Selling in the next two years? Five moves to make now

Most owners decide to sell about a year before they'd like the money. That's the single most expensive scheduling mistake in small business, because nearly everything that lifts a sale price takes six to eighteen months to show up in the numbers a buyer will trust.

If a sale is anywhere on your horizon, here is the order of operations.

1. Get the numbers provable

Clean, current books. Revenue traceable to customers and products. Margins by line, not by feel. This is unglamorous and it is first, because every other improvement is invisible if it can't be seen in the numbers.

2. Reduce what depends on you

List everything only you can do — approvals, pricing calls, key relationships. Then systemise or delegate them one at a time. A business that needs its owner three days a week sells very differently to one that needs him three hours.

3. Switch the dormant revenue back on

Lapsed customers, unpriced catalogue drift, channels nobody touched in years. This is where value hides, and it's the fastest to recover — often inside a quarter. Growth during the sale process is the strongest negotiating card there is.

4. Fix the concentration story

If one customer is 40% of revenue or one supplier can stop your production, buyers price that fear in. Broaden the base and consolidate supply on terms that survive a change of owner. We've watched supplier consolidation take a distributor from unprofitable and unsellable to roughly twice its previous valuation.

5. Only then, talk to a broker

A good broker will appraise what exists. Walk in after the work, not before, and the baseline they set — and the buyers they call — start from a different number. Better: involve them early on the multiple, and improve against it deliberately.