How it works.
Eight stages, typically six to nine months from start to closing. Here is what happens in each one, in plain language.
Confidential consultation
We start with a conversation about your business, your timing, and what a good outcome looks like to you. Nothing is committed and nothing leaves the room.
Business and valuation assessment
We review your financials, normalize earnings, and give you a realistic value range with the reasoning behind it, including what is holding the number down.
Preparation
We address what buyers will scrutinize before they scrutinize it, and assemble the materials a professional process requires. This is where value is protected.
Buyer identification
We build a targeted list of strategic acquirers, private equity platforms, and portfolio companies with a real reason to want your business, and you approve every name.
Competitive process
Qualified buyers are approached under confidentiality on a common timeline, so interest builds in parallel rather than one conversation at a time.
Offers and negotiation
Indications of interest arrive together and can be compared honestly. We negotiate price and every term behind it, and you decide who advances.
Due diligence
The buyer verifies what we presented. Because of the preparation stage, this is a confirmation exercise rather than a renegotiation.
Closing
Final documents, funds flow, and transition. We stay in it through the last signature and the days after.
Timing varies with the business, the industry, and how prepared the company is when we start. Owners who begin preparation a year or more ahead consistently move faster once they go to market.
Where are you in this?
Most owners contact us somewhere between stage zero and stage one, often a year or two before they intend to do anything. That is the right time.