There are a variety of conditions that may indicate that it is a good time to contact a business broker to explore exit strategies. This blog post is part of a series about signs or indicators that it may be time to consider a business sale or exit.
Sign it is time to sell your business #10: you are within five years of when you want to retire
Many business owners underestimate the amount of time it will take to sell and completely exit their business. The average marketing time for a small closely held business is between 6 and 9 months (depending on what surveys you look at). However, often there are things that need to be done to prepare the business for sale including gathering and organizing important information, discussing tax implications with a CPA and/or financial advisor, having a broker or intermediary value the business, having the broker or intermediary package the business, etc. Then after the business has actually sold, it is not uncommon to have a transition period of anywhere from two weeks to three years – which will largely be influenced by how dependent the business is on the seller. Furthermore, if you are within five years of when you want to retire and something unexpected negatively impacts the business, you may need to continue operating the business longer than anticipated in order to fix the problem before actively marketing the business.
