If you're thinking about selling your business at some point, timing makes a bigger difference than most people realise.
A lot of owners come to market when they're tired, or when something has started to slip. That's completely understandable — running a business for years is hard work, and the moment of "I've had enough" is often the trigger for picking up the phone. But it makes the sale itself harder, and it usually compresses the price.
Buyers will focus on what's going wrong rather than on what's been built. A dip in revenue, a key staff member leaving, a piece of plant nearing end-of-life — these become negotiation points rather than minor footnotes. Anything that looks like a reason for the owner to want out gets weighed against the asking price.
The stronger exits I've seen tend to share three things:
- The business is steady — predictable revenue, stable team, no surprises in the recent accounts
- The numbers are clear — clean management information that someone external can read in an hour
- There's no immediate pressure to sell — the owner can walk away from a deal that doesn't feel right
When all three are true, you have options. You can hold out for the right buyer instead of the first one. You can negotiate structure rather than just headline price. And you can preserve what you've built — staff, customers, brand — instead of watching it get unpicked during due diligence.
Even if a sale is a couple of years away, it's worth thinking about how the business will look from the outside. The work to get to that point — tidying up accounts, documenting processes, reducing dependence on the owner — also tends to make the business better in the meantime. There's no downside to running it like you might sell it.
The owners who sell well are almost always the ones who didn't have to.