Exit Strategy Review – Understand Your Business, Your Options, and Your Next Steps

Most business owners who start thinking about their exit do not know where to begin. They have a rough sense of what their business might be worth, a vague idea of selling to a trade buyer, and a growing list of questions they have never had properly answered.

The Exit Strategy Review is designed for exactly this moment. It is a structured, independent assessment of your current position — delivered as a written report that gives you the clarity to plan your next steps with confidence.

What the Review Covers

Every Exit Strategy Review covers six areas:

Current Valuation and Valuation Potential

An honest assessment of what your business is worth today — based on your financials, your market position, and current transaction multiples in your sector — and what it could be worth with structured preparation. This is not a formal RICS valuation, but it gives you a realistic working range to plan around.

Available Exit Routes

An assessment of which exit routes are realistically available to you — trade sale, management buyout, Employee Ownership Trust, partial exit, family succession — and which is most likely to give you the outcome you want. Most owners are surprised by the range of options they have not considered.

Key-Person Risk and Owner Dependency

An honest assessment of how much the business depends on you personally — and what that means for a buyer’s risk assessment and the price they would be willing to pay. Owner dependency is the single most common suppressor of SME business value in the UK, and one of the most addressable with time.

Barriers to Purchase

The issues a buyer would flag in due diligence — customer concentration, revenue predictability, contract quality, financial reporting clarity, compliance gaps — identified before they become deal-breakers. Knowing them early gives you time to address them.

Value-Enhancement Opportunities

Specific, prioritised actions that are most likely to increase your exit value in your remaining preparation time. Not a generic list — a targeted set of recommendations based on your specific business, your sector, and your timeline.

Indicative Timeline to Exit Readiness

A realistic view of how long meaningful preparation will take, mapped to your personal goals. This is often the most valuable part of the report — because it grounds the planning in reality rather than aspiration.

What You Receive

A written report, specific to your business. Not a template with your company name inserted. A document that reflects a genuine understanding of your situation and gives you clear, actionable recommendations you can work from.

The report is followed by a debrief call — typically 60 to 90 minutes — where the findings and recommendations are discussed in detail and your questions are answered.

Who This Is Right For

• Business owners who are thinking about an exit in the next one to five years and want to understand their current position before committing to any process.
• Owners who have been approached by a potential buyer and want to know where they stand before responding.
• Owners who feel they are ready to sell but want an objective second opinion before appointing a broker.
• Owners who know they need to prepare but are not sure where to focus their time and energy.

The Process

1. Initial call (60 minutes). A conversation to understand your business, your goals, your timeline, and your current situation. No charge for the initial call.
2. Information gathering. You provide a set of financial and operational information. A structured template is provided to make this straightforward.
3. Review and report. The report is prepared, typically within two to three weeks of receiving your information.
4. Debrief call. A detailed discussion of the findings, recommendations, and your questions.
5. Optional: Ongoing advisory. If you want support in implementing the recommendations, ongoing exit planning consultancy can be discussed following the review.

Confidentiality

Everything discussed and shared during the review process is treated in strict confidence. No information about your business or your plans is shared with any third party without your explicit written consent.