What is business exit planning: Get price, terms, and peace!

Trevor Stevenson-Platt

21 Nov 2025 — 4 min read

You don’t sell a business. You sell the feeling the next owner can sleep at night.
A friend learned that the hard way when a buyer cut their offer by 40% after one week of diligence. Nothing changed in the numbers—only their confidence.

This is why exit planning matters. Not because you’re leaving tomorrow, but because the decisions you make today either build certainty or invite a discount.
Markets turn. Energy fades. Perfect timing is a fairy tale.
What you can control is how transferable, reliable, and irresistible your company looks when someone serious lifts the hood.

Why this matters right now

If a buyer called this week with a fair number, could you hand over the keys in six months without chaos?
Would your team keep rowing?
Would the revenue hold, or does it depend on your face in the room?

The most common regret I hear: I waited too long to prepare.
Preparation isn’t paperwork; it’s value.
It puts options on the table—including the option not to sell.

What is business exit planning

Plain answer: exit planning is the deliberate process of making your business easier to buy, easier to run without you, and therefore worth more when you decide to sell.
It blends strategy, operations, financial clarity, and timing so you can exit at your price, on your terms, on your timeline.

Think of it as building a sale-ready company, not planning your goodbye.
It starts years before a broker drafts a teaser.
Every move from here either tightens or loosens the story a buyer will pay for.

Start at the finish line

Decide what life looks like after the sale.
How much do you need to net, after tax, in your pocket?
What role—if any—do you want after closing, for how long, and under what conditions?

Then work backward.
Clean financials. Monthly closes. Clear add-backs. A simple narrative for where profit really comes from.
If a stranger can’t understand your numbers in 15 minutes, you’re not ready.

A quality-of-earnings review is coming, whether you prepare or not.
Make the adjustments now: normalise owner pay, separate personal expenses, document revenue recognition, and track customer-level profitability.
Buyers pay for proof, not potential.

Make the business transferable

Here’s the litmus test:
If you took a month off with your phone off, would the wheels come off?
If yes, you don’t own an asset—you have a job with overhead.

Focus on transferability—the things that let a buyer believe they can own this without your shadow on every wall.

Document the core processes—sales, delivery, collections, hiring—the six or seven drivers of outcomes—each as a one-page standard.
Build a leadership bench: real decision rights, clear scorecards, weekly rhythms. Your name shouldn’t be the answer to every question.
Reduce concentration risk: no single customer over 20% of revenue; push for recurring or repeatable revenue; ensure contracts are assignable on change of control.

Tie incentives to metrics that survive you: gross margin, on-time delivery, net dollar retention.
If these numbers hold when you step back, confidence goes up—and price follows.

Think like a buyer, now

Buyers are pattern-spotters.
They look for what can break, what can scale, and what’s already proven.
Do their job for them.

Build a simple data room before you need it: a clear org chart; three-year financial history; a forward 12-month forecast with assumptions; customer cohorts; pipeline health; and a clean contract list with renewal dates.
Include a one-page strategic narrative: why you win, why customers stay, and what levers grow profit without heroics.

Tighten your legal house: assignability clauses, intellectual property ownership, vendor agreements, compliance.
Remove surprises.
Buyers don’t fear bad news; they fear late news.

Timing, options, and deal shape

You don’t have to sell all of it to change your life.
You can take a majority check now and a second bite later. You can sell to a strategic who values synergies. You can partner with an investor and roll equity. You can pass the torch to your team through employee ownership.
Each path trades price, control, and time differently.

Markets reward preparation, especially when windows open.
The best exits start two years before they feel necessary.
The worst start when something forces your hand.

Keep running a sale-worthy company even if you don’t sell this year.
Optionality is value.
If you have one path, you have no leverage.

What to do in the next 90 days

Pick three moves that increase certainty for a buyer and momentum for you.

Create a simple weekly dashboard with five numbers that matter.
Document your top three processes.
Name a number two and give them two decisions you usually make.
Meet with your accountant about a clean monthly close.
Map customer concentration and set a plan to reduce it.
Start a lightweight data room and drop in what you already have.

Small, consistent steps compound into a story that sells.
Buyers notice when the machine hums without you pushing every lever.

Key takeaway

Exit planning isn’t about leaving. It’s about building a business other people want to own.
Do that, and you get price, terms, and peace.
Skip it, and you’ll fund a buyer discount with your own sweat.