Why Change the Playbook That Got You Here?

You didn't hire your first salesperson because you couldn't sell. You hired them because someone with more experience could do it better than you, and free you up to focus on everything else.

That's how founders build every part of a business. You bring in people who have more experience in a specific area than you do, and you let them take that part of the business further than you could on your own.

Then the conversation around selling starts, and a lot of founders drop that instinct entirely.

They've got a friend who sold a business a couple years back and figure that person can walk them through it. Or a family attorney who's handled a deal or two and can "put the bow on it." Getting advice from people you trust is genuinely valuable. But why change the playbook that got you here in the first place?

Some of it is cost. Hiring an experienced team sounds expensive, and it's fair to question handing over a piece of the biggest financial event of your life. Some of it is confidence. If you negotiate deals for a living, it's easy to assume that skill transfers directly to selling your own company, and that doing it yourself could save you a real percentage of the deal.

Here's why that instinct works against you.

Roughly 80% of M&A deals never actually close. That number holds up across the industry regardless of how good the business is, because most of what kills a deal has nothing to do with the company being sold, and everything to do with how the process is run.

The businesses that walk away from a sale with the best outcome have people around them who've done this dozens of times, not once or twice. People who know which fights are worth having and which ones aren't, so you don't waste time or money on the wrong ones. People who aren't distracted trying to run your business and your deal at the same time, so neither one suffers.

You built your business by bringing in people who were better than you at specific things. Selling it deserves that same approach, not less of it.

1️⃣ If someone made an offer on my business tomorrow, who would I actually call first?

2️⃣ Am I assuming a friend or advisor can help just because they've been through a sale once or twice before?

3️⃣ Am I underestimating how much time and focus a sale process would take away from running my business?

4️⃣ Is my hesitation about cost, or about trusting someone else with something this personal?

5️⃣ Would I trust myself to build every other part of my business alone the way I'm considering handling this?

☑️ Take inventory of who's actually in your corner today: Write down who you'd call for legal, deal, and financial advice if an offer came in next week. If there are real gaps, that's worth addressing now.

☑️ Separate the "I trust them" people from the "they've done this before" people: Both matter, but they're not the same thing. Get honest about which one you're leaning on.

☑️ Talk to a founder who's already sold: Ask them what they wish they'd done differently when it came to building their team. It's some of the most useful, unfiltered advice you'll get.

That's all for this week. Selling a business is the same as building one in at least one way: you don't have to do it alone, and you shouldn't have to.

At Exitwise, over 70% of our deals reach a successful close, roughly three times the industry average. If you want to talk through what the right team looks like for your business, reply to this email or write me directly at [email protected].

Talk next week,

Brian Dukes
Managing Partner at Exitwise