If you ask around, you’ll get different answers:
- Your business coach might say they guide the process
- Your financial planner may focus on personal readiness
- Your tax advisor, or banker will emphasize structure
- Your attorney will point to legal protection
All important roles!
But here’s the reality most business owners don’t hear early enough:
Selling a business isn’t just planning, it’s a market-driven transaction.
And that changes who should lead your exit.
There are really two phases to your successful exit:
- Preparation
- Clean up financials
- Reduce risk
- Improve operations
- Execution
- Take the business to market
- Find and engage buyers
- Create competition
- Negotiate and close
Both phases matter! Yet only one role is responsible for actually getting the business sold.
The difference most people miss is a well-prepared business doesn’t create value on its own, a completed transaction does. And that transaction lives in the market, with real buyers, real negotiations, and real consequences.
Without clear leadership in that process, your company value can quietly erode. Opportunities to create competition are missed, and deals stall or fall apart. This isn’t because the business wasn’t good. It’s because the process wasn’t properly aligned.
The right process starts earlier than most think. You’ll need to understand your goals and your timeline. You will need to start by seeing your business through a buyer’s lens. What are current buyers looking at? Once you discover that, we begin to position your business before going to market. It makes identifying the right buyers, the first time. Not just any buyers. We are creating multiple options to build leverage.
If you’re within 3–5 years of selling, this information matters more than anything else. The earlier you understand how buyers will evaluate your business, the more control you have over the outcome.
Every advisor plays a role. Bringing the team into alignment is key.
The one leading the process should be the one accountable for bringing the market to the table, creating demand, and converting that into a successful transaction.
Because the goal isn’t just to sell your business.
It’s to sell it on your terms, at a value that reflects what you’ve built.
After all, you’ve already done the hard part. You built the business.
The last thing you want is for the exit to be the messy part.
l isn’t just to sell your business.
It’s to sell it on your terms, at a value that reflects what you’ve built.
After all, you’ve already done the hard part. You built the business.
The last thing you want is for the exit to be the messy part.
By Melissa Walsh, the Zirbes Group