- For the founder a sale happens once; for the buyer it is routine. That asymmetry is reason enough to prepare months ahead.
- Price is what gets discussed, but every open question a buyer finds ends up as a discount or a guarantee.
- Tidying the company, separating the family and planning the day after are best done before signing.
For most founders, selling their company happens once. For the buyer, it is often the tenth acquisition. That asymmetry is the main reason to prepare early.
Experience weighs heavily in that asymmetry. The buyer knows the process, has advisers used to these transactions and knows what tends to go wrong. The seller, by contrast, faces for the first time a thorough review of the business, demanding timetables and decisions that mix the financial with the personal. Preparing is how to even out that difference.
1. Know what you want — beyond the price
Staying on or leaving, the future of the team, the name, the timing: decide what matters to you before anyone asks. It will shape every negotiation that follows.
For some founders the priority is the price; for others it is that the team keeps its jobs, that the brand continues or that they can step back by a certain date. There may also be middle formulas, such as staying on for a period after the sale or a deferred payment, which change the balance between what is received and what is risked. Without a view of your own, offers are hard to compare and it is easy to accept terms you later regret.
2. Put your house in order
Clean accounts, clear contracts, documented intellectual property, an up-to-date shareholder structure. Every open question found by a buyer becomes a discount or a guarantee.
A buyer will examine the company in depth, in what is known as due diligence. It will ask for accounts, contracts with customers and suppliers, employment files, licences, ownership of brands and software, disputes and shareholder records. If something is not documented or does not add up, questions follow, and every awkward answer is an argument to lower the price or demand a guarantee. Carrying out that review beforehand with your advisers lets you correct what can be corrected and explain the rest calmly.
3. Separate the company from the family
Properties held by the company, personal expenses, loans between shareholders: untangling them before a sale is simpler, cheaper and calmer than doing it under a deadline.
This is the same separation between company and personal wealth that any family business needs to sort out: when the two are mixed, the buyer sees it at once and the transaction gets complicated. You must decide which properties stay out, how loans between shareholders are settled and which private expenses stop running through the company. Each adjustment has tax consequences and takes time, so it is not something to improvise in the final weeks.
4. Think about the day after
A sale turns a company into cash — and a founder’s daily routine into free time. How that wealth will be held and what comes next deserve a plan of their own, ideally before signing.
Few founders ask in good time what they will do on the Monday after the sale. Yet the effect is twofold: a major personal change and the arrival of liquidity that was not in their hands before. It is worth asking how you want that wealth organised, who will advise on it, what role the family will have and what you want to do with your time. The taxes on the transaction and the structure through which you sell can shape that plan considerably, which is why it is better thought through before signing than after.
5. Build the right team early
Lawyers, tax advisers and someone on your side who is not emotionally invested in the deal. The best time to assemble them is before you need them.
A well-run transaction usually has a corporate lawyer, a tax adviser, someone who knows the accounts thoroughly and often a financial adviser who knows the market. But it also has a trusted person who advises from a distance, because a founder who is emotionally involved can take decisions they later regret. Choosing them calmly, and not in the week of the offer, improves both the negotiation and your peace of mind.
A good sale is rarely improvised. It is prepared — patiently, and with the whole picture in view.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
