@yonkercauthenreith I've witnessed it, but have not had to make the hard decisions. FWIW, here's my perspective:
The sale will be only as good as your broker. Make sure you have the very best one.
A really good broker recently said, "Every successful business deal is a miracle." I'm seeing that. At the very last moment, a misstep (on behalf of the buyer, actually), led to one of the business' best customers getting offended; as a result, predicted profits dropped, the bank won't give them near as much funding, and the deal probably won't (and shouldn't) go through.
It's a long, tiring process, and one you may need to go through multiple times (like selling a house).
This is a manufacturing business. The buyer had already low-balled because he didn't have access to enough funding. When he made the fatal blunder with the customer, the offer price dropped to 40% of the original asking price. He was part of a group that buys businesses, "optimizes" them, and then flips them.
Some of the changes the new owner hoped to make were suggested to the business owner during a consultation, but the owner didn't want to do them, for various reasons. He is excellent at his skill set, and super intelligent, but he tended to do what he personally liked, instead of what made the most sense businesswise. The point is, if you are dealing with a group that wants to flip your business, if you leave them to do the optimizing, you will be leaving money on the table.
