Confidential exits for UK owners of businesses worth £500k to £20m. The whole process is designed by people who do it for a living, and walked through by people who never have. Our job is to remove that asymmetry.
It is not finding a buyer. Good businesses attract buyers.
The real problem with selling a business is the one almost nobody says out loud: the information is asymmetric, the experience is asymmetric, the patience is asymmetric. The buyer has a playbook, a deal team and no emotional attachment. You have one shot at the biggest transaction of your life.
We advise founders planning an exit, partners going separate ways, and families deciding what happens next. We have sat on the buy side of more than thirty acquisitions with our own group's capital - which means we know exactly what the person opposite you is thinking, because we have been that person.
One interested buyer is a valuation. Three are a price.
How we think about every sale process we run
The first deal is financial: the price, the structure, the terms. The second one nobody puts on paper: what happens to the years you spent building it. Most advisers only work the first deal. The owners who regret selling almost always regret the second one.
Price is a function of risk: the more certain your profits are, the more a buyer pays for them. So we prepare the certainty - verifiable numbers, reduced owner-dependency, a clean data room - then create competition. Every pound of profit a buyer cannot verify costs you several pounds at completion.
Who buys matters as much as what they pay. We ask early what you want to be true a year after completion - for your staff, your name, your own week - and we filter buyers against it. A slightly lower offer from the right buyer is sometimes the better deal, and we will tell you when we think so. Then it is your call, made with clear eyes.
Six stages, six to twelve months. The first one decides most of the outcome.
We value the business the way buyers will and tell you the truth about it. Then we fix what quietly costs you money before anyone else sees it: profits that cannot be verified, a business that cannot run a fortnight without you, records that make a buyer nervous.
An anonymous teaser and a proper information pack that answers a buyer's questions before they ask. Your name is released only under NDA, to buyers we have checked are real and funded.
Trade acquirers, groups building by acquisition, investors and management teams - approached in parallel, so offers arrive with competition behind them. Nobody hears about your sale from us.
We test every offer against the market and negotiate the terms that actually decide what you bank: structure, deferred elements, earn-outs, warranties, and what is promised to your people.
The stage where unprepared deals die and prepared ones close. Because we have run diligence from the buyer's chair more than thirty times, we know what is coming - so the answers are ready before the questions arrive, and a wobble never becomes a re-price.
Funds flow, the handover starts, and you walk out with what you came for - the number and the outcome. We stay until both are done.
The dns group has completed more than thirty acquisitions with its own capital. We know which numbers a buyer trusts and which claims they discount, where diligence bites, and how deals are re-priced at the eleventh hour - because we have done the pricing. That knowledge now sits on your side of the table.
Plan for six to twelve months from first conversation to completion. Preparation before you go to market decides which end of that range you hit. Buyers move faster, and pay more, for a business whose numbers and story are ready before they ask.
Your business is marketed anonymously - sector, region and headline numbers only. Nobody learns your name until they have signed a confidentiality agreement and we are satisfied they are credible and funded. Your staff, customers and competitors do not hear about the sale from us. Ever.
A valuation is a price on risk: the more certain your profits are, the more a buyer pays for them. We value your business the way buyers will, not the way you hope they will. If the honest number disappoints you, we will say so - and tell you exactly what would change it, and how long that would take.
Usually for a handover period, and it is negotiable. How long depends on how much of the business lives in your head - which is also one of the biggest drivers of the price. Reducing that dependency in the year before a sale is often the most valuable preparation there is.
That is precisely when you need one. A single unsolicited offer means no competition, and the buyer knows it. Our job is to test that offer against the market, quietly bring alternatives to the table, and make sure you are not negotiating the biggest transaction of your life alone against someone who does this every month.
We agree the structure and the number with you upfront, in writing, before you commit to anything. No percentages you discover later, no surprises at completion. Ask us and we will tell you plainly.
Written by our team, free, and honest enough that some of it may put you off. Better now than at completion.
Tell us about the deal. We reply within one working day.
Get in Touchaman@dnsassociates.co.uk
+44 (0)20 8903 6330
Linen Hall, Suite 304, 162–168 Regent Street, London W1B 5TB
