Selling your route

[John Ross]

I have always had a problem with the selling of a business.
The customers he had, have an understanding with him/her personally.
Who is to say that they would hire you. 
I think a fair way, might be to give a certain percentage of the job fee you get from, his referrals.
Even if you did not buy the business, if your work is good, and the price reasonably, you would probably have a fair number of these customers anyway.
I have lots of names of people I have tuned for, some of them for whatever reason, have had someone else tune. I usually find this out, when they call me back.
I never was one for calling to say it was time for a piano tuning, I always waited for them to call me.
I guess what I am trying to say is, what guarantee do you have that these are actually his customers.
I would be hesitant about offering any big buck price.
John M. Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada.
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Geoffrey Arnold 
  To: Pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:01 PM
  Subject: Selling your route






    Hi All!

    I have been working out the kinks in a contract with a retiring technician in a new area, where I would move, relying heavily on his client list, active business telephone number, and personal endorsment for my future business.

    I have sought the advice of several RPTs, and heard figures from $3,000 - $40,000 for such a business transaction. Any real world figures that might lend some aid in evaluating the monetary value of a 25 year tuner/technician business would be helpful

    We plan to use a percentage system for payment. One model is the "blue skies" fee in which the percentage is paid on gross annual income, arguing that business is brought from his reputation, and that no reliable method can be employed for seperating new business generated by me and my advertising, from old business coming from his client base and their referrals.
    The other model is a referral based percentage in which a percentage is paid on annual income resulting only from clients on the client list and direct refferals.

    It is the feeling of some technicians (and some of my family as well) that it isn't possible to sell a piano business assuming no transfer of physical property because it is a sole-proprietorship, and even if an old client trusted the seller, they will check the buyer out against the competition just as they would without the sellers endorsement. So one would do just as well to move into the area, advertise agressively, and pick up those pianos without any payment to the retiring technician. This is not my style but it does raise some issues.

    thanks so much for your thoughts on the matter!






  __________________________________________________
  Do You Yahoo!?
  Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
  http://mail.yahoo.com 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20060614/c5bfc0fe/attachment.html