New Guidebook for Selling Events Business Provides Context, Steps and Considerations for Owners
By Maddy Ryley, Managing Editor
Published by Trade Show Executive
CHICAGO — Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, a team of financial advisory professionals, has published the “Selling Your Events Business: A Strategy for Founders, Owners and Senior Executives” guidebook, detailing the necessary steps and considerations event business owners should take to sell their company.
Organized into digestible chapters, the guidebook details the post-pandemic market landscape, signs that an owner is ready to sell, best practices for valuing the business and creating an exit strategy, as well as marketing the business to buyers, negotiation tactics, navigating the due diligence process and closing the deal.
Trade Show Executive spoke with the guidebook’s author Ken Sonenclar, Managing Director at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, and Reed Phillips, Managing Partner at the firm, about the process of selling an events business, and their thoughts on the most important things business owners should know.
Proving Value
Both Sonenclar and Phillips emphasized that proving growth and growth opportunity is important to the process of selling a business.
“Most buyers will pay up for a business that is growing and looks like it has additional growth opportunities,” Phillips said. “The more you can position your own company that way before you sell, the better. It’s always hard to go to market with a company if they’ve been declining for the last three years.”
“Experiential is really important,” Phillips said. “I think a lot of trade show operators are trying to find new formulas that are more interesting for attendees and draw more attendees; that’s the name of the game. You don’t want the show to be the same old show every year, you want to have some razzle dazzle surprises.”
The guidebook includes some special considerations within the chapters, to provide business owners with even more context and knowledge, including the impact of sustainability on the value of the sale, the power of AI and other technology in business operations and collateral lines of business within the valuation chapter.
“Collateral business raises value, especially if you only have one show that’s once a year,” Sonenclar said. “You like to be able to have reasons to maintain contact with your audience all year, and just sending out social media messages may not be enough. There are opportunities; it could be webinars, research, other sort of product types that not only bring money, but they are a way of securing your audience.”
The exit strategy chapter acknowledges the complexities of healthcare and life-science events, as well as special considerations for hosted-buyer events, and supplier and support companies. Sonenclar shared that healthcare and life-science events and businesses get premium prices.
Different Kinds of Buyers
In the Marketing Your Business to Potential Buyers chapter, the guidebook includes the buyers’ point of view, breaking down the priorities and most important considerations buyers are looking at, depending on if they are a strategic buyer (think a company that has an existing events portfolio looking for market opportunity) or a financial buyer (think private equity focused on strong returns for investors and growth potential).
The two shared that income statements, growth opportunities and positioning and the total addressable market are some of the most important information to have reporting and analysis on, no matter who the buyer is.
“I would say in some industries we work on, we focus on one group [of buyers] or the other, because they’re the more dominant buyers,” said Phillips. “But, for trade shows and events we go to both, both are equally important and equally aggressive.”
Lean on the Experts
“Ken wrote this report, and the concept was that a lot of owners that own trade show businesses, and maybe have never sold them before, could use a primer on how the process works,” Phillips said. “It’s important for them to start thinking about selling their business before they sell it. This report gives them a roadmap for how to sell your company, so that you can think about all of the things that you have to do in advance, rather than just deciding now is the time to sell — and then learning what all the things are that you have to do. There are a lot of tricks to the trade, and if you know what they are in advance, you can be prepared.”
However informative the guidebook is though, Sonenclar expressed that it is also important to work with experts to ensure that business owners are getting the maximum value for their companiy.
“This is an industry where there’s a lot of opportunity to sell, but it’s not an easy process,” Sonenclar said. “It should be clear that we’re in the business of selling companies, but we and any other bank will say if you want to get the best outcome for your sale, you do need advisors, whether it’s a legal advisor, accounting or business advisor.”
Learn more about the guidebook and download it here.
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