Exit planning is the year or five years of work between deciding you will eventually leave and being in a position to. Most of it is not about the transaction at all: it is about making the business worth more and making it survivable without you, which are the same project.
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An exit strategy for small business owners: what a business exit plan contains
A target date, or at least a window. The route: sale, management buyout, ESOP, family transfer or wind down. What the business needs to be worth for your plans to work, and where it is now. The three or four things that most reduce its value today. And the personal question of what you do afterwards, which sounds soft and is the reason a large number of sales collapse at the last moment.
Business exit planning: the order the work goes in
Reduce dependence on you first, because it changes the multiple rather than the earnings and it takes the longest. Then fix revenue quality: concentration, contracts, repeatability. Then the records, which can be done in weeks. Then the market work. Owners who start with the market work and leave the dependency until last usually go to market twice.
What an exit strategy template misses
An exit strategy template is a useful checklist and a poor plan. What templates never contain is the honest assessment of what your business is actually like to own without you in it, which is the thing a buyer is pricing. Write that paragraph yourself, show it to somebody who will disagree with you, and plan against their version.
When to involve advisers
An accountant early, for the structure and the tax shape. A lawyer when documents are needed. A broker or adviser at the point you go to market, not before, unless you are buying their planning service deliberately. Paying for market advice two years early buys you an opinion that will be stale when you use it.
Questions people ask about exit planning
How long does exit planning take?
One to five years depending on how dependent the business is on you and how far your expectations are from the evidence.
Is an exit plan template enough?
As a checklist, yes. As a plan, no, because the substance is your business's particular weaknesses and no template knows them.
What if I want to leave quickly?
Then the plan is a sale at whatever the current state supports, with the dependency priced in. That is a legitimate choice, made knowingly.
What an exit plan business owners write themselves usually misses
The honest assessment of what the business is like to own without the owner in it, which is the thing a buyer is pricing. A checklist can be written alone; that judgement usually cannot, and it is the item templates never contain.