The 5 factors that move a sale price the most
Why one business sells for 4x EBITDA and another in the same industry sells for 8x. The five things that drive the difference, with practical fixes for each.
Plain-English breakdowns of what actually moves a sale price, what buyers look for, and what owners wish they had known earlier. New articles added monthly.
Why one business sells for 4x EBITDA and another in the same industry sells for 8x. The five things that drive the difference, with practical fixes for each.
About half of business exits are involuntary. Death, disability, divorce, disagreement, and distress. What every owner should have ready before any of them happens.
Most owners spend years getting the business ready and a weekend thinking about life after. The data on why that is backwards, and what personal readiness actually means.
58% of boomer owners want to exit within 5 years. Only 14% treat exit planning as a top priority. The math behind that gap, and the four things to fix this quarter.
Most owners do not know whether the price their company will fetch is enough to fund the rest of their life. The math takes 30 minutes and changes every other decision.
Owners who sell at top-of-range multiples did not run a 12-month sprint right before going to market. They ran a quarterly cycle for years. What each quarter looks like.
The same business can sell for very different amounts to different buyers. Which kind of buyer fits your company matters as much as how ready you are.
The diligence step that surprises more owners than any other. What a Q-of-E firm cuts, what they keep, and the prep that protects 10 to 25 percent of the EBITDA.
The owners who get top-of-range prices did not start prep 6 months before going to market. They started 24 months out. Quarter-by-quarter, here is what they did.
The structure of your sale, asset or stock, taxable or tax-deferred, can swing your after-tax outcome by 20% or more on the same headline price. Here are the four corners and the moves that shift you between them.
Most owners of mid-market C-corporations have never heard of Section 1202. The ones who do hear about it usually hear too late. The five qualifying tests, the new tiered hold period, and the planning moves that lock it in.
The federal estate tax bill on a $50M business sale can run $14M or more. Most of that exposure is fixable, but only if the work happens before there is a buyer in the picture. The OBBBA window, the valuation discount, and a tale of two founders.
A $20M sale rarely means $20M in the seller's account at closing. The four-part deal stack, the present-value math, and the five questions to bring to the LOI negotiation before the buyer sets the structure for you.
A modest preparation gap on net working capital can quietly shave $1M+ off the wire on closing day. What the peg is, how it gets calculated, the line items where seven figures live, and the five questions to settle before the LOI.
An owner who plans to give some of the sale proceeds to charity anyway can keep the same charitable impact and pocket hundreds of thousands more after tax by structuring the gift before the LOI. CRTs, DAFs, foundations, and the LOI cutoff doctrine.
The right M&A banker can add millions to the final sale price. The wrong one can quietly cost you the same amount. Four banker types, the fee structures that drive their behavior, the red flags, and the five pitch-meeting questions.
The sale of a business is not one negotiation. It is six. Teaser, CIM, IOI, management meetings, LOI, definitive agreement. Where seller leverage is high, where it collapses, and what to capture at each rung.
Roughly 70% of privately-held businesses that engage a broker or banker never close a transaction. The four structural failure modes, with a composite founder story anchoring each, and the 24-36 month sequence that prevents them.
Owners often go to market expecting 7x and close at 5.2x. Not because the buyer lowballed. Because the multiple applied to a specific business is different from the multiple in the trade magazines. The five mechanics that drive compression from LOI to closing.
Three practitioner playbooks built around the most common pre-sale planning gaps. Instant PDF, no email required. Published because owners who work the material ahead of time make sharper decisions when the buyer shows up.
18 discrete line items every owner should complete before the LOI lands, grouped by quarter. Each item names the regret it prevents and the cost of skipping it.
You'll walk away with: a personal quarter-by-quarter sequence for the next 24 months.
Download › PDF · 7 pages · 25 min readSix strategies (QSBS, pre-sale gifting, charitable, installment, 338(h)(10), QOZ) with worked examples showing $4M to $8M saved on a $50M sale versus the default outcome.
You'll walk away with: the LOI-stage cutoff for each strategy and a stacking sequence.
Download › PDF · 5 pages · 15 min readStructural terms hidden in the standard Letter of Intent, and the defuse language for each. Each trap has a documented cost range ($400K to $1.2M for the working-capital trap alone).
You'll walk away with: verbatim counter-language to bring to the LOI redline.
Download ›Four free interactive tools. Twenty minutes total to run all four. Each returns a scored PDF with the specific fixes to make and the sequence to make them in. No advisor introduction unless you ask for one, no follow-up call, no sales pitch anywhere.
See the free tools