved, settled, and updated all or most of the elements above, the next crucial step is understanding how much your optician practice is worth.

4: VALUE YOUR OPTICIAN PRACTICE

In this section will run through why a valuation is crucial when selling your optician practice, and some standard approaches you can use to understand your optician practice’s worth.

Getting an honest valuation before selling your optician practice will help you set a realistic asking price for buyers. This information will also help reassure buyers and emphasize areas in your business that need improvement or can build further value. It’s crucial that you can defend this valuation. Don’t undervalue years of dedication and time. In the same breath, you should be careful not to overvalue your business, as this will make finding a buyer a particularly challenging process.

Before we list valuation methods, let’s look at some factors that will affect (either positively or negatively) the value of a optician practice:

• Why are you selling your optician practice? Is it voluntary or forced?
• Your intangible and tangible assets
• The durability of these assets against macro and micro external influences

When it comes to choosing a method to value your optician practice, this will depend on the size of your business, your assets and other factors. Here are a few methods you could consider:

• Asset approach
• SDE (Seller Discretionary Earnings)
• Price-to-Earnings Ratio and EBITDA
• Entry Cost Valuation
• Discounted Cash Flow
• Comparable Analysis

If you’re looking to value your optician practice quickly, you can use our quick Valuation Tool. This tool has been engineered to offer a credible, estimate valuation based on two financial details you insert.

5: ADVERTISING YOUR OPTICIAN PRACTICE FOR SALE

Now that you have all your preparations complete, you’ll need to create a document that summarizes your optician practice’s selling points. This will need to include information that will be attractive to a buyer: USPs, turnover, reasons for selling, growth potential, location, and other elements.

You can sell your optician practice through us and gain access to serious buyers. You can read our article on how to sell your optician practice with us.

There are many advantages when using us to sell your optician practice:

• Access to serious buyers
• We have active buyers seeking to buy optician practices
• Nationwide reach
• Keeping the entire sale process confidential
• We can help move the deal along
• We can offer expert advice and analysis
• Our practice sales director Safwan Ul Amin can be the main point of contact, so you can focus on running the business
• We are experts at closing deals
• We conduct extensive due diligence on buyers to make sure they are committed, qualified and able to meet the asking price

Confidentiality 
We maintain confidentiality when selling your optician, to protect it from prying competitors, or internal speculation because you could have sensitive information, trade secrets or valuable ideas that you don’t want to divulge. If this is the case, ensure that all buyers introduced to you via us sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The next step in your selling journey will be due diligence, whereby the buyer and their professional team will carry out a rigorous inspection of your optician practice business.

6: DUE DILIGENCE PROCESS

At this stage in the selling process, your optician practice will be open to scrutiny by interested buyers and their professional team. Due diligence can uncover some of the hidden legal, financial, and commercial aspects of the business, and poor preparation could cost you. It is essential that you remain transparent during this stage.

Most of the interested buyers will have a list of documents or aspects of the business they want access to. Some of the elements you will be asked for during due diligence include:

• Statutory accounts (usually last 3 years)
• NHS statements
• VAT Accounts
• Bank Statments
• POS records
• Forecasts
• Budgets
• Monthly management accounts
• Employee information
• Client and supplier contracts
• Shareholder agreements
• Registered assets
• Legal claims
• Customer complaints

Of course, due diligence can look different from above and the buyers can request other information but most of the time its just what we have listed above. Nonetheless, you need to be as honest as possible. We do recommend hiring a legal professional to help you manage this stage.

The next step will be negotiating the sale of your optician practice, which is something that takes finesse, skill, and compromise which we are experts at.

7: NEGOTIATING WITH BUYERS

Whether you are a seller or a buyer, negotiating a business is a complex process. It requires comprehensive planning, practice, and patience. We have the necessary skills and experience to negotiate on your behalf with the seller to obtain the best asking price.

We work with four key negotiation skills:

7.1 Interpersonal skills
We touch base with buyer, we cover core terms and goals for selling. Communicate clearly and listen closely. We try to understand what the buyer wants and what we can and can’t control.

7.2 Careful honesty
As we previously explained, transparency is crucial when selling a business. We work with honesty to make sure all financial and legal details are met.

7.3 Flexibility
Being able to compromise is a key negotiation skill. We work with flexibility and not lose sight of the agreements we and the buyer have made. We manage expectations and perceptions.

7.4 Control
We take total control over with the buyer and make sure the negotiations are clear and by outlining everything in writing in Head of Terms.

8: CLOSING THE DEAL

We are experts at closing deals on behalf of optician practice owners. When we carry out the sale of your optician practice, we will review agreements as outlined in the head of terms before going to solicitors. Some of the agreements we will review are:

• Purchase and sale agreement
• Tax deeds
• Indemnity agreements
• Transfer documents
• Warranties
• Seller and buyer protection
• Non-compete agreements

Once the deal is finalised, and you haven’t informed your employees, now would be the best time to do it. Let them know if they will be affected, and how they will be supported.

HOW WESELLOPTICIANS CAN HELP YOU

It’s clear that selling a optician practice is not an easy task. It will take time to prepare and improve your operations, conduct an accurate valuation, get through the due diligence phase, negotiate documents, and finally, complete the sale, we can do all the above for you and save you time and effort.

WeSellOpticians has been helping optician practice owners throughout United Kingdom sell their businesses for over 5 years. We have a growing database of buyers, and a proactive customer care team led by our Practice Sales Director Safwan Ul Amin.

Let us help you sell your optician practice and work as a broker on your behalf. Read Our Guidance On How To Sell Your Optician Practice With Us.

If you wish to speak to us or have any questions you can contact our Practice Sales Director on:

Safwan Ul Amin
T: 02037332315
E: info@wesellopticians.co.uk
WeSellOpticians