How long does it take to sell a company?

A well-run process typically takes six to nine months: one to two months of preparation, two to three months of marketing and buyer meetings, and two to four months of exclusivity, diligence and legals. Poor preparation is the most common cause of the eighteen-month version.

Do I need an advisor to sell my company?

For most sales above a few million in value, a good advisor earns their fee through buyer access, process competition and negotiation cover. For smaller or founder-led processes, modern tooling covers much of the mechanical work: teaser creation, buyer matching, outreach and the data room. Either way, the owner who understands the process gets a better outcome.

What is my company worth?

What a competitive process says it is worth. Comparable transactions give you a range; competition gives you the top of it. The practical lesson: value is created by running a proper process with several engaged buyers, not by anchoring on a multiple from a blog post, including this one.

How to Sell Your Company: the Sell-Side Process Explained

Selling a company is the largest transaction most founders will ever do, and the first time they will have done it. The buyers across the table do it for a living. Process is how you level that field. Here is what actually happens, stage by stage.

1. Preparation: the months that set the price

Buyers pay for clean, and discount for chaos. Before anyone sees a document:

Financials: two to three years of accounts that reconcile, a defensible adjusted-EBITDA bridge, and a twelve-month forecast you can stand behind.
The story: why the business wins, why it grows, and, credibly, why you are selling. Buyers price uncertainty; a coherent story removes it.
Housekeeping: contracts assembled, IP assigned, cap table clean, key-person risks addressed. Every skeleton found in diligence costs more than it would have cost to fix now.

2. The teaser and the buyer list

The process starts with two artefacts. The teaser: one anonymous page, the business in ninety seconds, strong enough to earn an NDA. And the buyer list: strategic acquirers (competitors, adjacents, customers, suppliers), financial buyers (PE platforms and their portfolio bolt-ons), and internationals seeking market entry, each qualified on appetite and capacity, with a reachable decision-maker.

This list is the single biggest determinant of your outcome: every additional credible buyer is negotiating leverage. It is also the step modern tooling has changed most; sell-side M&A software drafts the teaser from your deck and matches the opportunity against thousands of buyers and investors by sector, size and geography, with verified contacts.

3. Marketing: NDAs, the IM and first meetings

Approach the list in waves, teaser first, NDA before detail. Behind the NDA sits the information memorandum and, increasingly, straight into a data room with staged access: headline materials first, sensitive detail later, access widening as buyers demonstrate seriousness. Track engagement per buyer, who viewed, who signed, who went quiet, because your process decisions in the next stage depend on knowing who is real.

4. Offers and the competitive middle

Indicative offers arrive; your leverage peaks here, before exclusivity, and never returns. Use it: clarify each buyer's assumptions, push the credible ones to sharpen terms, and choose on certainty and structure as much as headline price. An offer at a lower headline with clean cash terms and proven ability to close routinely beats a higher number built on earn-outs and financing conditions.

Only grant exclusivity when the offer is detailed enough to hold the buyer to, and keep it short: thirty to forty-five days, extendable on progress.

5. Diligence and closing

Diligence is an endurance test disguised as a checklist: financial, legal, commercial, technical, often in parallel, mostly through the data room. Respond fast, keep the business performing (the fastest way to lose value in exclusivity is a bad trading month), and let advisors absorb the friction so the relationship with your buyer stays constructive for the years you may still be working together post-close.

Then the papers are signed, the money moves, and the company you built has new owners. The founders who describe the process as "smooth" are, almost without exception, the ones who prepared before they started.

How to sell your company