Six stages · Start to finish
Your part is smaller than you think
Owners brace for months of disruption and then find the sale takes less of their week than the business already does. That division is deliberate..
Timings are what a well prepared Queensland business normally runs to. Last updated 15 September 2026.
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Owners brace for months of disruption and then find the sale takes less of their week than the business already does. That division is deliberate. You keep doing the thing you are good at, which is running it. The process sits with the broker.
Four things stay with you, and only four.
This is the big one and it is the one owners drop. A buyer prices the business on the numbers it is producing while they are looking at it, so a quarter that slips during the campaign costs more than any negotiation can win back. Chase the work, keep the team steady, take the holiday you had booked.
Buyers ask for documents in waves, and the serious ones ask hardest. A file that comes back the same week keeps the momentum. A file that takes three weeks tells a buyer something about how the business is run, and it is never the thing you want it to tell them.
Whether to accept an offer, what terms you will live with, how long you will stay on, what you will and will not warrant. Those are yours. My job is to make sure you are deciding with complete information and no pressure, not to decide for you.
Introductions to the key customers and suppliers, time with the team, and whatever training period is written into the contract. Do that part properly and the final payment, the reference and your reputation all follow it out the door.
Everything else is mine. The target list and the direct approaches, the confidentiality agreements, qualifying every enquiry before it learns who you are, the information memorandum, the negotiation, coordinating your solicitor and accountant with the buyer’s, managing due diligence, and holding the deal together through to settlement.
Expect a handful of calls in a normal week on market, a small number of inspections arranged at times that do not disturb your staff, and a burst of document work in the fortnight after an offer is accepted. If it is taking more of your week than that, something has gone wrong with the process, and that is my problem to fix rather than yours.
Tony Pope is a licensed business broker, not a solicitor. This explains how these rules and clauses usually work so you can have a better conversation with your lawyer.
Your contract should be drafted and reviewed by a solicitor. Where anything on this page differs from an official source or from your own legal advice, that source and that advice are right.
This explains how the rules generally work on a business sale. It is not advice about your situation, and nothing here should be acted on without your accountant running your actual numbers.
Tony Pope is not a registered tax agent and does not give tax advice. Deal structure changes what you keep, sometimes by more than the negotiation does, so get that advice before you sign anything.
Shares in a private company are a financial product under the Corporations Act 2001. Tony Pope does not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence and does not give financial product advice. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy or sell shares.
Where a sale is structured as a share sale, the share transfer itself is handled by your solicitor and your accountant. This page explains why the structure matters to your licence, your accreditation or your registration. It does not tell you which structure to choose.
Ask what it is worth
Free, in writing, and nobody finds out you asked. Tell me the trade and the suburb and I will do the rest.
Nobody finds out you are selling. This goes to me only, into my own database in Sydney. I will not contact your accountant, your landlord, your bank or your staff, ever, unless you ask me to.
If you would rather not put anything in writing yet, ring 0431 124 128. Prefer to pick a time yourself? Book a time in my diary.
Start at stage one
Stage one is a conversation and a number. Everything after it is only worth doing once you know what you are working towards. Thirty minutes, at a time that suits you, including evenings.