Who Needs to Be Part of Your Exit Planning Team?

Business brokers, M&A advisors, CPAs, attorneys, wealth managers. When you start thinking about selling your business, it can feel like everyone wants a seat at the table.

Many business owners we talk to have the same questions:

• Do I really need all these people?

• What's this going to cost me?

• Can't my current team handle the exit the way they're already set up?

These are fair questions. What we've found, walking alongside business owners through this process, is that the challenge usually isn't whether you need a team. It's whether your team is working together or operating in silos.

Table of Contents

• The Silo Problem
• Why Deal Structure Matters as Much as Sale Price
• When Expertise Gaps Cost Real Money
• The Orchestra Analogy
• What About My Existing Advisors?
• Getting Started

The Silo Problem

Each professional involved in an exit brings valuable expertise. The M&A advisor or business broker typically focuses on maximizing enterprise value and ideal deal structure. The CPA focuses on tax implications. The attorney focuses on legal structure and liability. The wealth manager focuses on what happens to the proceeds.

The problem is that each one tends to look at the situation through their own lens.

An M&A advisor, for example, is typically focused on maximizing the sale price for your business. That's their job, and they're often very good at it. But there are situations where the highest sale price isn't actually the most important outcome.

We recently worked with a client who didn't care about getting peak valuation. What mattered most to them was deal structure. They had a family member they wanted to spend more time with, so their priority was stepping away from the business as quickly as possible after the transaction closed.

They were willing to accept less cash and avoid deal structures that would have required them to stay on for five years or maintain rollover equity. Without someone coordinating across all the advisors, that nuance could have been lost in the push for maximum sale price.

Why Deal Structure Matters as Much as Sale Price

When advisors work in silos, important questions can fall through the cracks:

• How does the deal structure align with your financial planning goals?
• What are the tax implications of different transaction types?
• How do your legacy and charitable giving goals factor in?
• What timeline works best for your personal situation?

The role of a coordinated approach is to quarterback the team so that decisions aren't made in isolation. Every choice gets examined through multiple lenses: financial planning, tax strategy, legal structure, and personal goals.

Without this coordination, business owners can end up in the 70% who regret selling within the first 12 months, often because they focused exclusively on minimizing taxes or maximizing sale price without accounting for the personal and financial goals that make the transaction meaningful..

When Expertise Gaps Cost Real Money

One question we hear often: "I already have a CPA. Why would I need someone different?"

Many CPAs are excellent at what they do for ongoing business operations, but exit transactions involve a different level of complexity. We've worked with clients whose longtime CPAs looked at us and said, "I've never filled out a gift tax return before."

If someone hasn't dealt with that level of complexity, are they equipped to handle the nuances of selling a $40 million company?

One situation we worked through illustrates this well. A client was selling a business. They lived in Florida, but the business operated in New York. It was structured as a stock sale, with specific tax strategies in place. Then the buyers decided they wanted an asset sale instead.

The client, not understanding the implications, simply agreed.

When the legal team reviewed it, they raised the alarm. An asset sale would have changed everything from a tax perspective. The client would have assumed all the liability of the company. The tax strategies already in place would have been nullified.

Having the full team engaged throughout the process is what caught the issue before it had real consequences.

Free Resource: Exit Planning Readiness Assessment

Not sure where you stand? Our Exit Planning Readiness Assessment helps you identify the critical gaps between where you are today and where you need to be to exit successfully on your terms.