Business Sale & Exit

Most business owners fail to maximize the value of their business at sale due to a lack of preparation. Failing to prepare your financials, operations, etc., and a lack of insight into a system engineered to facilitate a quick close.

Your business has tremendous value, don't sacrifice it to a system designed to exploit your lack of experience.

At C&A, our core values include mitigating complexity, transparency, empathy, and being easy to work with. Never are those values more welcome - and necessary - than during the sale of your business.

Our approach to business exit and sale is simple. First, ensure you are fully prepared and informed,  which can include recommendations other than sale, and if sale is the best course, maximizing your return.

Feasibility & Readiness Assessment

The first phase in preparing you and your business for sale includes data collection, assessing feasibility and readiness, financial analysis, and strategic discussions to boost buyer interest and align leadership.

• Financial recast & indicative valuation. Normalize financial results (EBITDA add-backs, one-offs, owner perks) and benchmark against recent market comps to pin down a defendable valuation range.
• Risk-adjusted value drivers. Surface issues that depress multiples—customer or vendor concentration, below-market leases, thin second-tier management—and pair each with a practical fix that can be executed before going to market.
• Exit structure mapping. Compare a full sale, majority recap, minority investment, or staged transition, outlining rollover equity, earn-out mechanics, and tax impact so leadership can choose a path that meets personal liquidity and legacy goals.
• Readiness roadmap. Deliver a prioritized 90-day action plan—operational clean-ups, tax remediation, governance tweaks—so the company enters the next phase looking audit-ready and buyer-friendly.

Strategy & Pre-Market Outreach

The Initial Market Sounding stage is crucial in selling a business, as it involves discreetly reaching out to potential buyers. This helps sellers understand market interest, valuation, and fit, allowing them to refine their strategy and assess the sale's viability before fully marketing.

• Teaser creation & target list. Draft a two-page, no-names “blind” profile and curate an initial list of strategic and financial buyers whose mandates align with your niche, size, and culture.
• Quiet market sounding. Release the teaser under NDA to gauge appetite, valuation bands, preferred deal structures, and potential red-flags—information we feed back into positioning before a broad launch.
• Positioning refinement. Use real-time feedback to sharpen the equity story, tighten growth projections, and stress-test the proposed deal timeline and working-capital targets.
• Go/no-go checkpoint. Present leadership with a data-backed decision on whether to proceed immediately, delay for value-building adjustments, or pivot to an alternative liquidity path.

Go To Market & Transaction Execution

This is where our dedicated C&A Dealmakers team takes over with one singular goal: to maximize your return and ensure that the return you receive is properly protected in your estate and through your financial strategy.

• Compelling CIM & data room. Build a narrative-rich CIM that highlights growth levers while protecting proprietary data, and populate a diligence-ready virtual data room organized by buyer request lists.
• Deal-team quarterbacking. We act as the single point of coordination—aligning legal, tax, wealth, insurance, and operational advisors early—to eliminate silos, keep everyone on one critical-path timeline, and ensure every decision maximizes enterprise value.
• Coordinated due diligence. Front-load buyer scrutiny on the most value-sensitive areas—QoE, tax, legal, operational resilience—while deal team manages responses, plugs identified gaps in real time, and maintains an issues log to prevent late-stage “re-trades.”
• Seamless close & wealth transfer. Orchestrate legal, tax, insurance, and wealth-management advisors so funds land in the optimal vehicles at closing, minimizing leakage and aligning with your estate and philanthropic objectives.