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The Exit Runway

Twelve questions on the slow parts of sale readiness, answered in your own words, then the clock. Get your earliest credible go-to-market quarter.

You answer in plain words; our reading assistant matches each answer to a band and you confirm it. Answers are scored in your browser, nothing is stored, and no email is asked for.

Why a date? Most owners think sale prep starts when they decide to sell. Buyers price it the other way: committed revenue, a team that runs without you, pricing power, and clean numbers take quarters to build, not weeks. This tool puts a date on that, from your answers. It was created by Pre-Sale Prep, founded by Nick McLean, Managing Partner at Four Pillars Investors, a private equity firm that has closed 10 acquisitions.

Earliest credible go-to-market

What sets your date

What sets your price

Sellers themselves say the same thing after the fact: in UBS's 2023 survey of owners who sold, 70% had spent under two years preparing, and 8 in 10 wished they had started earlier.

Where these numbers come from

The program clock (34 weeks). Pre-Sale Prep's own recommended pace: 30 weeks across the five modules plus a 4-week buffer, derived from the program's content. Ours, and stated as ours.

The hire clock (9 months). Our practitioner number: about 3 months to find a second-in-command and 6 in seat before a buyer believes it. Independent guidance runs longer, not shorter: executive searches alone average 4 to 8 months, PwC tells sellers a new team should prove itself for at least a year, and published owner-dependence timelines run 12 to 36 months.

The revenue turn (3 or 6 improving months). Our floor for a flat or declining two-year record. The one published figure we found says 4 to 6 quarters of clean trend before going to market.

The process months (6 to 9). Tracks the IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse, a quarterly survey of roughly 350 brokers reporting real closed deals: their medians run 6 to 12 months by deal size.

What the field says in total. The Exit Planning Institute says 3 to 5 years. KPMG, PwC and Deloitte say one to two years, stated as their experience. Surveys of private equity investors (Accordion 2025, EY 2026) land on 12 to 24 months. Almost none of these numbers are published with a calculation behind them. This page's are: the date above is the longest of three clocks you can check yourself, and it sits at the short end of the independent range, not the long end.