All Posts

Of everything that separates a business that sells well from one that sells badly, this is the biggest — and it is the one owners are least likely to see in themselves. Most people who have built something successful believe the business runs well. What they often mean is that it runs well when they are running it. A buyer is not purchasing last year's profit. They are purchasing the likelihood that it happens again after you have gone. Everything that lives in your head, you

Owners preparing to sell tend to focus almost entirely on price. It is the number everyone talks about, and it is the number that ends up in the headline. But two deals at the same price can leave a seller with meaningfully different amounts, and the difference comes down to structure — how the transaction is put together, and how the price is divided across what is being sold. We raise this with clients early, because by the time it appears in a letter of intent the decision

Most owners prepare hard for the part of a sale that happens before an offer, and barely at all for the part that happens after one. That is backwards. By the time a buyer signs a letter of intent, the hard work of finding them is done — and the phase that follows is where a surprising number of deals fall apart, get repriced, or grind on so long that one side loses the will to finish. That phase is due diligence. This guide sets out what buyers ask for, category by category,