The Art of Selling Your Business: Timing, Advisors and the Lawyer Question

By Michael D. Rubin, CEO & Founder · Updated September 2026 · 699 words

The art of selling a business rests on three points: sell from a position of strength rather than waiting for a perfect market, do not run the sale yourself, and do not treat your regular lawyer as a substitute for a sale advisor. Each is simple to state and easy to get wrong.

The title borrows from a 2021 book on exiting a company. This article takes three of its themes and explains how they play out when a Texas company with $3 million to $100 million in revenue changes hands.

Sell from strength, not from a forecast

Owners often try to time the market, waiting for rates to fall, for a better year in their industry or for conditions to favor sellers. Forecasts are unreliable, and waiting carries its own risks: results can dip, a key customer can leave, health can change. The owner is strongest when the company is performing well, the records are clean and a buyer wants it.

An unsolicited offer is a signal worth taking seriously. That does not mean accepting it. It means using it as a reason to find out what the wider market would pay. See how to evaluate an unsolicited offer and when the right time to sell is.

Strength also means readiness. An owner with clean financials, a capable team and documents in order can respond to interest quickly, while one who needs several months of cleanup often loses the moment.

Why owners who sell on their own usually leave money behind

Most owners sell one company in their lives. The buyers across the table, whether private equity groups, strategic acquirers or serial entrepreneurs, may buy several a year. That gap shows up in predictable ways:

• One buyer instead of several, so there is no competition to set the price
• Confidential information shared before the buyer has shown it can pay
• A letter of intent signed with vague terms that are later renegotiated in due diligence
• The owner's attention pulled away from the business, so results slip during the sale
• Tax and structure decisions made late, after the chance to plan them has passed

What an advisor changes

A good advisor fixes each of those problems. The advisor prepares the financial recast and the marketing package, screens buyers, brings several to the table at once and handles the back-and-forth while the owner keeps running the company. The owner still makes every decision that matters, but with better information and more options.

An advisor also puts a buffer between owner and buyer. When a hard point needs pressing, the advisor can press it without damaging the relationship the owner will rely on during the transition.

The cost is a fee. At a performance-based firm it is paid only if the sale closes, so the advisor is paid for results rather than effort; our fee structure explains how that works.

Your company lawyer is not your sale advisor

Owners who trust a long-time attorney sometimes ask that attorney to run the sale. The problem is not competence but role. A lawyer's job is to protect you from legal risk, and a careful lawyer finds risk in almost everything. A sale advisor's job is to create buyer demand, manage the process and push for price and terms. You need both.

The attorney you need at the documents stage is a transaction attorney who does M&A work regularly, not necessarily the one who drafted your leases or handled a dispute. The advisor finds and negotiates the deal; the transaction attorney makes sure the purchase agreement says what was agreed and protects you after closing.

Bring the transaction attorney in early enough to review the letter of intent, because many of the terms that matter most are set there.

How MDR & Associates puts this into practice

We work alongside your own transaction attorney and CPA through our ten-step process, from the discovery meeting to funds wired. A principal of the firm is in every negotiation, and we negotiate multiple letters of intent at the same time so competition, not a single buyer, sets the price. If you have an offer on the table or are weighing one, contact us for a confidential conversation.

Where this fitsSell your business in Texas →

Questions owners ask next

Can my CPA run the sale instead of an advisor?

Your CPA is essential for the financial recast, tax planning and diligence questions about the books. Few CPAs run buyer outreach, screen buyers or manage competing offers. Most sellers do best with both: the CPA on the numbers and tax, the advisor on the market and negotiation, and a transaction attorney on the documents.

If I already have one interested buyer, do I still need an advisor?

Often yes. With one buyer, you have no measure of whether the price is fair and no alternative if terms change later. An advisor can test the offer against the wider market quietly, and the original buyer sometimes improves its bid once it knows others are looking.