Business Exit and Succession Planning: sell freedom, not dreams

You don’t sell a business like you sell a car. You sell a future. Buyers pay for what will keep working after you’re gone. If that makes your stomach flip, good, that’s where the money is.

Here’s the hard truth: the best time to prepare your business for sale was years ago. The second-best time is today. Exit and succession planning isn’t a document, it’s the act of making yourself optional.

Why this matters right now

If you wait until you’re tired or burned out, you’ll grab the first decent offer and leave a fortune on the table. Deals die from messy numbers, owner dependence, and last-minute surprises. Worse, the wrong terms handcuff you to your own company, working for someone else to earn the price you thought you already won.

Markets turn. Health wobbles. Key people get poached. The window is open until it isn’t. The work you do now reduces risk, raises price, and gives you options. That’s what exit and succession planning really buys, your freedom at a premium.

Pick your buyer. Reverse-engineer the plan.

Different buyers value different things. Choose your likely buyer and build for them.

• Strategic buyer: Wants synergies, customers, and product advantages. They’ll pay more if you give them a shortcut to their goals.
• Financial buyer (private equity): Wants a dependable cash machine with room to grow. They hate surprises and love systems.
• Management buyout: Your team takes the wheel. This demands a strong bench and clean financing.

Pick one lane. Then work backward. If it’s a strategic buyer, map which competitors benefit most and strengthen what they crave. If it’s a financial buyer, build repeatable revenue, reduce your personal gravity, and lock in margins. If it’s your team, train them like you’re gone next quarter, and mean it.

Make your company buyable

A buyable business runs without you, tells the truth in numbers, and keeps customers sticky.

Start here:

• Owner independence: Run the 30-day test. If you vanished for a month, would sales happen, ops hum, and cash still land? If not, build the checklists, dashboards, and roles until the answer is yes.
• Reliable revenue: Shift from one-off projects to recurring or repeatable revenue. Shorten sales cycles. Document the process so a new owner can replicate it without your charm.
• Customer concentration: If your top client is more than 20% of revenue, fix that. Diversify or lock in multi-year contracts to calm buyer nerves.
• Systems over heroes: When people solve the same problem differently, create one way—the documented way. Buyers pay for consistency.
• Proof beats promises: Replace “We’re about to” with “Here’s the data.” Pipeline, churn, win rates, margin by product—the boring stuff that makes deals easy.

Simple litmus test: if a stranger can walk in, read your playbook, and run next week’s meeting without calling you, you’re close.

Clean numbers. Clean story.

Buyers don’t mistrust your motives; they mistrust your bookkeeping. Clean numbers make the story undeniable.

• Stop the “creative” accounting: Normalise your financials. Strip out one-time costs and perks, then stick to the truth. Simple beats clever.
• Working capital is real money: Know what you need to run day-to-day. Buyers adjust price based on this. Take control before they do.
• Contracts and compliance: Signed agreements, assignment clauses, IP ownership, licenses, data privacy—no loose ends. Surprises here kill deals.
• Close cadence and cash: Close monthly by day 10. Keep a 13-week cash flow forecast. Predictability builds trust.
• Data room light: Keep a neat, minimal, always-current folder with essentials—financials, sanitised customer list, contracts, org chart, policies, KPIs. Aim for zero friction.

Your numbers tell a story. Make it read “stable, growing, repeatable,” not “founder-dependent chaos with a charismatic accountant.”

Succession: make yourself optional

This is where most founders stumble. They think succession planning is a handshake and a speech. It’s not. It’s proof the business runs, grows, and keeps its soul without you.

• Leadership bench: Name a second-in-command and give them real authority. Don’t be the bottleneck.
• Incentives aligned: Tie key people to the future with clear upside—bonuses, phantom equity, or retention packages that survive the sale.
• Knowledge extracted: Document the tribal secrets. Sales scripts, onboarding, vendor relationships, pricing logic—get it out of heads and into systems.
• Customer transition: Plan how relationships shift. Script the first 90 days with each major account. Buyers pay more when they see continuity.

Paradox: the more replaceable you are, the more valuable you become.

Price is vanity. Terms are reality.

A high headline number can hide a bad deal. Structure is where the game is won.

• Cash at close vs. prove-it-later: If part of the price depends on future performance, know exactly how it’s measured and what levers you still control.
• Risk transfer: Warranties, clawbacks, holdbacks—ways buyers protect themselves. Your preparation reduces their fear and improves your terms.
• Your role post-sale: If they need you, price it. If you don’t want to stay, build a plan that makes you unnecessary. Clarity beats resentment.

Simple rule: if you wouldn’t accept the deal with your phone on airplane mode for six months, it’s not the right deal.

A 12-month runway that works

A year is enough to transform the outcome. Here’s a practical arc:

• Days 1–30: Choose your buyer lane. Map valuation drivers. Start the 30-day owner-independence test. Clean the books. Build the light data room.
• Days 31–90: Lock customer contracts. Reduce concentration risk. Document core processes. Appoint a second-in-command and delegate visibly.
• Months 4–6: Tighten pricing and margins. Grow recurring revenue. Audit legal and IP. Create a customer transition plan. Quietly meet your M&A adviser, tax strategist, and attorney.
• Months 7–9: Stress-test the business—take a two-week offline trial. Fix what breaks. Pre-negotiate retention packages for key people.
• Months 10–12: Decide: sell now or run another cycle for a higher price. If selling, approach targeted buyers with a crisp story and proof.

See the pattern? Exit and succession planning done right is a sprint, not a seminar. You’re engineering confidence and reducing risk, on purpose.

Two founders, two futures

I watched two founders go to market the same quarter. One had great revenue but was the sun everything orbited. He got a strong headline price, then spent two years under an earn-out arguing over definitions and missing milestones he no longer controlled.

The other founder made herself optional. She trained her number two, moved big accounts to contracts, and cleaned her numbers six months early. Her price was lower on paper but 85% cash at close. She was on a beach the next month, not sitting in someone else’s Monday meeting.

Same economy. Different preparation. Wildly different lives.

Key takeaway

You don’t sell a business. You hand over a machine that runs without you. The more it runs on proof, not promises, the more you get paid, and the faster you get free.

Your move

If you disappeared for 30 days starting tomorrow, what would actually break and what would keep running? Name it, fix it, and let that be the first step of your exit and succession planning.