Built to Sell Chapter 13: What Makes a Company Actually Sellable

Chapter 13 is called “A Sellable Company” and it’s the moment everything Alex has been working toward starts to become real. Not finished. Not done. But real. There’s a number on paper. Someone wants to buy his business. And now the hard part begins all over again.

Let me walk you through it.

The Call That Changes Everything

Alex gets a phone call from Peggy, his M&A advisor. It’s 7 p.m., he’s driving with the sunroof open, August evening. She tells him Print Technology Group is preparing an offer. Alex has to pull over into a gas station because the adrenaline hits him that hard.

Peggy says Marcus, the buyer’s business development guy, has asked for three-year projections and expects to send a letter of intent by end of day Thursday. They plan to meet Friday morning.

Alex can barely sleep. He’s up before 6:30 a.m., kills time at Starbucks, drives circles around Peggy’s office building. Shows up at 7:45. Peggy gives nothing away when she greets him.

Then she hands him the document.

Six Million Dollars

Print Technology Group is offering $6 million for the Stapleton Agency. Plus an earn-out of up to $3 million if Alex hits revenue and profit targets over three years. So potentially $9 million total.

Alex tries to keep a straight face. Fails. His face goes red.

Here’s the thing. This is a company Alex started from a basement office ten years ago. A generic do-everything agency that was worth almost nothing when this story began. And now someone is putting $6 million on the table. That’s validation on a level that’s hard to describe if you haven’t built something yourself.

The offer comes with conditions: sixty days of due diligence, exclusivity for Print Technology Group during that period, and a signing deadline of September 15. Pretty standard stuff for acquisitions of this size, Peggy tells him.

Ted Brings Him Back to Earth

Alex goes to Ted, his mentor, expecting celebration. Ted reads all six pages of the letter of intent, making notes in the margins. Then he says something that deflates Alex completely.

“This is a nonbinding letter of intent. It’s not the same thing as a binding offer. They can walk away at any time for any reason.”

Ted acknowledges the milestone. He says six times pretax profit is a fair offer. But he doesn’t want Alex counting the money yet. And he’s right. I’ve seen enough deals fall apart in my career to know that a letter of intent is a starting point, not a finish line.

In IT, we have a saying: “It’s not deployed until it’s deployed.” You can have all the approvals and sign-offs in the world, but until the thing is actually running in production, anything can go wrong. Same principle applies here.

The Due Diligence Grind

This is where the chapter gets really interesting, and really exhausting. Print Technology Group sends over David Reynolds, an associate whose job is basically to question everything.

David shows up with tortoiseshell glasses and a huge briefcase. Alex hides him in his office so employees don’t get suspicious. Then the interrogation begins.

David challenges the market size. Alex claims 58,000 businesses in their addressable market. David pushes back. “Isn’t a logo something a company creates once?” Why would there be repeat business?

Alex explains with real examples. Natural Foods hired them for a corporate logo, then came back for Natural Treats when they launched ice cream, and now they might need another one for a pet food line. Spring Valley Homes creates a new logo for each housing development. Three logos in two years from one client.

David probes the hiring process, the sales approach, the office lease, every customer file, bank statements, the Five-Step Logo Design Process manual itself. The man is insatiable.

The grilling goes past 5 p.m. Alex needs a strong drink.

And it doesn’t stop there. The next forty-five days are more of the same. Every document Alex sends triggers three new requests. Every answer creates more questions.

Knowing When to Push Back

This is the part of the chapter I found most useful. Alex is losing patience. He tells Ted about David’s endless requests. Ted gives him advice that applies to basically any negotiation.

“Every negotiation reaches a point where you need to communicate to the other side that they’ve pushed you as far as they can.”

Ted’s logic is simple. Marcus, the deal guy at Print Technology Group, went to his boss to get approval for this acquisition. They’ve spent two months and hundreds of hours investigating. Marcus’s job is to close deals. If this one falls through, he looks bad internally.

So Alex calls Marcus. He’s polite but direct. He says something like: if you can’t make a decision based on what you already have, we need to move on.

Marcus apologizes, says he’ll check with David, and agrees to work toward closing within two weeks.

That’s it. No yelling, no ultimatum drama. Just a clear signal that patience has limits. And it works because Alex has something the buyer wants.

What Actually Made the Company Sellable

The chapter is called “A Sellable Company” and it’s worth stepping back to see what got Alex here. Because a year or two ago, nobody would have offered anything for his business.

What changed? Alex stopped being the business. He built a repeatable process (the Five-Step Logo Design Process). He hired salespeople who sell the product, not custom solutions. He created a team that delivers results without him in the room. He built a client base that keeps coming back for new logos, not one-off projects.

The due diligence is brutal, yes. But the reason Alex can survive it is because there are real answers to David’s questions. There’s a documented process. There are examples of repeat customers. There’s a sales formula with actual numbers.

If Alex had walked into this process with his old business model, where he personally handled everything and every project was custom, David’s first question would have killed the deal.

My Take

Two things from this chapter stood out to me.

First, the emotional rollercoaster. Alex goes from excitement ($6 million!) to deflation (Ted’s reality check) to exhaustion (due diligence) to frustration (David won’t stop asking questions) to relief (Marcus agrees to close). All in one chapter. Selling a business is not a single event. It’s a months-long process that tests your patience every single day.

Second, the value of having answers. In my years in IT, the projects that survived audits and reviews were never the ones with the best technology. They were the ones with clear documentation, repeatable processes, and people who could explain how things work without the original creator in the room.

That’s what “sellable” really means. Not just “someone wants to buy it.” It means your business can explain itself to a stranger with a briefcase and survive the interrogation.

Alex isn’t done yet. The deal isn’t closed. But for the first time, he has something that someone else values enough to write a check for. And that’s because he spent the last year building a business that doesn’t need him.

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