Businesses sold from a position of preparation command the top of their range; businesses sold under deadline pressure negotiate from the bottom of it. This is the twelve-month program — four quarters, sixteen items — that moves a business from "thinking about it" to "positioned." Print it, pin it up, work it.
Every dollar a buyer can't verify costs several dollars of price.
Compiled or reviewed statements that tie to your tax returns. Buyers and their lenders pay for what they can verify — nothing else.
Vehicles, phones, travel, family on payroll. Legitimate add-backs are fine; the goal is that each one is documented and explainable in a sentence.
Every unrecorded sale lowers your provable earnings — and your price — by a multiple. Twelve clean months is the minimum a buyer will trust; twenty-four is better.
A current equipment list with age and condition, and an inventory figure you can support. Both get verified line-by-line in diligence.
Buyers pay less for a business that leaves with you.
Standard procedures for the ten things only you know how to do. A binder a competent stranger could run a week from beats a hundred pages of theory.
Introduce your second-in-command into the top accounts. Revenue that follows YOU out the door gets priced as risk — or carved into an earnout.
The cheapest diligence test that exists. What broke while you were gone is your prep list; the fact that nothing broke is a selling point.
Stay bonuses or retention agreements for the people a buyer will insist on keeping. Quietly — confidentiality discipline starts now.
Recurring revenue, transferable assets, and a clean risk profile.
Maintenance agreements, memberships, retainers. Contracted revenue derisks the buyer's first year and commands a premium in every industry.
Your name, your mark, your proprietary product names — owned by the company being sold, not by you personally. Transferable goodwill helps the multiple; personal goodwill discounts it.
A single customer above roughly a fifth of revenue makes buyers and SBA lenders nervous. New-business effort now is priced into your sale later.
The lease that expires next year, the licensing gap, the lawsuit you've been ignoring. Every open item becomes either a price reduction or an escrow holdback in diligence.
Decisions made calmly now beat decisions made at the closing table.
If you own the building: sell it with the business, or keep it and become your buyer's landlord. The answer changes the price, the buyer pool, and the financing — decide before marketing, not during.
Your actual financials, normalized earnings, the right lens for your size, current comparables. Start free with the SDE calculator; a broker review narrows the band.
Broker, deal attorney, CPA who has done transactions. Your longtime generalist advisors may be wonderful — and out of their depth on an asset-vs-stock sale.
Blind profile, NDA process, data room. Staff, customers, and competitors should learn about the sale after closing — that takes process, not luck.
Run the free SDE calculator for a baseline value range, read what moves the multiple in your industry, or start a confidential conversation — two sentences about the business, no documents, replies within one business day.
This checklist is general education for planning purposes. It is not legal, tax, accounting, or financial advice, and completing it is not a representation that any business will sell at any particular price or at all. Consult your own attorney, CPA, and advisors on your specific situation.
This Site is owned and operated by ALBEO FL LLC, doing business as Albeo Business Advisors, a Florida limited liability company licensed as a real estate brokerage by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, License No. CQ1075604. Dom Dominguez, MBA, MS is the brokerage's qualifying broker, Florida Broker License No. BK3529743. Albeo Business Advisors is the trade name registered on that license for ALBEO FL LLC; it is not a separate legal entity. Phone: 813-389-9466. ALBEO FL LLC does not claim or represent real estate licensure in any state other than Florida.