When an owner tells me, “Alex, I’m thinking about selling, but not right now—maybe in a year or two,” my reaction is usually: “That is the perfect time to talk.”
Most owners treat the sale of a business as a single event. They think they will wake up one morning, decide to sell, call a broker, and sign papers three months later. In reality, a successful exit is a process, not an event. And the most valuable work happens before you ever speak to a buyer like me.
If you try to sell a business that lives entirely in your head, with messy financials and handshake agreements, the market will punish you. You will face low valuation offers, structures heavily weighted toward earn-outs, or polite rejections from banks.
But if you spend the next 12 months systematically removing those barriers, you change the conversation. You move from “selling a job” to “offering a transferable asset.”
This is not about turning your SME into a rigid corporation or hiring expensive consultants to restructure everything. It is about a practical, quarterly roadmap to make your business transferable (it works without you) and bank-ready (it can support financing).
Here is how a disciplined buyer would advise you to spend the next year.
The first quarter is not about growth. It is about visibility. Before you can improve the business, you must see it clearly—through the eyes of a stranger.
1. Normalize Your Financials Owners often run businesses to minimize tax. Buyers run businesses to maximize EBITDA. These two goals contradict each other.
Start by looking at your last 3 years of P&L. Identify every expense that is personal or discretionary (the leased car you don’t use for work, the family members on payroll who don’t work there, the “business trips” that were family holidays).
You don’t necessarily need to stop these immediately, but you need to track them clearly as “add-backs.” A buyer needs to see the true earning power of the business. If your books show €50K profit but you say, “Trust me, it’s actually €200K,” that requires faith. A bank doesn't trade on faith.
2. The Contract Audit In many family businesses, the most important relationships—key suppliers, biggest clients, the landlord—are based on handshakes and twenty years of friendship.
This is a massive risk for a buyer. If you leave, does the relationship leave with you? Spend these months converting critical verbal agreements into written contracts. If your lease is month-to-month, secure a long-term extension. If your main supplier has never signed a framework agreement, get one in place.
3. The “Dependency Audit” Be honest with yourself: What happens if you get sick for a month? Write down every decision that only you can make. Pricing? Hiring? Signing checks? This list is your “To-Do” list for the next two quarters.
Once the foundation is visible, the middle of the year is about shifting the weight of the business off your shoulders and onto a system. This is where we build the “Second Line” of management.
1. Empower, Don’t Just Delegate There is a difference between assigning tasks and assigning authority.
If your production manager has to ask you before buying €500 of spare parts, you haven't delegated; you are just micromanaging from a distance. Give your key people specific budgets and decision-making power. Let them make small mistakes. A buyer wants to see a management team that can operate the steering wheel, not just passengers waiting for instructions.
2. Depersonalize Key Relationships If your top three clients only want to talk to you, that is a problem.
Start bringing your Sales Manager or Operations Lead to every high-level meeting. Gradually let them take the lead in the conversation. Over 4–5 months, the client should get used to calling the company for answers, not you. The goal is that by month 9, a client doesn't panic if you are on vacation.
3. Extract the “Tribal Knowledge” Get the processes out of your head. How do you price a complex job? How do you handle a specific machine breakdown?
You don't need 100-page ISO manuals. Simple checklists or one-page “How-To” guides are enough. The test is simple: can a new hire do the job reasonably well by following the document, without asking you ten questions?
In the final quarter, you stop looking at operations and start looking at the capital structure. You need to view your business as a bank officer would.
1. The “Shadow Debt” Test A buyer will likely use debt to buy your company. That debt will be serviced by your company’s cash flow.
Look at your EBITDA. Imagine a loan payment that eats up, say, 50–60% of that free cash flow (a typical DSCR requirement). Can the business survive that? Or is your cash flow so erratic that a bad month would cause a default?
If the math doesn't work, you have two choices: increase profitability or accept a lower valuation/different deal structure (like a vendor loan). It is better to know this now than to have a deal collapse in due diligence.
2. Address Concentration Risks Banks hate concentration. If one client is 40% of your revenue, financing will be difficult.
You might not be able to fix this in three months, but you can mitigate it. Can you get a long-term contract with that client? Can you secure credit insurance? Can you show a pipeline of new, smaller clients that reduces the percentage over time? A buyer needs a narrative to show the bank that the risk is managed.
3. The “Two-Page” Reality Check Draft a 2-page anonymous summary (a “teaser”) of your business as it stands today.
Revenue and EBITDA trends (are they stable?).
Staff structure (is there a Second Line?).
Client base (is it recurring?).
Capex needs (are they low?).
If you can’t write this document without using the words “potential” or “future,” you aren't ready. A bankable business is sold on its history, not its roadmap.
If you follow this roadmap, one of two things will happen in a year’s time:
Scenario A: You decide to sell. You enter the market with a clean data room, a management team that speaks for itself, and financials that a bank can underwrite. You will attract serious buyers, not bargain hunters. You will have leverage to negotiate price and structure because you aren't desperate.
Scenario B: You decide not to sell. You now own a business that doesn't depend on your daily presence, generates clear cash flow, and allows you to take true vacations. You have upgraded your quality of life.
In either case, the work you do in these 12 months is the highest ROI activity available to you.
You are moving from being the operator of a job to being the owner of an asset. And that is the only position from which you should ever negotiate a sale.
If you are starting this journey and want to understand how a buyer would view your starting point today, you don’t need to hire a consultant. You can start with the short confidential seller form on my site. It allows you to outline your current situation, and I can give you a quiet, indicative view on where you stand—so you know exactly what to focus on for the year ahead.