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Exit planning is the practical work of making a company sellable on a chosen exit strategy: financial hygiene, management depth, customer contracts, tax structure, timing and a diligence-ready data room.
Exit strategy is the route. Exit planning is the 12–24 month (sometimes longer) programme that makes that route executable without a fire drill.
Typical workstreams:
Illustration only. Eighteen-month plan for a €4m-EBITDA engineering firm.
| Months | Planning action | Why a buyer cares |
|---|---|---|
| 0–6 | Replace related-party rent with market lease; document it | QoE add-back becomes real |
| 6–12 | Hire a finance manager; stop founder-only banking | Due diligence speed |
| 12–15 | Customer concentration down from 38% to 28% via new logos | Risk in the SPA |
| 15–18 | Vendor due diligence + VDR | Sell-side credibility |
Skipping to month 18 and “hiring an advisor” is how price chips are born.
Planning that only produces a glossy CIM, with no change in the business, is marketing. Planning that improves cash conversion and reduces key-person risk is value creation — which then shows up in valuation.
Founder retirement; PE 100-day plans in reverse (pre-exit); corporate carve-outs that need a standalone P&L.
You cannot plan away a cyclical trough. Over-planning (three years of transformation before any buyer conversation) can miss a market window. Tax schemes that look clever in planning can be diligence poison.
Dazur is an exit-planning system in product form: structure the financial and commercial file early, value it on evidence, and only then open matching — so planning is not a binder on a shelf.