Specialist exit advisor · Free diagnostic
How ready is your business to sell?
Helping owner-managed UK businesses prepare for sale 2-5 years in advance - increasing valuation, reducing deal risk, and avoiding last-minute problems.
Who this is for
Owner-managed UK businesses with £1m-£20m turnover
When to start
2-5 years before you plan to sell
The outcome
Higher valuation. Fewer deal-term concessions. No eleventh-hour surprises that chip the price or push liability back on to you personally.
Why owners leave money on the table
Buyers have a playbook. If you're not ready for it, they will use your weak points against you.
Experienced acquirers follow the same three-move pattern in every SME deal. Each of these is preventable - but only if you close the gaps before a buyer is looking.
Chip the price
Untidy cap table, an unsigned contract, a customer without a written agreement - each one becomes a reason to discount. Small gaps add up to six-figure revisions on the offer letter.
Change the deal terms
More cash in escrow. Earn-outs that stretch longer. Warranty caps rise, indemnities widen. Each change looks small; together they shift real risk and real money back on to you.
Put liability on you personally
Personal warranties, uncapped tax indemnities, long restrictive covenants, retention of proceeds. The sale ‘completes’ but the risk follows you out the door.
Why a solicitor, not an accountant or a broker
Deal Advisory sits upstream of everyone else on your sale team.
Your accountant prepares the numbers. A corporate finance boutique markets the business and negotiates headline price. A broker finds the buyer. All necessary. None of them typically stress-test what will actually get called out in legal due diligence. That is where buyer chips come from.
| Role | Prepares the numbers | Finds buyers | Stress-tests legal DD | Reduces personal liability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accountant | ||||
| Corporate finance boutique | ||||
| Business broker | ||||
| Deal Advisory |
Deal Advisory does not replace your accountant or broker. It arrives earlier - 2 to 5 years out - so that by the time they go to market, the things a buyer would chip you on are already closed.
The free scorecard
What you get
A headline score out of 100
One number that captures how buyer-ready the business is today, benchmarked against live deal experience.
Traffic-lit results across 5 domains
Financial quality, legal cleanliness, operational dependency, contracts and concentration, governance.
A personalised written report
Written specifically for your answers, quantifying the likely price chips and the fixes that remove them.
How it works
- Step 1
Answer 12 questions about your business. Five minutes, on your phone or laptop.
- Step 2
Get your score and personalised report instantly on screen, and in your inbox as a PDF.
- Step 3
Talk to Steven directly if you want a sequenced plan. No sales team, no obligation, no booking tool in the way - just call or email.
Who runs this
Built by the solicitor who closes the deal.
Steven Mather is a commercial solicitor with a career spent advising owner-managed UK businesses. He works through Nexa Law, focuses on SME M&A under £20m, and has advised thousands of clients on deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Clients describe his approach as commercially minded, direct, and allergic to legal jargon. Fixed fees where possible. Rapid turnaround. Named among the UK's top-ranked lawyers on LinkedIn in Q1 2026.
Further reading
Two free reads, no email required.
One is a practical solicitor's guide to the mechanics of a sale. The other is a 2026 benchmark report on where the UK SME exit market actually stands.
The book · PDF
Selling Your Business: a solicitor's guide for UK owners
Heads of terms, warranties, earn-outs, personal guarantees and the tactics buyers use to chip price - in plain English.
Research · 2026 Edition I
The UK Owner-Managed Business Exit Report 2026
A benchmark of where the UK SME exit market stands at the start of 2026: the compressed tax window, who is actually buying, six consolidating sectors, the five gaps that move multiples, and what an exit-ready business looks like in 2027.
Approx. 50 minutes to read · Six chapters