We sold a Western-owned manufacturing business within two months. It was a case where the owner only came to us when the business was already on the edge of closing down.
In situations like this, selling isn’t a calm, well-planned decision. It becomes a last-minute attempt — rushed, stressful, and full of pressure.
We had only two months.
What does “selling too late” really mean for a business?
Through this process, one thing became very clear: time pressure directly reduces a business’s sellability.
First, the seller has no room left to improve the business.
Many things that could have been prepared earlier — restructuring, cleaning up operations, presenting the business more attractively — simply can’t happen anymore. The business has to be sold “as it is.”
For buyers, that creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty always shows up in the price and deal terms.
Second, the pool of buyers becomes much smaller.
When a deal must close quickly, we can only focus on buyers who can make fast decisions.
The high-quality buyers — those who take time to properly understand the business but move more carefully — are often forced out simply because the timeline doesn’t allow it.
Most importantly, urgency weakens the seller’s negotiating position.
Once buyers sense that “if this doesn’t sell now, the business may shut down,” the balance of power shifts immediately.
Even if the business has real value, it becomes difficult to reflect that value in the final terms.
In this case, the manufacturing business had annual revenue of over AUD 1.5 million. With earlier preparation, it could very realistically have sold for several times the final deal price.
And yet, the deal still got done
Despite the difficult starting point, we managed to bring the transaction across the finish line — step by step — even when the seller was close to losing hope.
But in our internal review, the conclusion was very clear:
If the sale process had started earlier, the outcome would have been significantly better.
Not because the business was unsellable — but because time was no longer on the seller’s side.
Final thoughts
This is not an isolated case.
In many SME sales we see, the issue isn’t whether the business is valuable.
The issue is that the owner starts too late.
Selling is never a decision made in a single moment. Yet many business owners only seriously consider it when pressure has already built up and options have narrowed.
A good sale takes time — and it takes breathing room.
More time means the ability to prepare properly, position the business well, choose the right buyer, and negotiate fairer terms.
And those advantages usually only exist before the situation becomes urgent.
