Here’s something important most advice on selling a small business skips: the first buyer visit happens on Google, not in a meeting room. Before anyone sends an offer, they’ll search your name, click through to your website, and decide fast whether this looks like a real, well-run company.
We have watched owners spend months polishing financials for selling a small business while a three-year-old website quietly undercut the whole pitch. It’s fixable. It just has to happen earlier than most people expect.
Why Selling a Small Business Starts Long Before You List
Most owners assume the process begins when they call a broker. It doesn’t. Broker guides put the full journey from deciding to sell through closing at roughly nine to eighteen months, and a big chunk of that is preparation that has nothing to do with buyers yet. Some advisors want the clean up to start eighteen to twenty-four months before you go to market. Plenty of experienced ones would tell you to give it years.
Peter Boolkah coaches founders through exits and appeared on The Next Build Podcast. He told us that statistically in the UK, 90% of businesses are unsellable. His reasoning was simple. Buyers don’t pay for how hard you worked. They look at your company as an investment and ask what the return is.
That stings after 20 years of long weeks. It’s also useful, because it tells you where the effort should go.
What Buyers Check Online Before Buying a Business
Buyers, brokers and their advisors do their homework quietly. They look at your website, your reviews, your Google Business Profile and where you show up in search. Checklists for selling a small business from brokers and marketplaces keep repeating the same advice, which is to have a professional website, keep your Google listing accurate and complete, and be ready to show how your marketing performs.
Picture what that stranger sees. Does the site load fast on a phone? Is the phone number easy to find? Is the newest review from last month or from 2021? Are the services described plainly, or buried in vague copy?
None of that decides a deal on its own. But it’s the cheapest signal you control, and a sloppy one makes a buyer wonder what else got ignored. In selling a small business, first impressions do more of the work than owners like to admit. Doubt has a way of turning into a lower offer.
Build For the Buyer, Not Just the Customer
Every marketer knows the ideal customer profile. Peter’s point was that almost nobody builds an ideal buyer profile. A family handover, a management buyout, private equity and a trade sale each want a different structure, and he says you should be thinking about that around five years out.
Your website has its own version of this problem. A site built to win local customers is one thing. A site that also shows a buyer steady leads, clear services and proof that demand doesn’t hang on you personally is another. Sales that come from search, reviews and content keep working when the owner takes a week off. Sales that live in the owner’s phone contacts don’t. Buyers know the difference, and that’s what small business valuation conversations quietly turn on.
An Outdated Site Says More Than You Think
Peter says if you sell your business on an outdated operating system, you’re going to get discounted. He was talking about companies still running on pre-pandemic rules. But for most small businesses, the website is the most visible operating system they have.
Slow pages. Thin content. A contact form that lands in an inbox nobody checks. All of it was fine in 2018, and none of it looks fine to someone deciding whether to buy your company. If you’re planning on selling a small business in the next few years, treat the website like part of the inventory.
Selling a Small Business With a Stronger Online Footprint
Think of it as a five-year runway, even if you don’t have five years. Compress it if you must, but keep the order.
- Year 1, foundation: Fix speed, mobile layout and tracking. Write clear service pages. Clean up your Google listing. M&M Solutions and Consulting can set that up for you. Book a call with us to fix your existing website or build a brand new one that converts leads into customers and prospects into buyers.
- Years 2 and 3, the library: Publish content that answers real customer questions, and collect reviews on purpose instead of by accident.
- Years 4 and 5, proof: Put together the numbers that show steady enquiries, where they come from and what they cost you.
Nobody can promise that any of this raises your price when you’re selling a small business, and we won’t either. What it does is hand a buyer less to worry about, which is most of what due diligence is trying to find out anyway.
Show That The Business Runs Without You
Selling a small business is somewhat a test of whether the company works without you. Peter said the biggest risk in any transaction is human capital, especially when the founder leaves. Teams are often built around the founder and they don’t always stay. His goal for clients is a business that lets the founder exit cleanly on day one of the sale.
The website side of that is obvious enough. The harder thing is the owner’s calendar. If you’re the one answering every lead, doing every quote and fixing every problem, a buyer will notice, even if you don’t say it.
This is where a time tracker earns its keep. Zaptime tracks how you spend your working time, points out your biggest time sink each week and works out your effective hourly rate. Run it for a few weeks and you’ll see how much of the business lives in your hours. Then you can delegate, automate them or write them down, before anyone asks.
The Short Version on Selling a Small Business
Selling a small business rewards the owners who start early and think like a buyer. Tidy the website, keep the listings honest, document what only you know, and get real about where your own hours go.
“The world around you will never adapt to you.”Peter Boolkah