Exiting a business is a complex mix of strategic choices and personal transition. We provide the calm, senior-led support you need to navigate this process with clarity
Where the business stands and what a buyer will notice.
Reduce risk and build value.
The high-stakes calls, made with a clear view of each option.
Through buyer conversations, diligence and completion, with an adviser on your side.
Where the business stands and what a buyer will notice.
Reduce risk and build value.
The high-stakes calls, made with a clear view of each option.
Through buyer conversations, diligence and completion, with an adviser on your side.
Structured support across three key dimensions
Strategy
Narrative
Preparedness
Value Drivers
Your non-negotiables
Risk
Offers
Buyer Fit
Structure
Diligence
Negotiation Priorities
Price vs. Risk
Objectives
Timing
Trade-offs
Build optionality, reduce risk, and strengthen your position
Exit Readiness Assessment
Exit Partner Programme
Business Sale Support
Choose the level of support that matches where you are in your exit journey
Owners planning an exit who want to maximise their eventual sale price, and be confident they are truly buyer-ready.
Owners who want a senior, independent adviser alongside them for 6–24 months as they get exit-ready, build value and prepare for a transaction - with Business Sale Support services available at deal tempo when a sale is in play.
Important: Strategic and commercial guidance only. We work alongside, not instead of, your corporate finance, legal, and tax advisers.
TIMELINE
6–24 months
With regular review points
INVESTMENT
Retainer-based
Agreed up-front once we understand your situation
Support for the whole of a sale, from your side of the table.
Selling your business is a series of decisions you only get to make once, made against people who make them for a living. Business Sale Support puts an experienced adviser beside you for whichever part you’re facing: deciding whether to sell at all, weighing an offer that’s landed, preparing to go to market, understanding who the real buyers are, getting through diligence, and holding steady from agreed terms to completion. You take the part you need. Your corporate finance adviser, accountant and solicitor keep their ground - we work alongside them, on your side, never in their place.
Six modules. Each is a complete piece of work with its own start and finish - you buy the one your situation needs, and nothing obliges the next.
The Sale Decision. You’re at a fork: sell, hold, respond to an approach, raise, or hand the question to a corporate finance firm. We work it through with you - the evidence, the options genuinely open, a plain reading of each - and you leave with a written record of the decision and where each route leads. Some routes lead away from selling, and away from us. The record says so when they do.
The Offer Review. Someone wants to buy your business, and their timetable is already running. Inside one to two weeks: what the offer actually says, where it sits against your evidenced position, who the buyer really is, what their diligence will find, and how to prepare for the conversations ahead. You decide what to do with it - the reading is ours, the decision is yours.
Launch Preparation. You’ve decided to sell. Before the market hears about it: a clear view of whether to sell now, the call on whether a short sprint would genuinely move it, the data room built in the order diligence will ask, the story evidenced, and the marketing materials and management presentations you’ll need. We’ll also help you decide if choosing a corporate finance firm is the right path or whether your existing team, with us alongside, is appropriate.
The Buyer Landscape. Who would credibly buy your business, what each would pay for and fear, and how each is best approached. It starts with The Buyer Universe: a search of public sources for the businesses and investors that could buy, set out in a full report. From it we agree a shortlist with you and research each buyer on it in depth, so you’re never negotiating with an audience of one unless you choose to be.
Diligence Defence. The buyer’s advisers are about to take your business apart, politely. We prepare you: what they’ll find and in what order, what can be cleared before they ask, what will be contained through structure and what that costs, and how to keep the answers consistent when the questions get pointed.
Terms to Completion. The stretch that costs founders the most - agreed terms, then weeks of drafts, schedules and small renegotiations, with exhaustion setting in and the finish line moving. A steady adviser at deal tempo: every document read from your side, every term tested against the lines you set at the start, every wobble met with a calm read.
We advise you; we don’t hold the mandate. Your sale process runs through your appointed corporate finance adviser - or, where you and your accountant choose to run the process together, through that partnership - and we work alongside it, on your side of the table. We never contact a buyer. Approaches are made by whoever runs your sale, and we contact no one without your documented, explicit instruction.
We give no legal, tax, insurance or regulated financial advice. Your solicitor, your accountant and your tax adviser hold their own ground, under their own regulation and terms. We work alongside them, never instead of them, and we hand over cleanly wherever their ground begins.
What that leaves us is the ground no one else at the table holds: the adviser who sits with you - helping you decide, read the offer, prepare for diligence and hold your position - whose advice on whether to sell, and whether to accept an offer, is never paid on the deal completing.
Most owners meet two separate worlds on the way to a sale: the adviser who helps them prepare, and the firm that runs the deal. The handover between the two is where preparation gets lost. The adviser who knew the business leaves the room just as the stakes rise.
We built our services so you never cross that seam alone. The same founder-side adviser who assessed your business and worked the preparation stays with you through the decision, the offer, the diligence and the completion - alongside your existing team. Nothing is re-learned at the moment you can least afford it.
Each module has its own fee, quoted before it starts and complete in itself. The Sale Decision is from £1,000. The Offer Review is from £2,000. Launch Preparation, The Buyer Landscape and Diligence Defence are quoted at entry, once we’ve sized the work with you. Terms to Completion runs as a monthly arrangement, because a deal’s timetable belongs to the buyer and we’d rather say that plainly than guess at a fixed price; we tell you the expected span when we start.
Nothing about any module’s fee depends on you buying another, and there are no continuation discounts to chase. Where a later piece of work builds on an earlier one - or on an Exit Readiness Assessment you’ve already had - it consumes that record at the depth it was done and incorporates it into the report.
If you’ve been approached, start with The Offer Review - or with The Sale Decision if the real question is whether to engage at all. If you’ve decided to sell, start with Launch Preparation. If you don’t yet know what you want to do, start with The Sale Decision. And if the question underneath is “where does my business actually stand?”, the Exit Readiness Assessment is the instrument for that, and everything here can build on it.
A business that is ready to sell is a better business to own. Our goal is to give you optionality - the freedom to sell, step back, or scale, knowing your business is a transferable asset, not just a job.
Build clarity on what your business is actually worth and why
Reduce risk by identifying and addressing diligence surprises early
Strengthen your position whether you are selling or building a better business to own
Support your decisions with founder-level insight and pragmatic advice, from first thoughts of exit through to completion
Exit Strategy & Solutions is a senior-led advisory practice. Mark serves as the primary adviser for all client engagements, supported, where it adds value, by Tom Beaufoy on transformation and operations, and by specialist advisers from our network, each under their own regulation and terms.
By combining our collective deal experience with founder-level thinking, we deliver the strategic clarity and practical implementation support owners need to maximise their outcomes.
Founder-to-exit experience, on your side. Let’s discuss where you are, what you need, and how to get there - confidentially and without obligation.