The Real Timeline to Sell a Company, Month by Month

Cameron DuPree
Aug 7
3 min read

Updated: Aug 10

Most lower-middle-market sale processes run six to ten months from launch to close. Owners who hear that number usually have two reactions: surprise that it's that long, and then, once they see what happens inside it, understanding of why rushing it costs money. Here is the honest month-by-month.

Months -12 to 0: Preparation (the phase most owners skip)

The best exits start before the process does. This is when a valuation exposes the fixable issues: add-backs that need documentation, customer concentration that needs a year to dilute, an owner-dependent operation that needs a second-in-command. Every month of preparation here is worth multiples of a month spent negotiating later. If you do nothing else early, do this.

Weeks 1-4: Valuation and packaging

The formal engagement begins with financial normalization: three years of statements and returns, add-backs identified and documented, earnings benchmarked against closed transactions. Simultaneously, anything a buyer's diligence would find gets surfaced now, on your side of the table. A surprise you disclose is a footnote; a surprise a buyer finds is a price reduction.

Weeks 3-6: Confidential positioning

The confidential information memorandum gets built, the document that presents your company the way acquirers evaluate it: earnings quality, customer mix, management depth, growth levers. A blind teaser carries no identifying details. The buyer list gets built: strategic acquirers, private equity platforms making add-on acquisitions, family offices, and qualified individuals, each mapped to your industry and size.

Months 2-5: Market

Outreach goes out, blind. Interested buyers sign NDAs and get screened for capital and intent before they learn your company's name. Management calls and site visits are staged and controlled. The goal of this phase is not finding a buyer; it's converting interest from several qualified buyers into competing indications of interest and letters of intent on a common timeline. Competition, not negotiation skill, is what moves price.

Months 4-6: LOI and negotiation

Offers arrive, get compared on more than price (structure, financing certainty, treatment of employees, transition expectations), and one gets negotiated to a signed letter of intent. The LOI sets price, structure, and an exclusivity period. This is the deal's most dangerous moment: everything after the LOI tends to move price down, never up, which is why the preparation months matter so much.

Months 5-9: Due diligence

The buyer verifies everything: financials, taxes, contracts, employees, licenses, insurance, systems. A well-run process manages this on a live tracker with staged information release. Deals die here for two reasons, surprises and drift. Preparation prevents the first; disciplined weekly management prevents the second. If the buyer is financing the purchase, their lender's underwriting runs in parallel and is often the true critical path.

Months 6-10: Documentation and close

Purchase agreements, disclosure schedules, assignment of contracts and leases, licensing transfers, and closing coordination among attorneys, CPAs, and lenders. Then funding, the only day that actually counts.

What makes it faster or slower

Faster: clean financials, documented add-backs, a management layer, cash or well-prepared SBA buyers, and an owner who responds to requests within a day. Slower: messy books, landlord consent problems, license transfers, financing contingencies, and, the most common one, an owner who wasn't emotionally ready and slows every decision.

The timeline isn't the enemy. An unprepared fast sale to one buyer is how owners leave seven figures behind. Six to ten months, run with discipline, is what full value costs.