Why some businesses don’t sell. Is yours one of these?

Why some businesses don’t sell. Is yours one of them?

There is, in theory, a buyer for everything. But in practice, some businesses attract offers so derisory they might as well be accompanied by a sympathy card. The founder, having spent years nurturing their creation, is horrified to find that the market thinks it’s barely worth a long weekend in Marbella.
Could this ignominious fate await your company? The warning signs are easy to spot—at least for everyone except the founder.

1. The Founder is allergic to delegation
The charismatic autocrat syndrome. Talented employees sense the ceiling is made not of glass but granite, and promptly leave. No obvious successor remains. Buyers, who would quite like the business to function after the founder departs, tend to see this as a deal-breaker.
2. Technological nostalgia is the house style
There’s a fine line between “sticking to the knitting” and clinging to a moth-eaten jumper. Founders who treat change as a threat rather than a tool often find their relevance quietly expiring. Buyers aren’t keen on firms that think “cloud-based” means looking out the window before making decisions.
3. The Founder despises what the company has become
They mutter darkly about “what it used to be,” fantasise about escape, and visibly sag when asked how things are going. To discerning buyers, this reads less like quiet reflection and more like a flashing neon warning: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
4. Staff are either leaving, or perfecting the art of the long lunch
Morale is low, productivity lower, and the only thing growing is the list of job alerts in everyone’s inbox. New business is treated with the enthusiasm of a wet bank holiday.
5. The service offering is vintage—but not in a good way
What was once niche and lucrative has become commonplace and cheap. Competitors undercut it, clients internalise it, and technology automates it. The business, meanwhile, continues offering it like a treasured family recipe that no one orders anymore.
6. Strategic planning resembles a magic show
Each new quarter brings a new miracle cure. AI, Design Thinking, The Metaverse—each adopted with evangelical zeal and abandoned shortly after. If your strategy resembles a startup conference agenda from 2019, buyers will assume the business is powered more by hope than logic.
7. The past is a better place
The golden age syndrome. Founders who spend too much time reliving their greatest hits tend to miss the fact that the charts have moved on. Worse, they may still believe their own PR—always a dangerous sign. The market, less sentimental, measures worth in productivity (Gross Profit divided by Full-Time Staff Equivalents). And it rarely lies.
These pathologies show up not just in mood, but in the accounts: anaemic margins, bloated payrolls, stagnant growth. And at the root of it all? The founder. The very person who built the business is now the principal obstacle to its sale.
This does not mean all is lost. But it does mean that rescue requires a brutal honesty, followed by an unromantic stretch of rethinking, rebuilding, and reinventing. Only then might the founder rediscover what they once enjoyed about running a business—or at least sell it for a price that doesn’t make them wince.
In any case, the clock is ticking. Crack on