Member Article

Digital business-selling platform launched by North East entrepreneur

North East entrepreneur Barry Gill has launched a digital platform for business owners, wesellanycompany.com, to sell their companies online.

Qualified accountant Barry, who has worked both in-house and consultancy-side in the corporate finance sector, launched the venture after struggling to find a simple and straight forward business selling platform while working for TIG Corporate Finance.

With a third of fees paid to wesellanycompany.com going towards targeted, social media adverts for each company on sale, part of the firm’s USP lies in breaking away from the traditional business selling model.

Barry believes this concept to be truly unique and a means of significantly extending the potential views of listings and, in turn, driving buyers back to the website to register their interest in the company for sale.

He explained: “A number of companies have signed up to the platform and the feedback we’ve had has been that people are impressed by the fact that we support each listing on the site with targeted social media adverts across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

“This is a totally unique concept and not something that has been done before. It means through the website, we could list a business for sale anywhere in the world and then use the adverts to target potential buyers in that location – we don’t just sit back and hope that someone will stumble across the website and see a business listing.

“In fact, we’ve already got a gym in Spain for sale listed on wesellanycompany.com – the concept of supporting listings through social media is definitely a unique selling point for our customers.”

Users of wesellanycompany.com can sign up to use the service for 30, 60 or 90 days with packages costing £150, £250 and £350 + VAT respectively.

In addition, insolvency practitioners can register to use the site for accelerated sales, listing the business on the platform for two weeks for a fee of £100 + VAT.

Each registered user of the site will receive regular email updates with information about how their listing is performing online supported by social media advertising.

The service is particularly useful for insolvency practitioners, says Barry, as email updates provide sellers with evidence of having marketed the sale of the business to other potential buyers, in line with SIP16 legislation.

He added: “Business owners and the agents acting on their behalf are busy people.

“I didn’t want wesellanycompany.com to be another task for them to complete on their long to-do list. Users of the site fill in a simple online form and wait for potential buyers to get in touch.

“Users aren’t bogged down with setting up and managing the social media adverts – that’s what we do and it’s all part of our simple and straightforward service.”