The word "exit" and the word "sale" have got welded together somewhere along the way. Ask most owners what an exit looks like, and they'll describe a trade sale — a broker, a process, a competitor or a private-equity house at the other end of it. That is one of the routes. It happens to be the route most advisers are set up to sell, and it's the route that generates their fee. It is not the only route, and for a lot of owners it isn't the right one.
There are five. Each has a shape, a set of owners it suits, and a set of trade-offs. Choosing the route is the first real decision in an exit — and it's the one that determines every other decision downstream.
1. Trade sale
Selling the business to another operating company — a competitor, a strategic acquirer in an adjacent market, or a customer or supplier moving up or down the value chain. This is the route most owners default to and most advisers guide toward. Done well, it can produce the highest price — a strategic buyer with a real reason to want the business will sometimes pay more than the numbers alone justify.
Suits: Businesses with an identifiable strategic value to an obvious buyer — a customer base, a technology, a market position, a team — that's worth more inside another company than it is standalone. Owners ready to hand over the keys completely.
Trade-offs: You're selling to someone whose interests genuinely diverge from yours the moment the deal closes. The team, the culture, the customer relationships, the brand — all of it becomes the buyer's to change. Earn-outs are common and often disappointing.
2. Management buyout
Selling the business to the existing management team, usually with debt financing and sometimes with private-equity backing. The people who already run the business become the people who own it.
Suits: Businesses with a strong management team already in place — one that has both the appetite and the capability to own and run the business without the founder. Owners who care about continuity for the team and the culture, and are comfortable staying involved during a transition period.
Trade-offs: The price is usually lower than a trade sale would achieve, because management buyers can't pay strategic premiums. The financing structure often means the owner takes some of the consideration as loan notes paid over years, so the risk profile is different from a clean sale.
3. Employee Ownership Trust (EOT)
Selling the business to a trust that holds the shares on behalf of the employees. The government made this route substantially more attractive in 2014 with a capital-gains-tax exemption for owners selling a controlling stake to an EOT — one of the more owner-friendly pieces of tax law of the last twenty years.
Suits: Owners who care deeply about what happens to the business and the people in it. Businesses with enough profitability to service the deferred consideration (the owner is usually paid over 5 to 10 years from the business's future profits). Owners who want a clean exit at a fair price but not the highest possible price.
Trade-offs: The price is set by an independent valuation rather than a competitive market, so it's typically lower than a trade sale would achieve. The consideration is deferred and depends on the business continuing to perform after the owner leaves — so the owner's payout is exposed to what happens next. But the tax treatment substantially closes the net-of-tax gap, and for many owners the trade-off is worth it several times over.
4. Partial sale
Selling a minority or majority stake to an outside investor — private equity, family office, strategic minority investor — while remaining in the business as owner and operator. Take some money off the table, de-risk personally, keep running the business.
Suits: Owners who don't want to leave but do want to reduce their personal exposure to one asset. Businesses with strong growth ahead of them that the owner wants to be part of but doesn't want to fund alone. Owners who want a second bite: partial sale now, full sale in 3–7 years at a higher valuation.
Trade-offs: You now have a shareholder with expectations, governance rights, and a timeline. The way you make decisions changes. The relationship with the investor becomes one of the most important things in the business, and it isn't always comfortable.
5. Family transition or deliberate hold
Passing the business to the next generation of the family, or making the deliberate decision to hold rather than sell — running the business as a long-term cash-generating asset that the owner (or their family) continues to own.
Suits: Family businesses where the next generation genuinely wants to run the business (and is capable of it — this is where most family transitions fail). Owners whose personal financial situation doesn't require them to extract value now, and who value the ongoing income and identity the business provides.
Trade-offs: Family transitions are complicated by everything family. A deliberate hold requires the owner to keep running the business — or to build a management structure that runs it for them, which is a version of the owner-independence work an exit process would require anyway.
How you choose
The five routes are not interchangeable, and the differences between them aren't only about price. Each one implies a different answer to a set of questions that have nothing to do with the numbers:
What do you actually want to do with the next five years?
What matters to you about what happens to the team, the customers, the brand, the building?
How much of your net worth do you need to convert to cash, and how quickly?
What does your family situation require?
What's your appetite for staying involved in a business you no longer control?
Most exit advice starts with the business and backs into the owner. The route-choice conversation has to run the other way — starting with what the owner actually wants, and working back to the route that delivers it. That's why the Plan phase of the Architect Your Exit approach puts route selection before the value-creation work: the destination determines the road. Optimising a business for a trade sale is different work from preparing it for an EOT or a partial sale, and doing the value work before choosing the route risks building toward the wrong destination.
The single most useful thing an owner can do at the start of an exit process is not decide when to sell. It's decide whether to sell — and if so, to whom, and in what shape. Everything else follows from that choice.