Sell Your Business
The owner's guide to a higher-price exit, through a structured competitive process.
Selling your business is the largest financial transaction most owners will ever make, and usually the only one they run once. The difference between a good outcome and an average one rarely comes down to the business itself. It comes down to whether the sale is run as a structured competitive process or handed to the first buyer who calls.
This page explains how to sell your business for its full value, what the process looks like, who the buyers are, and how FISART prepares and runs the sale on your behalf. Each part of the sale has a dedicated page that goes deeper, linked at the end of this overview.
Key takeaways
- Sell your business through a competitive process, not a single conversation: businesses sold outside a run process typically clear 0.5x to 1.5x EBITDA below what a managed competition produces.
- Preparation drives price. The three months before go-to-market, spent on due-diligence readiness and reducing owner dependence, move the number more than the negotiation itself.
- Most $1M-$100M businesses trade at 4-8x adjusted EBITDA, set by size, growth, margins, recurring revenue, and owner dependence.
- A prepared FISART sale reaches a letter of intent in about 45-60 days and closes in 4-6 months on average, and in no more than 9 months.
- The right buyer is often not the obvious one: strategic acquirers, private equity, family offices, and search funds value the same business differently.
- FISART is a senior-advisory M&A firm: a personal senior advisor, a retainer plus a success fee, and AI-powered buyer sourcing that widens the buyer pool.
Last updated: July 2026 · Reviewed by the FISART senior team
4-8x EBITDA
250+ vetted buyers
45-60 days to LOI
$1M-$100M revenue
What selling your business really means for a $1M-$100M owner
For an owner in the $1M to $100M revenue band, selling your business means converting years of retained earnings, customer relationships, and operating know-how into a single, taxable, largely irreversible payment. The stakes are concentrated, and the market is opaque, which is why the method of sale matters as much as the asset.
The common mistake is treating a sale as a transaction rather than a process. An owner receives an unsolicited approach, the number sounds large against a lifetime of salary, and a quiet bilateral negotiation begins. A single buyer negotiating alone has every incentive to anchor low, stretch diligence, and chip the price at each step, because there is no competing bid to hold the line.
A run sale changes the incentives. When several qualified buyers advance in parallel, price discovery happens in the open, and the seller keeps leverage until exclusivity is granted on the seller's terms. Your business has one intrinsic value, but the price a buyer will pay depends heavily on how the sale is conducted.
Why a competitive process wins a higher price
A competitive process wins a higher price because it replaces a one-sided negotiation with a managed market, where qualified buyers bid against each other and the seller holds leverage until the end. The value of the business does not change. The price a buyer will pay does, because competition and the fear of losing the deal pull bids upward.
In the lower middle market, businesses sold outside a competitive process typically trade roughly 0.5x to 1.5x EBITDA below what a run process produces. On a business earning $3M of adjusted EBITDA, that spread is $1.5M to $4.5M of enterprise value, decided not by the fundamentals but by how the sale was run. This is the mechanism behind a successful sale, and it is the reason FISART runs every mandate as a structured competition.
| Dimension | Single buyer | Competitive process |
|---|---|---|
| Price discovery | Buyer sets the anchor | Market sets the price |
| Leverage | Shifts to the buyer over time | Held by the seller until exclusivity |
| Terms and structure | Buyer-favorable | Benchmarked across bids |
| Diligence pressure | Open-ended, price chipping | Time-boxed against competing bids |
| Typical outcome | 0.5x-1.5x EBITDA below | Auction-cleared price |
| Certainty of close | Lower, one point of failure | Higher, fallback bidders exist |
Valuation in 2 minutes
What is your business worth in today's market?
Start with a data-backed estimate using the FISART valuation calculator, then bring the number to a confidential conversation.
When to sell: readiness and timing
The best time to sell is when the business is healthy, growing, and less dependent on you than it was a year ago, not when you are forced to. Timing has two layers: your personal readiness and the readiness of the business, and the second is the one you can still improve before go-to-market.
Personal triggers are usually life-stage: an owner approaching retirement, a succession question with no internal successor, burnout, a relocation, or a strategic decision to take chips off the table while the market is strong. These are healthy reasons to sell, and buyers view them as such.
Business readiness is where preparation pays. Clean financials, a management team that runs day-to-day operations, documented recurring revenue, and a defensible customer base all raise both the multiple and the certainty of close. For the full framework, see exit planning and the 3-month preparation program, and gauge where you stand with the valuation calculator.
How much is your business worth?
Most lower-middle-market businesses are valued as a multiple of adjusted EBITDA, and for the $1M-$100M revenue band that multiple typically falls between 4x and 8x, depending on size, growth, margins, recurring revenue, and owner dependence. Larger and faster-growing businesses sit at the top of the range, smaller or owner-reliant ones at the bottom.
Two numbers drive the outcome: the earnings base and the multiple. The earnings base is adjusted EBITDA, which normalizes reported profit for owner compensation, one-time costs, and non-operating items through defensible add-backs. The multiple reflects risk and growth.
For the methods, ranges, and worked examples, see the business valuation hub and the breakdown of EBITDA multiples by industry. To translate a headline price into what you would keep after tax and structure, use the net proceeds calculator.
What drives your multiple
Five factors move the multiple more than any others: owner dependence, recurring revenue, customer concentration, growth, and margin quality. Two businesses with identical EBITDA can trade a full turn apart on these alone, which is why the three months of preparation focus here. Owner dependence is the single largest discount, and contracted recurring revenue is worth more per dollar than project revenue. Customer concentration is a value destroyer when one account is a large share of revenue, while consistent growth and clean margins move a business toward the top of its range.
Key value drivers
- ·Owner dependence and management depth
- ·Recurring, contracted revenue
- ·Customer concentration and contract structure
- ·Growth over the last three to five years
- ·Margin quality and consistency
- ·Clean financials and working-capital profile
The sale process at a glance
A run sale moves through five stages: preparation, go-to-market, management meetings and indications of interest, letters of intent, and confirmatory due diligence to close. In a prepared FISART process, a letter of intent typically arrives 45 to 60 days into active marketing, and the full sale closes in 4 to 6 months on average, and in no more than 9 months. For the full walkthrough, see how to sell a business and the FISART methodology on our process.
Preparation
Data room, adjusted EBITDA, and the equity story built before any buyer sees the business.
Go-to-market
The buyer universe approached under NDA, anonymized first.
Meetings and IOIs
Management meetings turn interest into indicative offers.
Letters of intent
The strongest bid converted into exclusivity on the seller's terms.
Diligence to close
Confirmatory due diligence and legal drafting to a signed deal.
Who buys businesses like yours
Businesses in the $1M-$100M range are bought by four main buyer types, and each values the same business through a different lens. A wide buyer universe matters because the highest bid usually comes from whichever type sees the most value in your specific business, and that is not always the obvious one. For how buyer sourcing works, see what an M&A advisor does.
Strategic acquirers
Companies in or adjacent to your industry that acquire to gain customers, capabilities, geography, or margin. They can often justify the highest price through synergies, particularly when your business closes a specific gap in their strategy, and they tend to run the most demanding integration diligence.
Private equity firms
Financial buyers that acquire as a new platform or as an add-on to a portfolio company. They pay for predictable cash flow, growth potential, and a management team that can operate post-close, and they often offer rollover equity alongside the cash at close, with a further exit in roughly four to seven years.
Family offices
Patient, long-hold capital invested on behalf of wealthy families. They value continuity, culture, and legacy, look for stable businesses with reliable cash flow, and carry less pressure to sell again on a fixed timeline. They compete well on terms even when they are not the highest headline bid.
Search funds and individual acquirers
Experienced operators, backed by investors, who buy and then run one business, alongside management buy-in candidates who step into the leadership role. Search-fund activity has grown sharply since 2020 in the US and internationally, and for the right business this group competes on both price and continuity.
How FISART sells your business
FISART sells your business through a three-month exit preparation program followed by a structured competitive sale, run by a personal senior advisor from first conversation to close. The model is built to fix the two things that cost owners the most: going to market unprepared, and going to market to too few buyers.
The core offer is a three-month exit preparation program on a staged retainer. It runs in three phases: a due-diligence simulation that finds and fixes the issues a buyer would use to chip the price, value enhancement focused on reducing owner dependence and strengthening recurring revenue, and exit readiness where the data room, the equity story, and the buyer strategy are finalized. Preparation then flows directly into the sale, which runs on a success fee, with the retainer credited toward it. You keep control of timing throughout.
The sale itself is a structured competition across the FISART buyer network of more than 250 vetted strategic acquirers, private equity firms, family offices, and search funds. This is where AI-powered buyer sourcing earns its place: data pipelines, targeted research, and buyer-matching widen the pool well beyond any single advisor's personal network, and a wider, better-matched pool is what drives price through real competition. AI adds reach and precision to the search. It does not replace the advisor, and it does not run your negotiation. A senior advisor does, personally.
You work with a personal senior advisor, not a rotating junior team, from the first call to the closing table. And FISART is US-headquartered with strong US buyer reach, so international and cross-border owners can access American strategic and financial buyers that a domestic-only advisor would never approach. For the reasoning behind buyer sourcing as a competitive advantage, see how an M&A advisor sources buyers.
What to expect: fees and engagement
FISART works on a retainer plus a success fee. The three-month exit preparation program is billed as a staged retainer scaled to the size of the business, and the sale itself is billed as a success fee at close, with the retainer credited against it. This structure aligns the incentives correctly: the retainer funds the preparation that raises your price, and the success fee rewards a closed transaction at a strong number. Engagement fees, timelines, and the exact scope are set in a confidential consultation, because they depend on the size and complexity of your business.
Worked example: what a competitive process is worth
The clearest way to see the value of process is to hold the business constant and change only how it is sold. Consider a healthy business with $3M of adjusted EBITDA. The figures below are illustrative, based on the 0.5x to 1.5x EBITDA process spread typical of the lower middle market, not a promise of outcome.
| Scenario | EBITDA | Multiple | Enterprise value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsolicited single offer | $3.0M | 5.0x | $15.0M |
| Same business, run process (low) | $3.0M | 5.5x | $16.5M |
| Same business, run process (high) | $3.0M | 6.5x | $19.5M |
In this illustration, running a structured competition rather than accepting the first offer is worth $1.5M to $4.5M on the same business and the same earnings. This example is for general information and does not replace individual advice. Actual multiples and outcomes vary by sector, size, growth, and market conditions.
Explore the sell-side in depth
This page is the overview. Each part of selling your business has a dedicated page that goes deeper, so you can follow the path that fits your situation.
Frequently asked questions
Direct answers on how to sell, how long it takes, what your business is worth, buyers, fees, and confidentiality.
Ready to talk about selling your business?
Book a confidential consultation with a senior advisor to understand what your business could sell for, and what it would take to get there. No obligation, and no junior team.