Planning Your Business Exit?
Our free 9-point checklist walks you through how to prepare your business for sale.
Understand what buyers want
Learn how to get your business ready
Avoid pitfalls that reduce value
Spot improvements before engaging buyers
Gain clarity before planning your next step
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What the Checklist Covers
Here is a summary of the nine areas buyers care about most. The downloadable checklist includes specific action items for each.
1. Financial Documentation
Buyers will want to see at least three years of tax returns, profit and loss statements, and balance sheets. Clean, consistent financials signal a well-run business and speed up due diligence. If your bookkeeping is informal or inconsistent, this is the single highest-impact area to address before going to market.
2. Earnings Normalization
Your business's value is based on its Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE) — not its reported net income. SDE adjusts for owner compensation, personal expenses, one-time costs, and other items that don't reflect the true cash-generating ability of the business. Documenting these add-backs clearly and defensibly is critical to getting an accurate valuation.
3. Legal and Contract Review
Review your lease, vendor agreements, customer contracts, and any licensing or franchise agreements. Buyers need to know which contracts are transferable, which require consent, and whether any contain change-of-ownership clauses that could complicate the sale.
4. Operations and Staffing
How dependent is the business on you? Buyers pay a premium for businesses that can operate without the owner's daily involvement. Document your key processes, identify which employees are critical to operations, and consider whether any roles need to be filled or formalized before a sale.
5. Customer and Revenue Concentration
If a single customer accounts for more than 15–20% of revenue, buyers will see that as a risk. Diversifying your customer base, establishing long-term contracts, and building switching costs are all ways to reduce concentration risk before going to market.
6. Asset Inventory
Prepare a complete list of the physical and intangible assets included in the sale: equipment, inventory, intellectual property, domain names, social media accounts, and any proprietary software or systems. Buyers need clarity on exactly what they are acquiring.
7. Growth Narrative
Buyers are not just purchasing today's cash flow — they are betting on the future. Prepare a clear, honest narrative about where the business is headed: untapped markets, new service lines, operational efficiencies, or geographic expansion. Back it up with data where possible.
8. Personal Readiness
Selling a business is an emotional process. Before you begin, be clear about your motivations, your post-sale plans, and your minimum acceptable outcome. Sellers who enter the process without this clarity often hesitate at critical moments or reject reasonable offers for the wrong reasons.
9. Timeline Planning
A well-prepared business sale takes 6 to 12 months from listing to closing. Working backward from your target exit date, map out when you need to start financial preparation, broker engagement, and marketing. For a detailed timeline, see our guide on when to sell your business.
Want the full checklist with specific action items? , or schedule a consultation to walk through it with an advisor.
Looking to Start the Exit Process?
Here's what it looks like with us:
Consultation
Valuation
Listing
Offers
Closing
Why Work With Sundance Financial?
Extensive Experience
We've advised on company sales totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. That experience helps us guide business owners through every stage of the process with clarity and confidence.
Understanding of Buyers
We've spent years on the other side of the table-evaluating and acquiring businesses. We know what buyers look for and how to present your business to attract the right offer.
World-Class Approach
Our approach is built on methods learned at the world's leading finance and investment firms. We bring big-firm expertise to help business owners achieve the best outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should I start preparing to sell?
Ideally, 12 to 24 months before you want to close a deal. This gives you time to clean up your financials, reduce owner dependency, address any operational weaknesses, and position the business to command the highest possible price. That said, if circumstances require a faster timeline, our checklist helps you prioritize what matters most.
What are the most common mistakes sellers make?
The three biggest mistakes are overpricing the business based on emotion rather than market data, failing to prepare clean financial records before going to market, and losing focus on day-to-day operations during the sale process. Each of these can delay or derail a deal. Our checklist is designed to help you avoid all three.
Do I need to make improvements before listing my business?
Not always, but targeted improvements can meaningfully increase your sale price. The highest-impact changes are usually financial — cleaning up your books, documenting add-backs clearly, and showing stable or growing revenue. Operational improvements like reducing owner dependency and securing key contracts also help. Our checklist identifies which improvements are worth making and which are better left to the buyer.
What if I discover problems during preparation?
Discovering issues early is actually a good thing — it is far better to identify and address them before a buyer does during due diligence. Common issues like missing contracts, informal employee arrangements, or inconsistent bookkeeping are all fixable. We help sellers assess which issues need to be resolved before listing and which can be disclosed and managed during the sale process.
What is included in the 9-point checklist?
The checklist covers nine key areas of exit readiness: financial documentation, earnings normalization, legal and contract review, operations and staffing, customer and revenue concentration, asset inventory, growth narrative, personal readiness, and timeline planning. Each section includes specific action items and explains why buyers care about that area.
What Business Owners Are Saying
Ed was a huge help throughout the sale of my company. He explained the process very clearly from the start, and helped me handle tough negotiations with buyers.
Edouard is one of the best advisors I've worked with. He is highly professional and cares a lot about his clients. His attention to detail makes a real difference.
He was very helpful and cared about my business and my goals. He always made sure I knew what was happening and what my options were. He made selling less stressful.
About Sundance Financial
Sundance Financial is a business brokerage that helps small business owners sell their businesses. We provide professional valuation, confidential marketing, buyer qualification, negotiation support, and deal management — from the first conversation through closing.
We work primarily with founder- and owner-operated businesses. Most of our clients are selling for the first time and want an advisor who will represent their interests throughout the process.
Our founder, Edouard, has spent the past decade working with leading investment banks, private equity firms, and top consulting companies on deals worth hundreds of millions. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated at the top of his class as a George F. Baker Scholar.
What Is Your Business Worth?
Sundance offers free, no-obligation valuations. Get a detailed personalized assessment, or use our online tool to check your standing against industry benchmarks.