A headline this week declared that mid market deal activity continues to plummet. It is a strong word. Then you read the numbers underneath it and a different picture appears. Through the first five months of this year the total value of these deals is up. The average deal size is up. The thing that is down is the count, the raw number of deals getting done. Buyers have not disappeared. They have slowed down. And slow buyers do not punish a strong company. They punish an unprepared one.
The figures come from LSEG and they cover deals valued between one hundred million and one billion dollars. Total deal value is up about two percent so far this year while the number of transactions is down about six percent. The average deal grew from roughly three hundred million dollars to about three hundred twenty four million. One honest note. That dataset tracks deals larger than the ones a ten to one hundred million dollar owner lives in. But the behavior it captures is the same weather a smaller seller is walking into.
A corporate attorney quoted in the story described deals starting and then pausing while buyers work through diligence. Buyers are more careful than they were a few years ago. In her words it is not a race to the finish line. They are still getting deals done. They are simply taking their time and looking harder.
Most owners draw exactly the wrong lesson from this. They hear slow market and decide to wait. That is reading the data backward.
The numbers do not say buyers refuse to buy. They say buyers are careful and that deals stall in diligence. Sit with that. A deal that starts and then pauses might be reacting to the market. It might also be reacting to something inside the company. You do not control the first. You do control the second.
In my most recent book The Business Sale Paradox I lay out the Four Pillars of Sale Readiness. It is a way to look at your business honestly across four areas. Your personal and emotional readiness. Your financial strength. How transferable the value is once you leave. And how ready you are for diligence. A weakness in any one of the four creates risk. In a cautious market the diligence pillar is where deals go to die.
When buyers are racing they overlook things. When buyers are slow they do not. Every messy number becomes a question. Every add back you cannot document becomes a negotiation. Every customer that makes up too much of your revenue becomes a reason to pause, lower the price, or walk away. A careful buyer is not hostile. A careful buyer is simply looking, and an unprepared company gives them too much to find.
The fix is not waiting for an easier market. You do not control the market. The fix is becoming the company that gives a careful buyer nothing to slow down for. Clean books. Earnings you can prove. Add backs that are documented and defensible. A business that keeps running when the owner is on vacation. Diligence materials organized before a buyer ever asks for them. None of that requires the market to cooperate. All of it is inside your control.
A strong company gets through a slow and careful market just fine. A weak company is the one that needs an easy market to paper over its problems. The easy market is not here right now. So the real question is not whether buyers are fast or slow. The real question is whether your company can survive a hard look. Buyers being patient is not your problem to fix. It is information. It is telling you that the bar is preparation, and that the owners who clear it are the ones who did the work before they went to market.
There is a full breakdown of the four pillars and how to close the gaps in The Business Sale Paradox.
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