Why 80% of Businesses Never Sell

Every business broker in the country will tell you the same thing when you ask how long it takes to sell a business: “Six to twelve months.”

That’s a polite answer. It’s also incomplete. Because the real question, the one nobody asks until it’s too late, isn’t how long. It’s whether.

And for about 80% of the businesses that come across my desk, the honest answer to “whether” is: never.

First, Let’s Talk About What You’ve Actually Built

I don’t ask that to be harsh. I ask it because most business owners have never had an honest conversation about what they have.

So here’s the question I actually ask: Tell me a little about your business.

Owner-operated? Working 60 hours a week? Making $80,000 a year?

How’s “never” sound?

That’s not a business for sale. That’s a job, with overhead, liability, and a lease you personally guaranteed. The day you hand someone the keys, the thing starts leaking. You are the product. You are the system. You are the reason customers come back and employees show up. There’s nothing to transfer except the stress.

The brutal math is this: if a buyer has to replace you, and replacing you costs more than the business earns, there’s no deal. And here’s what sellers miss: that buyer has expectations about what their own time is worth. They’re not stepping into your 60-hour week to make $80,000. They have a number in their head, and you don’t know what it is. Assume it’s higher than you think. Because if the business can’t pay a real wage to someone running it and still service debt and generate a return, the math doesn’t work at any price.

This is the glue factory. The owner doesn’t see it coming. They’ve put in twenty years, they’re proud of what they’ve built, and they deserve to be. But pride doesn’t create a transferable asset. A buyer doesn’t pay for the years you put in. They pay for what they’re getting on day one and what they can build from there.

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The Other End: The Unicorn

Every buyer who calls me wants the same thing. A lot of them are sharp, educated people, some with business degrees, and somewhere along the way an instructor told them that great deals are out there waiting to be found. Maybe that’s true in a case study. It is not true in Iowa in the real market.

I call this the unicorn. I’ve been doing this long enough to tell you with confidence: unicorns don’t exist. Sorry, cupcake, this is not a fairy tale. And the buyers who hold out for them watch good deals walk by for years while they wait for something that will never come.

Here’s what’s actually available: good businesses run by real people, with real warts, priced at what the market will bear. Some are growing. Some are stable. Some need work. None of them are perfect.

The buyers who win are the ones who can look at a good horse and see it clearly, not as the unicorn they wanted, but as the foundation of something they can build.

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The Spectrum in Between

So what actually sells?

The glue factory. Owner is the business. Flat or declining revenue. No systems. No bench. Walking away means it’s over. This doesn’t sell, and it shouldn’t. The owner’s best exit is to fix it first, then sell, or work until they can’t anymore and close the doors.

The horse. Growing, reasonably profitable, with a story to tell. Maybe not polished. Maybe the books need work. Maybe the owner is still too involved. But there’s a real business here, a real customer base, and a buyer willing to roll their sleeves up can see themselves in the driver’s seat, with the scenery getting greener over time. This sells. This is the story I can tell.

The stallion. Documented cash flow, real management, systems that survive the owner leaving, growing market. Buyers line up. Prices hold. These are the 20% that sell cleanly.

The burro. This is the unsung hero of the small business market. Not glamorous. Not growing fast. Just works. Reliably, profitably, every year. Priced right for what it is. The buyer who’s honest about what they can afford and what they’re willing to build? That buyer and that burro can go a long way together.

The burro deals are the ones I love most. No drama. No inflated expectations. Just a solid business and a buyer who’s done pretending they’re going to find the unicorn.

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The Honest Conversation

Most of what I do isn’t valuation. It isn’t marketing. It isn’t negotiating, though I do all of those things.

Most of what I do is help people get honest.

Sellers need to hear that the business they’ve built may not be worth what they think, and that the path to a real exit might require two or three years of intentional work before we ever put it on the market. That’s hard to hear. But it’s the conversation that actually leads somewhere.

Buyers need to hear that the perfect deal isn’t coming. The business they pass on today because the margins aren’t quite right might be the best opportunity they ever see. That’s also hard to hear. But it’s the truth.

The brokers who tell you what you want to hear will take your listing, collect a retainer, and watch it expire. The broker worth talking to is the one who tells you what you need to hear, before you’ve wasted a year finding out the hard way.

So: what do you have? And what are you actually willing to accept?

Those two questions determine everything.