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
As seen in:
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 and M&A advisory firm 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.