Three-Five Years Before a Business Sale

Today's luncheon of the Atlanta Chapter of the Exit Planning Exchange kicked off a series on the exit journey: what business owners need to be doing at various stages along the road to a sale. The focus for today's lunch was on the 3–5 years before a sale, when the work that truly changes valuation has time to take hold.

Thank you to this year’s president, Will Lee, for his leadership as this year's president, and to Anthony Chen for moderating a panel that remained practical. I appreciate the invitation to be part of it.

I was delighted to sit alongside three outstanding professionals who each hit a different driver that buyers care about and that influences exit valuation:

• Lynda Martin addressed leadership structure, decision-making, and developing an operating system that makes execution repeatable.

• Mary Dombrowski discussed sales and business development, what owners often miss in building a reliable revenue engine, and avoiding sales volume built on discounting.

• Jeff Armacost spoke to the importance of branding and the story a company tells about itself.

My lane was pricing, and I kept coming back to a fundamental point: buyers do not pay up for “we raised prices once and it turned out ok.” They pay for companies consistently adding client-perceived value, which leads to pricing power, the ability to raise prices over time without losing best-fit customers.

That kind of pricing power does not come from finance in isolation. It happens when pricing becomes a discipline and a culture across marketing, sales, product, delivery, and leadership.

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I’m John Ray, author of The Generosity Mindset. I help expert-service professionals communicate value, attract best-fit clients, and price their work more confidently, without confusing generosity with giving everything away. If you’d like to start a conversation or join the list from my Sunday morning email newsletter, send me a DM.