The mistake almost every owner makes when selling a company
Expert in business negotiation. Turns complex situations into profitable deals for business owners and C-level executives. Trains teams and individuals beyond their comfort zone in real situations.
It is one of the most consistent patterns visible in M&A transactions: the owner who built the company over years knows every operational detail, every key customer by name, and precisely that depth of knowledge leads him to believe he will handle the negotiation of its sale just as well.
He will not, and it is not about competence. It is that running a company and negotiating its sale are two different skills that barely overlap.
Why experience in one area does not help in the other
Picture an experienced surgeon who decides to negotiate his own employment contract without a lawyer, because he is an expert in his field after all. Expertise in one discipline does not automatically create competence in a completely different one. The same mechanism applies when selling a company: the owner is an expert in his business, not in the negotiating dynamics of selling it.
The buyer on the other side of the table has trained that skill repeatedly, across dozens of different companies, with a team of advisors who do exactly this for a living. The imbalance in experience does not show up in one dramatic mistake; it shows up in dozens of small decisions throughout the process, each of which nudges the outcome slightly in favour of the better prepared side.
Where exactly this gap shows up
Most often in three moments: in the pace of the process (the buyer dictates a speed that suits them, the seller has no reference frame for whether it is reasonable), in the structure of the offer (the owner focuses on the headline number while the real value or risk sits in details such as earn-out conditions or holdbacks), and in moments of silence (the buyer knows how to use silence as pressure, the owner instinctively fills it with further information he did not have to give).
What to do about it
Recognising this gap is the first step, not the last. The second step is deciding who steps into that gap instead of the owner: a lawyer prepared for the contractual side, an advisor for the transaction structure, or someone who deals exclusively with the dynamics of the negotiation itself. These three roles are often mistaken for one, even though they are not.
Do you recognise this pattern in your own preparation for a sale?
Do you have a negotiation ahead that decides?
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