Corporate · Consulting
Business Sales & Exit Planning: Get the Business Ready Before You Sell It
Nine companies sold. Over $11 million in business assets closed in eighteen months.
The problem
What this usually looks like
Most owners decide to sell and discover their business is not sellable: the financials are messy, the owner is the business, customer concentration is dangerous and there is no management team. That discovery costs them years or hundreds of thousands of dollars at the closing table.
How I approach it
Start two years before you want to leave. Clean up the financials, reduce owner dependence, document the operations and de-risk the customer base. Then run a proper confidential sale process with qualified buyers instead of taking the first offer that appears.
Scope
What I actually do
Assess sellability honestly: what a buyer will pay today and what is dragging the multiple down.
Value the business, normalize financials, recast owner discretionary earnings and EBITDA, apply comparable multiples.
Build the exit readiness plan: reduce owner dependence, document processes, diversify customer concentration and clean up the books.
Prepare confidential marketing materials, the blind profile and confidential information memorandum.
Qualify buyers on financial capacity and fit before any confidential information is released.
Support negotiation, letter of intent, due diligence coordination and the path to closing.
Advise on transition and vendor training so the earn-out or holdback actually pays out.
Deliverables
What you get
- Sellability assessment and valuation range
- Exit readiness action plan with timeline
- Confidential information memorandum
- Buyer qualification criteria and NDA process
- Due diligence preparation checklist
Outcomes
What changes
- A higher, defensible sale price
- Fewer surprises in due diligence
- A business that runs without the owner, which is what buyers pay for
Engagement
How we work together
Sellability assessment and valuation
Two-year exit readiness program
Sale process advisory
Questions
Straight answers
How early should we start exit planning?
Two to three years before you want out. That is enough time to clean up financials, reduce owner dependence and fix customer concentration. The three things that most damage valuation.
What is your track record?
Over $11 million in business assets sold across nine separate privately held companies in eighteen months in the Greater Toronto Area, at an average transaction value near $1.2 million, ending when COVID-19 closed the market in Q1 2020.
Related
Services that usually go with this
Sales Management Consulting
For owners and executives whose sales team is busy but not closing, and whose forecast is fiction.
Logistics & Supply Chain Consulting
Twenty years on the board, not twenty slides about best practice.
Hiring instead of contracting? See the full-time roles, or the ATS-formatted resume.
Contact
Tell me what you are hiring for
- Call: +1 519 278 5085
- Email: tim@timarmstrong.ca
- Based: London & Southwestern Ontario, Ontario, America/Toronto (Eastern Time)
- Availability: Available nationally across Canada, on-site, hybrid or remote
- Serving: London · Stratford · Woodstock · Kitchener: Waterloo · Cambridge · Guelph · Brantford · Sarnia · Chatham-Kent · Windsor · Toronto · Mississauga and Canada-wide