The Hidden Trap of the “Average” Exit

Most business owners approach selling their company thinking, “I’ll get what the market says it’s worth.”
They believe valuations sit neatly in the middle, like average height or average temperature.

But here’s the truth: in business exits, the average is where deals go to die quietly.
Most sales cluster in a predictable “normal distribution” — safe, steady, and uninspiring.
It’s the Pareto distribution — not the average — that separates a good sale from a life-changing one.

The 80/20 Rule of Business Sales

Vilfredo Pareto’s principle is everywhere:

• 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your customers.
• 90% of market share is held by 10% of companies.
• In business exits, 80% of your final sale price comes from 20% of the actions you take before the sale.

When you understand this, you stop spreading your time, energy, and resources evenly.
You start focusing on the high-leverage actions that create outsized results.

4 Ways to Escape the Average When Selling Your Business

1. Court Strategic Buyers, Not Just Any Buyer
Most owners work with whoever shows interest.
But the real magic happens when you find buyers who see your business as more valuable in their hands than in yours.
These are the 1% buyers, they’ll pay a premium because your business completes their bigger picture.

2. Invest in Pre-Sale Positioning, Not Just Operations
Many owners keep grinding in operations until the day they decide to sell.
But the biggest increases in valuation happen when you:

• Build the quality of earnings.
• Work on the intangibles of the business.
• Mitigate risk for the buyer

3. Build the Right Relationships Now
Start to get your advisory team in place. Selling your business is a team sport and the odds are that even though you are an expert in running your business, if you haven’t sold a number of companies before it is a difficult skill to learn reading a book. The exit process is complex and full of bear traps.
Your best deals will come from deep relationships with the right people industry leaders, competitors, private equity firms, and key partners.
One well-timed lunch could be worth more than a year’s worth of generic outreach.

Why This Works

Most owners sell “in the middle” because they don’t know where the extremes are.
But the extremes, the high-value buyers, the irreplaceable relationships, the premium positioning, are where the exceptional exits live.

From the outside, it might look like you “got lucky.”
But behind the scenes, you stacked the odds in your favour long before the deal closed.

Final Thought: In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Then when luck comes you are ready.”
If you want more than an average price for your business, you don’t wait for luck, you engineer it.