Is Now a Good Time to Sell, or Should I Wait for the Market to Improve?

We get asked this more than almost anything else. Usually by an owner who's read something in the FT, half-remembered it, and is now wondering if they've missed the boat or should hang on for a better one.

Here's the honest answer: there is no perfect market. There's just the market you're in, and how ready you are for it.

What's actually happening right now

Deal volumes across the UK go up and down. Buyers, whether trade or private equity, are always choosier, and financing is more disciplined than it was in the cheap-money years. None of that is news to anyone who reads the business pages.

What doesn't make the headlines is who's still winning in this market. It isn't the sellers with good timing. It's the sellers with good businesses. Buyers with capital haven't stopped deploying it, they've just got fussier about where it goes, and they're concentrating on companies with clean numbers, recurring revenue, and a management team that isn't just the owner. Those businesses are still attracting strong interest and strong multiples, in this market or any other.

Which tells you something important. The businesses struggling to get deals done aren't struggling because the market's shut. They're struggling because they weren't ready when a buyer looked under the bonnet, and no amount of "better market conditions" would have fixed that. A cautious buyer in a strong market will find the same problems a cautious buyer finds in a weak one.

So drop the idea that the market owes you a good moment. It doesn't. Preparation is the one lever you actually control, and it's the one that decides your outcome far more than whatever the deal pages say this quarter.

Why "wait for the market to improve" is usually the wrong question

Owners who say this are almost always imagining a future where conditions are obviously, unmistakably better, interest rates lower, confidence higher, buyers queuing up. That moment rarely arrives cleanly. Markets don't ring a bell. By the time its obvious conditions have improved, every other seller has noticed too, and you're competing with a wave of businesses all coming to market at once.

Meanwhile, waiting has a cost that's easy to underestimate. Every year you don't prepare the business for sale is a year that key-person risk builds, systems stay undocumented, and you personally become more essential rather than less, which is exactly the opposite of what a buyer wants to see. We've watched owners wait three years for "the right time" and come to market with a business that's actually less saleable than it was when they first thought about it, simply because nothing was done to prepare it in the meantime.

The better question

Instead of "is the market right," ask "is the business right." Those are two different problems, and only one of them is within your control.

A business with clean, buyer-ready management accounts, a second layer of management who can run things without you, diversified customers rather than three accounts making up half the revenue, and a clear growth story is saleable in almost any market. A business missing those things will struggle to get a good outcome even in a booming one.

This is the bit most owners don't want to hear, because it means the answer to "should I wait" is rarely about economics. It's about whether you've done the work.

When timing genuinely does matter

We aren’t saying market conditions are irrelevant. If your sector is in obvious structural decline, if you're two years from a major contract cliff-edge with nothing lined up to replace it, or if there's a clear regulatory or tax change on the horizon that will materially affect value, those are real reasons to think hard about timing rather than just preparation. Equally, if a strong strategic buyer is actively consolidating your sector right now and you're a natural target, that window won't stay open indefinitely. Timing can matter. It's just rarely the first thing that matters.

What you should actually do right now

Start the readiness conversation now, regardless of when you think you'll sell. Get an honest valuation, not to sell tomorrow, but so you know where you actually stand and what's driving the gap between what you have and what you want. Look hard at the things that would worry a buyer: customer concentration, owner dependency, the state of your management information. Fix what you can over twelve to eighteen months. Then, and only then, start thinking seriously about timing.

Do this and you'll find something interesting happens. The question "is now a good time" stops mattering nearly as much, because a well-prepared business can move quickly when the right buyer or the right moment turns up, and it isn't held hostage to a market it can't control.

The owners who get burned aren't the ones who sold in a "bad" market. They're the ones who waited for a good one and never actually got the business ready for either.

So if you're asking whether now is the right time to sell, my honest answer is: probably not the question you should be asking yet. Ask instead whether your business would survive serious buyer scrutiny today. If the answer's no, that's your starting point, whatever the market's doing.