Guide
Getting sale-ready
Preparation is what keeps the price you agreed and the money you bank close to one another.
Most of the value lost in a sale is not lost at the negotiating table. It is lost in diligence, when something a buyer expected to find is missing, and the price moves quietly downwards while everyone stays polite. Preparation is not presentation. It is the unglamorous work of making sure that what you say about the firm can be evidenced by the firm, so that the offer you accept resembles the money you eventually receive.
Time is the useful ingredient. Some things can be tidied inside a month, such as reconciling income to the back office and getting fee agreements into one place. Others cannot be hurried at all, because they are the shape of the business rather than the state of the paperwork: an ageing client base, income that rests on one adviser's personal relationships, a proposition that has quietly become three propositions. Owners who start a couple of years out get to fix those. Owners who start when the offer arrives get to explain them.
Data quality is where preparation earns its keep. A buyer pays for income it can verify, so income you cannot reconcile is income you will not be paid for. That means client records that match the platform, ongoing charges that match signed agreements, suitability files that exist for the advice you gave, and a clear view of which clients actually generate the recurring income rather than which clients you would like to think do.
Deals collapse for a short list of reasons and most of them are avoidable. A surprise in the files. Income that turns out to be smaller or less durable than the summary implied. A key person leaving, or the discovery that the key person is you. Complaint or regulatory history that was not mentioned early. Buyers rarely walk away because a business is imperfect. They walk away because something was found rather than told.
The reasonable expectation is that a buyer will ask for everything a careful owner already keeps: three years of accounts, a client and income breakdown, your compliance and complaint history, your adviser and staff position, and the contracts holding all of it together. The articles below set out what to fix, in what order, and how long each piece takes when it is done properly.
Articles in this guide
4 guides in this subject35 minutes of reading
- The 24-month plan to sell your practiceA working-backwards timetable for selling a UK advice firm: what to fix at each stage from two years out, and what to triage if you have less time.
- What IFA buyers ask for in due diligenceThe information a buyer requests at teaser, offer and diligence stage, why the sequence matters, and what having each answer ready signals about your firm.
- How data quality affects your sale priceBuyers price what they can verify. What advice firm buyers test in diligence, what a clean data room looks like, and where poor records cost real money.
- Why deals collapse, and how to avoid itUnderstand common reasons IFA sales fall through, including price expectations, due diligence and deal terms, with practical preparation before buyer talks.