From signing with an adviser to money in the account usually takes nine to twelve months. Preparation takes about two months, contacting buyers and picking a finalist another four, and due diligence with agreement negotiation four to six. The biggest delays come not from the market but from unsorted documentation on the seller’s side.
Where the nine to twelve months go
A sale process falls into three stages with different dynamics. The first depends entirely on you, the second on the market, the third on the buyer and their advisers.
Months 1-2: preparation
This produces the transaction valuation, the teaser, the information memorandum and the data room. In parallel the list of potential buyers is built. It is the only stage where you fully control the pace: if the documents are in order, two months is enough. If contracts, shareholder resolutions or a clean fixed-asset register are missing, it stretches to four.
Months 2-6: the market process
Contacting buyers, confidentiality agreements, releasing the memorandum, indicative offers, shortlisting two to four finalists and negotiating terms. The pace depends on how many buyers genuinely engage and how fast they decide. A Polish trade investor usually responds within weeks; a large foreign group or a fund with an investment committee needs longer.
Months 6-12: due diligence and closing
The buyer and their advisers examine the company, ask questions and raise objections. The sale agreement is negotiated in parallel. At the end come the conditions precedent: corporate approvals, sometimes merger clearance, release of bank security. This stage almost never runs faster than planned, and often runs slower.
Five things that most often stretch the timeline
- Documents that do not exist. Missing resolutions, unsigned contracts, unclear title to property. Every such gap stops due diligence until it is filled.
- A result nobody can explain. If EBITDA jumps year to year and no one can say why, the buyer assumes the worst case and asks for more analysis.
- Dependence on the owner. When every key relationship and decision runs through one person, the buyer builds protections: an earn-out, a transition period, extra warranties. Each of those is a separate negotiation.
- The seller changing their mind. Reopening price or structure after an offer has been made can set the process back two months and weaken your position.
- The buyer’s financing. If the deal is leveraged, the bank sets the pace, not the parties.
What actually shortens the process
One thing makes the biggest difference: preparing the documentation before the process starts rather than during it. Companies that enter due diligence with a complete data room and a clean financial history get through that stage in six to eight weeks instead of four months.
The second is a seller-side review. Vendor due diligence, which means examining your own company before the buyer does, lets you fix problems calmly, without deadline pressure and without handing arguments to the other side.
The third is a realistic price expectation from the start. A process run for a price the market will not pay ends in a round of conversations with no offers and a restart six months later.
When to start if you want to finish on time
If you have a specific date by which you want to be out of the business, count back twelve months for the process itself and add time for preparation. In practice that means the decision to start is worth taking eighteen months to two years ahead.
If you have no date but a sale is the direction, the best moment for a diagnosis is when the company has a good year behind it and another ahead. A valuation done after earnings drop always costs more than postponing the decision saved.
The full timetable of our process is on the company sale page, and the terms of working together on how we work.
Common questions
Can a company be sold faster than nine months?
It can, if the buyer is known from the start and no competitive process is run. A deal with a single counterparty can close in four to six months, but without competition the price is almost always lower.
When do employees find out?
In most transactions just before or just after the agreement is signed. Contact with buyers happens only after confidentiality agreements are in place, so nothing reaches the market earlier.
How much of my own time does the process take?
Most of it during preparation and during due diligence. In the middle phase, while buyers are being contacted, the owner’s involvement is limited to meetings with genuinely interested parties and decisions at each fork in the road.
What if there are no offers after six months?
That is a signal that either the price is disconnected from the market or the company has a problem visible from outside. In both cases it is better to stop, fix the cause and come back in a year than to cut the price under pressure.
See also
- Teaser and information memorandum, the two documents produced in the first stage
- Red flags, if you want to shorten due diligence by preparing in advance
- How we work, for what happens at each stage
About the author
Łukasz Brzyski runs Brzyski & Partners Management Consulting. He advises on the sale and purchase of companies valued between PLN 10 and 50 million, and sold two companies he co-founded before he started advising others. More about the author