Books about buying a small business: where to begin

If you want to learn how a business search and purchase proceed, start by examining an acquisition guide. If you want to follow what buying a particular company asked of its new owner, a memoir offers a different kind of attention.

The descriptions of the four instructional books below come from their publisher or official book site. The comparison turns on what you want to understand before your next reading.

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: the search and purchase

Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business is presented by Harvard Business Review Press as a guide to buying and owning a business. Its stated coverage includes assessing whether the path fits, raising capital, finding and evaluating prospects, and negotiating with a seller.

That scope is relevant when your reading question concerns the work between deciding to investigate ownership and reaching a purchase. You may want an organized account of the questions involved in a search, including the work that precedes a promising candidate.

Use the published scope to identify the part you need most. A reader learning how a search works has a different immediate purpose from somebody trying to understand a seller’s continued role. The latter can also use the site’s reading on customer relationships after a sale to make that particular dependency more concrete.

If the gap is the negotiation itself

The purchase guide places negotiation within the acquisition process. A reader who already understands that sequence may want a closer look at how to discuss an agreement. Two books offer different stated emphases.

Getting to Yes: finding the interests behind the offer

Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton’s Getting to Yes emphasizes interests and options for agreement. The publisher’s page for the updated 2011 edition identifies all three authors and this approach.

Consider it when a discussion has narrowed to two prices and you want to examine what else each party needs. A seller’s departure date and the buyer’s need for customer knowledge might matter alongside the price. The worked negotiation about connected terms lets you try that kind of question before choosing another book.

Never Split the Difference: learning through the conversation

Chris Voss’s Never Split the Difference, written with Tahl Raz, emphasizes the human and conversational side of negotiation. The official book page describes questions, listening and understanding the other person’s perspective.

Consider it when your preparation is organized but you struggle to learn what a tense seller is concerned about. That is a different immediate reading purpose from mapping the transaction. For your next sample, name what is missing from the preparation: a possible change to the terms, or a better understanding of what the seller is telling you. Start with that question.

Buy Then Build: considering a different starting point

Walker Deibel’s Buy Then Build centers on acquisition entrepreneurship. Its official site presents buying an existing company as an alternative to starting from scratch, with the intention of developing the acquired operation.

Investigate this title when the prior question is whether you want an existing operation to be the starting point for your work. That is a different reading purpose from searching for a dramatic turnaround. A functioning business brings something to examine already: customers, people, work and arrangements that the proposed owner would inherit or need to replace.

The reading can help frame the route you want to understand. An actual company still needs its own account. The site’s comparison of two buyers follows one reason: the work and costs replacing the seller may differ between buyers even when the offered business is the same.

Infinite Upside: the purchase followed by a turnaround

Chapter 6 of Infinite Upside starts from a business that is losing money. Sheth sees vehicles and operating changes that could make a different company possible. Ownership then brings the work of getting from the acquired operation to that proposed one.

The chapter follows changes that cannot all happen at once. Vehicles take time to sell. Customer commitments continue while the fleet changes. Removing a storefront leaves collections, deliveries and paperwork needing another arrangement. Finding an expense is easier than finding every job that expense has been doing.

Those details make the memoir worth considering alongside process reading. You can follow a new owner’s particular judgments, including what the result later makes him reconsider. In Chapter 13, Sheth remains proud of the turnaround while questioning how little room he left for delay.

The acquisition reading guide brings the purchase and the continuing operation into the same account. Use it to see whether the story interests you, then return to the surrounding chapters in the book.

Give each kind of reading its own job

When a process description interests you, note what you want to learn to do: investigate prospects, understand a proposed arrangement or prepare for a transition. When the memoir interests you, note a particular judgment you want to examine. Keeping those purposes visible makes it easier to notice when a compelling story has become a substitute for an unanswered question.

For example, the fact that a buyer changed an acquired operation does not establish which changes another buyer can make. The seller’s records, continuing relationships and the buyer’s own capabilities belong to the proposed company. The book can make a reader more attentive to them; it cannot supply those missing facts.

If the question becomes whether the transition can fund its own middle, break-even and cash forecasts separates the operating target from the dates. That is a focused companion question, rather than another reason to treat every acquisition book as interchangeable.

When you return to the acquisition chapters, keep a note of which original judgment the later reflection changes.