How to Prepare a Business for Sale.
Brokers write the sales memo. Accountants clean the P&L. Neither tells you what's actually making your business hard to sell.
Most businesses that want to sell aren't ready. Not because the business is bad — because the foundation isn't visible to a buyer. Clean revenue, a real client base, a good location, loyal staff. None of it translates into a good sale price if the business can't demonstrate that it runs without the owner.
A broker will present the business well. An accountant will normalise the P&L. What neither of them will tell you is that a buyer is paying for a business they can step into — and if the business depends on you for every decision, client relationship, and operational call, what they're actually buying is a job. They won't pay a multiple for that.
“The exit starts earlier than most owners think. The work to make a business genuinely attractive to a buyer takes time to build and time to prove.”
What a buyer is actually paying for
When a buyer evaluates a business, they're assessing three things: whether the revenue is real and verifiable, whether it will continue after they take over, and what it will cost them to run it. The first is a financial question. The second and third are structural questions — and they're where most deals lose value or fall over.
Revenue continuity
Is the revenue attached to the business or to the owner? If clients come because of a personal relationship with the seller, a significant portion of revenue walks out the door at settlement.
Systems and documentation
Can the business be operated by someone who wasn't there when it was built? If processes live in the owner's head, the buyer inherits a dependency, not a system.
Team
Does the team perform without the owner? A business that loses key staff in the months after a sale is a business in crisis. Retention and performance structures matter.
Clean financials
Are personal expenses running through the business? Is the P&L an accurate picture of operating costs, or has it absorbed personal tax, vehicles, and entertainment? Normalisation is essential — and a buyer's accountant will do it if yours hasn't.
The normalised P&L — what it reveals
Many business owners believe their business is worth less than it is — because they're reading a P&L that includes personal tax, personal vehicles, family wages, entertainment, and other non-business costs. Strip those out and the actual owner earnings can be dramatically higher than the reported profit.
The inverse is also true: businesses that look profitable on the surface can reveal significantly thinner real margins when the owner's actual market-rate salary is accounted for. If the owner is working 60 hours a week and not paying themselves what they would cost as an employee, the business isn't as profitable as it appears.
A normalised P&L — one that strips out non-business costs and adds in a market-rate owner salary — gives an honest picture of what the business actually earns. That number, multiplied by an industry-appropriate multiple, is what the business is worth.
How long does exit preparation actually take?
Realistically, twelve to thirty-six months of preparation for a business that hasn't been built for sale. The structural work — documenting processes, building team independence, cleaning the cost structure, de-personalising client relationships — takes time to execute and time to demonstrate.
A buyer who sees eighteen months of clean, verified, owner-independent revenue is in a very different position from one who sees the same revenue attached to an owner who is the face, the operations, and the relationships of the business. The multiple reflects the difference.
“The best time to start preparing a business for sale was three years ago. The second best time is now.”
Exit preparation and owner optionality are the same work
For owners who aren't sure they want to sell — who are considering stepping back from operations rather than exiting — the work is identical. Building a business that runs without you gives you the same freedom a sale would, without the sale. You can choose to exit, or you can choose to stay with significantly less involvement. That optionality is built through the same structural changes.
Exit or optionality
What would a buyer see if they looked at your business today?
The discovery call is where we answer that honestly — what the business is worth now, what's holding the valuation back, and what the work is to close the gap.