So How Many Businesses Sell?

The number we'll use for our estimate is the one mentioned previously: 5,547,400 businesses. We'll round this off to 5,500,000, which incidentally is the same as last year. In this figure agriculture, mining, transportation, utilities, finance, insurance and real estate represent about 800,000 of the total. We realize that very few of these type businesses actually are sold by business brokers or intermediaries. We feel, however, that the 800,000 are offset by businesses that might be sold in the categories just mentioned, non-employee businesses, coupled with the fact that the numbers are not quite current and the number of businesses is growing at 2%+. The next question we are asked right after the number of businesses that sell is how many are sold by business brokers/intermediaries? This is like guessing at a number and then having to guess at a second number using the first guess. The number bandied about is that approximately 50 percent of businesses that actually sell are sold by business brokers. Our contention is that there may be a large number of businesses for sale, but the number that actually sell represents a small portion. Also, we don't think that lawyers, accountants, suppliers and the next-door-neighbor are involved in as many deals as business brokers and others like to think.

Our figures are based on several premises: that about 20 percent of all businesses are for sale at any one time; and that the smaller the business, the less likely it is to sell.