The Internet - friend, foe or double agent?

29/01/2010 by info.

Ah, yes, the World Wide Web, the Internet, what fiendishly clever stuff. Everywhere, isn’t it? Still Growing and a fabulous business tool!

Yes, it is. But do you realise quite how fiendishly clever? Quite how much everywhere it is? And what a double-edged business tool it is?

A little bit of history to begin with. As a business transfer tool, the Internet’s been with us for about ten years now. In contrast to traditional newspapers such as Daltons Weekly, it is a hugely efficient medium for agents to find buyers and get businesses sold. Using business for sale websites, buyers now have at their fingertips a wealth of information about virtually any business on the market that interests them. A fabulous marketing tool indeed for the agent.

But just imagine (if you don’t find the idea too outrageous!) a seller trying to pull the wool over a buyer’s eyes.

Imagine that sales details of the Stalefish Arms, a Suffolk seaside restaurant, has charmed a prospective purchaser with glowing descriptions of the reputation the establishment enjoys for service, good food, quality wines and well-kept local beers.

And now imagine the prospective purchaser searching Google, just to impress friends with the Michelin Rated Restaurant he is going to buy, but finding instead independent reviews putting the Stalefish Arms top of a list of Restaurants Best Avoided If You Enjoy Eating. The customer comments are unprintable in a respectable newsletter.

That’s the snag with the Internet. Without your having the foggiest idea, it’s looking over your shoulder at everything you do, recording your secrets on so many billions of terabytes that a bailout of City bankers sounds like small change!

It’s no longer a case of buyer beware. In the Internet age, it’s the seller beware.

For buyers there is sufficient information out there to highlight pros and cons alike of a transaction and to speed up due diligence before any binding commitment is made.

Whereas sellers nowadays are well advised to go online to find out what people are really saying about their businesses. If they’re lucky, they might have time to change their reputation. Not by posting false reviews but by improving the way they run their business.

If they don’t, there’ll be no sale, or not at the price they want!

As the old, true saying has it, keep your friends close - but your enemies even closer!

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