The pandemic is bringing about a paradigm shift in the economic model. Barcelona focused its industry on tourism and, for now, it seems that this activity will take time to recover or find a new way of being. Many SMEs are going through a tough time and their owners may be considering selling them. As may also be thinking of buying those people who have lost their jobs and can afford to start running a business. And, in times of crisis, prices fall and it can be a good opportunity to take the risk of buying.
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The buying and selling of a company is not an easy process, much less for an SME. Basically because the knowledge to do so is not as accessible to small owners and entrepreneurs as it is to the executives of large companies. Faced with this situation, Laura Sallent and Oriol Alba decided to create Lemon Value, a digital academy where they teach what steps to follow to buy a company, how to determine its value, and how to fill out all the necessary documents to formalize the operation.
After going through Reempresa
Sallent and Alba met at Reempresa, an initiative promoted by the employers' association Cecot and the Autoocupació foundation, with the collaboration of the Generalitat. Reempresa functions as an exchange space between entrepreneurs who sell SMEs and those who acquire them, known as re-entrepreneurs.
The promoters of Lemon Value met at Reempresa, an exchange space between entrepreneurs who sell SMEs and those who acquire them, promoted by CecotThe two were part of Reempresa since its creation in 2011, and throughout all these years they were seeing that there was no platform that could offer knowledge in Spanish about buying and sellingof SMEs digitally and quickly, after realizing that entrepreneurs and new entrepreneurs often did not have too much time to prepare for this process. For this reason, Sallent and Alba have prepared short classes with videos that do not have to be followed consecutively, making it easier for students to go to what interests them most.
Commitment to digital training
At the beginning of this year, they decided to promote Lemon Value, taking into account that they saw how home-based training was gaining strength. Without knowing it, this would be one of the activities that has accelerated the most during the pandemic, with confinement at home and the enhancement of telematics tools. Precisely during these months was when they began to work on the new academy, designing the training program and learning how to create web pages, to be able to make their own.
In mid-November, Lemon Value was ready and, since then, they have already added about 50 students to their courses. Sallent and Alba, recently appointed new general secretary of Cecot, want their classes to serve those people who want to buy and sell an SME, but also professionals who offer management, advisory or consulting services. It is to them that entrepreneurs usually turn when they are faced with a buying and selling situation and perhaps do not have this specific knowledge to give them an answer.
Courses to overcome negotiation difficulties
Sallent and Alba have designed a total of four courses. One is free and includes the main keys to the SME transmission process. If you want to go deeper, the other three are more specific: how to buy a company; how to fill in all the documents and contracts, with about twenty templates and instructions on how to do it, and how to determine the value of a company, differentiating between price and value, and learning about the different valuation methods for non-financials.
The academy offers four courses, one of which is free, that provide all the necessary information for the transmission of an SMEThe Lemon Value coursesthey also want to provide the necessary tools to avoid those situations in which negotiations break down and make an agreement between the buyer and seller impossible.Sallent points out a few. The first is the lack of trust between the two parties, when, for example, the seller is not entirely transparent with information about their company and the buyer begins to doubt its viability. One that is closely related to this first one is the lack of understanding to reach an agreement, without putting oneself in the other's shoes or wanting to haggle, attitudes that, according to Sallent, lead to agreements that end up being unstable because one of the parties does not feel comfortable.
Another difficulty in the sale of an SME is when its value has to be established and, consequently, its price determined. The excessive value that sellers believe their companies have can affect this, considering that they have often dedicated a lifetime to them. It also influences when buyers cannot afford a certain price and reject proposals that could fit them, without thinking about seeking financing. In fact, Sallent indicates that obtaining financing is one of the parts that most distresses buyers, who often do not know what the best option is.