Home / M&A Advisory / Preparing Your Company for Sale
Most of the value in a sale is won or lost before the first buyer is contacted. Preparation is where reporting is cleaned, risks are removed, and the equity story is built. The companies that command premiums are not always the fastest growing. Often they are simply the best prepared. This is the work that protects your price.
A buyer underwrites risk. Every gap in your reporting, every unaddressed concentration, every loose contract is a reason to discount the price or widen the diligence. Preparation removes those reasons in advance. It is the difference between a buyer who raises their number as diligence confirms the story and one who chips away at it as surprises surface.
Preparation spans four areas. None of them is glamorous, and all of them move the price.
Financial. Clean, consistent statements, a clear revenue bridge separating recurring from one-time income, and a defensible adjusted earnings figure.
Commercial. Customer concentration understood and, where possible, reduced, with retention and expansion documented.
Legal and contractual. Customer and supplier contracts in order, intellectual property assigned, and any partner or licensing agreements reviewed.
Operational. A business that runs without depending entirely on the founder, with a team a buyer can retain.
Knowing what diligence will test lets you address the answers before a buyer asks the questions.
Messy or inconsistent financials. Reporting a buyer cannot trust invites a lower offer and a longer, more invasive diligence.
Hidden concentration. A single customer or partner the buyer discovers late reframes the risk and the price.
Founder dependence. A business that cannot run without you is worth less and harder to structure cleanly.
Clean and standardize your financials, build a revenue bridge that separates recurring from one-time income, understand and reduce customer concentration, get contracts and intellectual property in order, and reduce dependence on the founder. The goal is to remove the reasons a buyer would discount the price.
Ideally twelve months or more. The highest-value improvements, such as reducing concentration or improving retention, take time to appear in the numbers. Reporting and contract cleanup can be done in weeks and pay off immediately.
Inconsistent financials, hidden customer or partner concentration, and heavy dependence on the founder. Each gives a buyer a reason to lower the offer or lengthen diligence. Most are fixable before a process begins.
Founder-led companies with roughly $5M to $100M in revenue and $1M to $20M in EBITDA, across technology sectors in the United States and Canada.
Windsor Drake runs confidential, competitive sale processes for founder-led companies. Request a private, no-obligation read on where your business would price today and which buyers are active in your market.
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