Articles

Despite the best of intentions, even once the framework of a practice sale is agreed, it is often still very hard to predict the exact date that a deal will settle. Even with the buyer and seller doing all that they can to prioritise and expedite the deal, a transaction can be at the mercy of the availability and circumstances of many other people’s lives, including:

The devastating bushfires that took place over last summer have become a distant memory for many people, as have the courage and sacrifices of the Volunteer Firefighters. We interviewed Dr Richard Warren a few months ago, one of our dentist vendors from 2019, for our “Life After” series and found that he is one of the volunteers who spent much of the fire season on call and in the field, working tirelessly to save homes, businesses and wildlife. We owe volunteers like Richard a lot!

There is a famous Brothers Grimm story about a princess who found her prince by kissing a frog. From this story, the saying "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince" has come into common use, as a way of saying that the pursuit of any prize may take multiple attempts.

So happy to be able to help YWAM with this acquisition. Sounds like it will make a massive difference in the oral health of PNG school kids!

Dental practice sales involve large sums of money changing hands. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars being paid in compensation for goodwill.

As Australia combats COVID-19, there is a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds. The current situation is essentially unprecedented in human history. While there are some “chicken littles” out there, running around saying that the “sky is falling” and hoarding enough toilet paper to satisfy a small country, most people believe that the outbreak of COVID-19 will run its course within a few months. When it does, there will be many dentists who will be worried about the impact the economic shutdown will have had on the value of their practice, particularly if they are at a stage in life where selling is typically the next step. While no one has a crystal ball here, there are plenty of reasons not to be distressed.

My practice was a low - level suburban practice, so I didn’t anticipate a lot of interest. However, we had 13 interested parties come through to view the practice within a week or so. The new owners are a lovely couple, a husband and wife who are both dentists. I am still working for them two days a week. They are able to offer a number of things, which I hadn’t been prepared to do. I’m lucky as they have been extremely easy to work with. If I have a problem I can talk to them about it, and they are happy for me to do the two days. I’m very busy on those days – I often think I work harder on those two days than I did before I sold the practice!

There is a famous Aesop’s fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The race starts and the hare races ahead and soon leaves the tortoise far behind. Confident of winning, the hare takes a nap towards the end of the race and when he awakens, he finds that he has lost the race.

There is a school of thought that in a price negotiation, the buyer should point out every fault, weaknesses, minor flaw and imperfection of the acquisition and talk down any strengths in order to justify giving the vendor a lower than expected price.

As a dental practice business broker, my job is to represent the vendor’s interests in a business sale and get them the best possible price and terms in a transaction. Knowing this, some buyers feel that it isn’t in their interests to have a broker like me involved in their sale, as my sole function is to act for the other side. What these buyers don’t realise is that by faithfully representing the vendor in a practice sale, I also bring many benefits to the buyer that would not be there if the vendor was acting alone.