The owners who achieve the best outcomes rarely decide to sell on a Friday and list the following Monday. They give themselves a runway — usually around twelve months — to tidy the things that quietly erode value and to surface the strengths that don't yet show up in a P&L.
Here's the broker-led roadmap we walk owners through.
Months 12 to 9: get the numbers right
Buyers and their accountants will look at three full years of financials. Before anything else:
- Reconcile and tidy the chart of accounts so revenue and cost categories actually mean something.
- Separate personal from business — vehicles, travel, subscriptions, family wages. Either remove them or document them clearly as add-backs.
- Normalise owner remuneration to a market salary for the role you actually perform.
- Document one-offs — Covid-era support, a building insurance payout, a legal settlement — so they don't distort the trend.
The goal is a clean, defensible EBITDA that a buyer's accountant can verify in an afternoon, not argue with for a month.
Months 9 to 6: reduce owner dependency
The single biggest value killer in a small-to-medium NZ business is "if the owner stops, the business stops." Start handing over:
- Key customer relationships
- Quoting and pricing decisions
- Supplier negotiations
- Hiring and rostering
- Banking and cashflow oversight
If you can take a genuine three-week holiday and the business runs without daily phone calls, you've materially increased its value. If you can't, that's your project for the next quarter.
Months 6 to 4: contracts, IP and the lease
This is the work owners hate and buyers love.
- Customer contracts — get the top 10–20 customers onto current, signed terms. Verbal arrangements with a handshake might be how it's always worked, but they don't transfer.
- Supplier agreements — confirm pricing, exclusivity, change-of-control clauses.
- Employment agreements — every team member on a current written agreement, with restraints where appropriate.
- Intellectual property — make sure trade marks, domains, software licences and any custom code are owned by the company, not by you personally or a former contractor.
- The lease — buyers want to see at least the deal length plus options. A two-year tail on a five-year deal is a problem; renegotiate early.
A buyer pays for what they can keep. Anything that walks out the door with you isn't part of the sale.
Months 4 to 2: the operational story
Now you turn attention to the things that prove the business is a system, not a personality:
- A simple org chart with clear responsibilities
- Documented standard operating procedures for the work that actually drives revenue
- A current employee handbook and induction process
- Health and safety records up to date
- A financial dashboard the new owner can run from on day one
You don't need a corporate-grade operations manual. You need enough that a competent buyer can see the wiring.
Months 2 to 0: the Information Memorandum
The IM is the document a buyer reads before they meet you. A good one does three things:
- Tells the story of the business — what it does, who it serves, why customers stay.
- Presents three years of clean financials with clearly explained add-backs.
- Sets out the opportunity for the next owner — what's already working and what they could lean into.
A weak IM forces buyers to do all the imaginative work themselves. A strong one frames the business at its true value and filters out the time-wasters.
What this is worth in practice
Owners who do this twelve-month preparation typically achieve a sale price meaningfully higher than those who go to market cold — and, just as importantly, they reach completion. Deals fall over in due diligence far more often than they fall over on price. The roadmap above is what keeps you in the deal.
If you're a year out from a possible sale, the best step is a confidential, no-obligation conversation now — not in eleven months' time.