Maximise the value of the business you have built — and arrive at the sale table investor-ready, not reactive.
Owner-managers, boards, and PE sponsors of UK businesses with turnover of £3m–£75m planning a trade sale, MBO, or PE investment within the next 12–24 months.
Fractional CFO + Fractional Commercial Director + Fractional COO
Most business owners underestimate the amount of preparation required to achieve maximum value from a sale or investment transaction.
They engage an adviser, begin the process, and discover in due diligence the things they should have addressed twelve months earlier: financial controls that do not meet investor standards, a commercial dependency on one or two key customers, operational processes that cannot demonstrate scalability, or an EBITDA figure that looks different to an acquirer than it does to the management team.
These discoveries do not kill deals — but they damage valuation, create retrades at the eleventh hour, and hand negotiating leverage to the buyer at exactly the moment the seller can least afford to lose it.
The Exit Accelerator is a structured, multi-function programme designed to get the business into the best possible commercial, financial, and operational shape before the sale process begins — so that due diligence confirms the valuation rather than challenging it.
Exit readiness assessment: the fractional CFO, Commercial Director, and COO conduct a joint assessment of the business’s current exit readiness across all three functional domains — identifying the gaps a buyer’s due diligence team will find, the EBITDA adjustments that require preparation, and the commercial and operational improvements that will most directly improve valuation. A prioritised programme plan is agreed with the board.
Value creation and remediation: financial controls upgraded to investor-grade standard, EBITDA quality analysis completed and evidenced, customer concentration reduced through active commercial development, operational scalability demonstrated through documented processes and systems. Management accounts and financial model rebuilt to support the vendor due diligence pack.
Final preparation and process readiness: vendor due diligence pack completed, information room prepared, financial narrative refined, key personnel retention arrangements confirmed. The business enters the sale process with all three directors positioned to support the transaction — with the CFO as primary financial interface for buyers and advisers.
Exit Accelerator is priced from £6,000 to £10,500 per month for the full three-director programme — delivered over 6 to 18 months depending on the business’s starting position and the timeline to sale. The investment is typically recovered many times over in improved valuation multiple: a business that achieves even 0.5x additional EBITDA multiple on a £3m EBITDA base recovers £1.5m — far exceeding the total programme cost.
Exit Accelerator is a packaged twelve- to eighteen-month engagement designed for owner-managed and PE-backed UK businesses preparing for sale, refinancing, or major investment in the next eighteen to twenty-four months. It combines fractional CFO, commercial, and operational leadership to maximise valuation, professionalise the business for institutional buyers, and lead the management team through the transaction process.
Ideally twelve to eighteen months before the targeted transaction date. That window gives enough time to address the operational, commercial, and financial weaknesses that erode valuation, present at least one full year of cleaned, professionalised numbers to the market, and rehearse the management team for buyer interactions and due diligence. Engagements that start with less than nine months of runway can still add value but with less ability to lift the headline price.
Exit Accelerator covers normalised EBITDA presentation, quality of revenue, customer concentration risk, management depth, financial controls, board pack and management information, data-room preparation, vendor due diligence support, working capital normalisation, and management presentation rehearsal. Where appropriate it also covers organisational decisions that materially affect valuation — leadership succession, contract renegotiation, and bolt-on integration.
No — Exit Accelerator is the sell-side operational preparation layer that sits underneath your corporate finance adviser, M&A lawyer, and accountants. The fractional team makes sure the business is genuinely ready for the transaction the advisers are running, removing the operational frictions that typically delay or derail deals. We routinely work alongside the top mid-market corporate finance houses and the major UK law firms.
Exit Accelerator is typically £25,000 to £40,000 per month depending on the size of the business, the scope of the work, and the proximity of the transaction. The fee is fixed monthly, includes the Transformation Lead and all participating fractional directors, and is structured to be fully expensed pre-deal rather than a contingent success fee. Most clients view the cost as a fraction of the valuation uplift the engagement delivers.
Most engagements wind down in the months immediately after completion, with one or two fractional directors typically retained for transition support and earn-out delivery. Where a buyer asks the existing management team to stay on under an earn-out, fractional directors can also remain in place to manage the integration with the buyer's wider business and protect the value the existing team needs to deliver to earn their full proceeds.
Book a discovery call to discuss whether Exit Accelerator is right for your business.