How selling a business actually works

The short version

• Selling a business is nine stops. Most owners are somewhere in the first three for years.
• The first three cost nothing and commit you to nothing: work out what you want, find out what it is worth, see what would move it.
• The middle stops are preparation and choice: get it ready, decide how to sell, put the story together.
• The last three are the deal: meet who shows up, work through the offer, hand it over.
• Nobody does this twice. Unfamiliar is normal. That is the whole reason to see the map early.

Nine stops

Most owners sell one business in their life. The process is unfamiliar by definition, and unfamiliar feels like difficult. It is not difficult so much as long, and it goes better for owners who can see the whole road before they are on it.

Here it is, end to end.

1. Work out what you want

Not the number. The reason.

Some owners want the money. Some want the business to continue with the name on the trucks. Some want to be out by a date. Some want to stay a while and hand it over slowly. Some want a family member or a key employee to take it, and want to know if that can work.

These lead to different sales. An owner who gets a number before knowing what they want tends to do something unhelpful with it.

2. Find out what it is worth

A range, never a number. Buyers pay for what the business earns its owner, times a multiple that reflects how safe those earnings look once you are gone.

This can happen years before you sell. It should. It costs nothing, and it tells you which of the things in the next stop are worth your time.

3. See what would move it

Whether the business runs without you. Whether the books can be verified. Whether one customer holds the keys. Whether anything expires the week after closing.

Each of these moves the number and each of them takes time to change. That is why most owners are in the first three stops for years, and why that is not a failure.

4. Get it ready

Cleaner books. A team that can run a week without you. A lease that transfers. The paperwork a buyer will ask for, gathered before they ask.

This is normal maintenance, not a confession. It is worth doing even if you never sell, because a business that is ready to sell is a better business to own.

5. Decide how to sell

Two paths, and both are legitimate.

With a broker. A broker values the business, prepares the materials, finds and screens buyers, and manages the process to closing. You pay a commission, usually a percentage of the sale price, at closing. You give up some control over who sees what and when, and you gain someone who has done this many times.

Directly. You prepare the materials, find and screen buyers, and manage the process, with your attorney and accountant for the parts that need them. You keep the commission and you keep control of the story and the confidentiality. You take on the work, and you take on learning the process while doing it.

Neither is the right answer for everyone. The piece on choosing how to sell lays both out at equal length.

6. Put the story together

A buyer needs to understand the business before they will pay for it. The document that does this has a name, the confidential information memorandum, and most people call it the CIM.

The honest version is the one that closes. A weakness you disclose costs less than a weakness a buyer discovers, because the discovered one makes them wonder what else there is.

Confidentiality is protected the whole way. Serious buyers sign a non-disclosure agreement before they see anything with your name on it. Your crew, your customers and your competitors find out when you decide, not before.

7. Meet who shows up

This is the part that surprises owners.

You are not picking the highest number off a list. You are meeting the person who would take over what you built, hearing what they intend, and deciding whether you would hand them the keys. The right person at the right price. Both halves count, and you get to choose.

How many buyers you meet depends mostly on the size of the business. Deals under $500K frequently draw one or two offers, while 87% of deals over $5M draw three or more (IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026).

8. Work through the offer

Once you have chosen each other, the deal gets built.

An offer arrives as a letter of intent, usually shortened to LOI. It sets out the price and the main terms, and most of it does not bind either side yet. Then the buyer verifies what you have told them, which is called diligence. The money gets arranged, and there are more ways to do that than most owners expect. Lawyers paper the purchase agreement. A closing date is set.

Price and terms are not the same thing. A higher price paid over five years from the business's own earnings is a different deal from a lower price paid at closing. This stop is where that difference gets decided.

9. Hand it over

Most sales include a transition. Weeks or months where you introduce the buyer to customers, show them where everything is and let the place get used to them. How long is up to what you agree.

Then there is telling your people, telling your customers, and the Monday after. Each of those is its own piece, because each of them is harder than the paperwork.

How long the whole thing takes

Long enough that starting early is the only comfortable way to do it. Nobody looks back and wishes they had found out what the business was worth later. The piece on how long it really takes has the figures, with sources.