Are You Prepared for the Sale of Your Company?
When you are interested in selling your company, the clock starts ticking. As CFO, you’re now responsible for building the financial backbone that supports growth—and makes the company easy to sell when the time comes. To do this, promises must be kept and old habits must be broken.
Five Pillars for an Exit-Ready Finance Team
Before you make big changes, you need a grounded understanding of the core elements that shape how your finance team operates, including:
People:
Start by looking at the team you have in place today. Are they getting the work done—accurately, on time, and without hand-holding? Can they work independently and collaborate well? Are there any skill gaps that need attention? Most finance teams need new capabilities to keep pace with PE ownership.
Process:
How effective are your team’s workflows? Are handoffs smooth and expectations clear, or are people working in silos with minimal context? Inefficient workflows often stem from communication breakdowns. According to Salesforce, 86% of employees and executives say poor communication and collaboration are key drivers of workplace failures. Map the flow of information across your team. When roles and objectives aren’t clear, even simple tasks crumble.
Technology:
If your team is still passing spreadsheets back and forth, it’s time for a reset. Many midsize companies lean heavily on manual tools, duplicating work and increasing the chance of errors. According to Accenture, 80% of finance tasks could be automated, freeing up as much as 60–75% of your team’s time. Take a step back to see what’s working, what’s slowing you down, what can be automated, and where your systems are creating unnecessary friction.
Culture:
Your finance team’s internal dynamics reflect your company’s values. Is there a sense of shared purpose, or is everyone operating in isolation? The way your team interacts during everyday tasks—things like covering for each other during vacations and stepping in to solve problems together—speaks volumes, impacting everything from employee satisfaction and retention to how the rest of the company perceives the finance team.
Governance:
Do you have the right checks in place—without relying on any one person to own a process from start to finish? If someone is reconciling accounts, who’s reviewing the work? Are deposits being verified, logged, and traced all the way through? Strong governance creates confidence, both in the numbers and how decisions get made. As expectations grow under PE ownership, so should the structure behind your controls.
Three-Step Roadmap
With a clear view of how well your finance team is functioning, you can start laying the foundation for what comes next.
1. Stabilize
This is triage mode. Start by tightening up the basics: clean up your reporting, shorten the monthly close timeline, and document key processes. Find the weak points, then fix them.
The goal here is to establish repeatable, reliable operations. That means people know what’s expected, tasks are done correctly and on time, and reports are available when leadership needs them. If your team is still chasing down invoices or manually processing checks once a week, you’ve got friction points that slow cash flow and decision-making.
You don’t need perfection here, but you do need clear, accurate financials and consistent processes that give your PE firm confidence and set your team up for what’s next.
2. Transform
With the day-to-day operations under control, focus on how you can work smarter. Look for ways to eliminate redundant steps, fix clunky handoffs, and reduce manual work. Here, you’re shifting your mindset from ‘getting it done’ to ‘getting it done better.’
That might mean implementing automation tools, building integrations between systems, or cleaning up how departments collaborate. If your team is still keying data into multiple systems or spending hours reconciling reports, those are hours you could redirect toward forecasting, analysis, or partnering with other parts of the business.
This is where roles start to evolve. You’re shaping a team that embodies attention to detail, agility, and strategic thinking. Every tool or process upgrade should free your team to add more value, faster.
3. Transition
As the company moves closer to a resale, your focus shifts again. Now it’s about positioning the company for maximum value. In this stage, you’re essentially pressure-testing what you’ve built. Examine everything with laser-like detail. Are your company’s financials audit-ready? Are controls strong? Are KPIs clearly linked to strategy? This is also when you finalize the team structure that will carry the business forward post-sale. That might mean retraining key staff or bringing in new talent that aligns more closely with where the business is headed.
It’s not about looking good on paper; it’s about making sure the business can stand up to buyer scrutiny, support scale, and demonstrate that the heavy lifting is already done.
For guidance on how to support your finance team through the entire resale timeline without losing momentum, contact us here.