The best guidance often comes from peers—fellow business owners who are a step or several steps ahead of you. They’ve faced similar challenges, tackled similar questions, and navigated similar complexities. Some have even sold multiple businesses, providing them with unique, hard-earned insights that can directly benefit you.

As you contemplate strategic options for yourself and your business, a key, and yet often overlooked step in preparing yourself and your company for sale, is to solicit input, advice, feedback, and lessons learned from other business owners – some of whom will be one or two steps ahead of you (and others will be ten or twenty steps ahead). Ask a community of peer business owners who are in the process of selling or who have already sold, and you are guaranteed to learn something. I know this because I have heard so many of them say how much they wish they had a community like ours of peer business owners to weigh in. All of them have nuggets of advice they would like to share (in some cases, “I was so fortunate to have____” and in other cases, “I really wish I had known that ___ would cost me so much money unnecessarily.”)

When the time is right to actively prepare your business for sale, however, you will need a team of specialists, experts in the business sale process. When you and your business are prepared, you will need a team of experts to assist you with the sale process. These include a sell-side intermediary (or depending on the size of your company, perhaps a business broker on the smaller end or an investment banker on the larger end), an M&A sell-side accounting firm, an M&A attorney, your tax advisor, your wealth advisor. Just as you choose an orthopedic surgeon and not your family doctor to help with a knee replacement, you need to select Merger and Acquisition experts. Your day-to-day business attorney or ongoing accounting relationship are not M&A advisors.