If This Is the Year: The Sequence an Electrical Sale Follows

If this is the year, it helps to know the order things happen in and how long each stage takes, because almost every disappointment in a sale comes from an owner expecting one timetable and getting another.

By Simon Read, Founder & Managing Director · Published Jan 2026 · Updated Oct 2026 · 4 min read

Six stages, and how long each one really takes

The first stage is the baseline: an honest view of what the business is worth as it stands, which takes days rather than weeks and costs nothing. The second is preparation, which is where the time actually goes. Depending on the state of the contract register, the records and the dependency on you, it runs from two months of tidying to two years of genuine change, and skipping it is the most expensive decision available.

The third stage is the approach to the market, and for an electrical business worth talking about it takes four to eight weeks to reach the right buyers discreetly and get their initial views back. The fourth is offers and heads of terms, the short document setting out the main points of the deal, usually another four to six weeks, and it is the stage owners find most enjoyable and least decisive, because an offer is a statement of intent rather than an agreement.

The fifth stage is due diligence, the buyer's detailed check of the business, which is the longest and least predictable. Six to twelve weeks is normal, and the pace is set by the state of your filing rather than by anybody's enthusiasm. The sixth is legal completion, four to six weeks in parallel with the end of diligence. Allowing for the gaps between stages, that is six to nine months from serious start to money arriving, with preparation in front of it.

What the April 2026 change means for timing

A process beginning now will not complete inside three months. That is arithmetic rather than pessimism: the fastest realistic path from a standing start takes longer than that, and any deal that did complete inside three months would be one where the buyer was already known, the paperwork was already assembled and the price was agreed before anybody started.

The rate is worth stating plainly. Business Asset Disposal Relief, which lowers the tax on your gain if you own and work in the business, was 14% from April 2025 on qualifying gains up to a £1m lifetime limit, and has been 18% since Apr 2026. Which rate applies depends on the date the sale contract is made (for a conditional contract, the date its conditions are met), not the completion date, so a sale that starts now is planned on the 18% figure. The rise from 14% cost at most £40,000 on a full lifetime allowance, which is real money and smaller than the difference between a prepared business and an unprepared one.

That is the whole point and it is worth being blunt about it. Compressing a sale to beat a date hands the buyer the one piece of information you would rather they did not have, which is that you are in a hurry, and that knowledge is worth more to them than the difference in rate is to you. Plan for the rate that will apply, and spend the time on the parts that are within your control.

What to do in the month before anything begins

Assemble four documents and the rest follows more easily than you expect. Three years of statutory accounts with current management figures. A contract register showing every recurring arrangement, its terms, renewal date, value and margin. A workforce schedule with grades, cards, qualifications and length of service. A one-page note of everything that runs through you personally, written honestly.

Then decide two things before anybody else is involved. What you want the outcome to look like, including how long you are willing to stay afterwards, how much of the price you are prepared to take over time rather than at completion, and what would make you walk away from an otherwise good offer. And who, inside the business, needs to know and when, which is a decision rather than something to be settled by whoever guesses first. Owners who settle those two questions in January spend the rest of the process making decisions instead of reacting to them.

Diligence is paced by the state of your filing, not by anybody's enthusiasm.

Begin With Stage One

The baseline valuation is confidential and runs on your own figures. It is the only one of the six stages that costs nothing to start.

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When you decide to sell, here is how Simon Read runs the sale, from the first conversation to completion.

Common Questions

Can a sale be completed quickly to beat a tax change?

Realistically no. Six to nine months is the normal span from serious start to completion, and the stages that take the longest, diligence in particular, are the ones least within your control. Any timetable much shorter than that assumes a buyer already identified and paperwork already assembled.

What delays a sale most often?

Incomplete records. Diligence questions that should take an hour take a fortnight, the buyer's advisers start assuming there is a reason, and momentum drains out of a deal that was otherwise fine. Contract documentation, work in progress and retentions (money main contractors hold back until defects are cleared), and employee records are the three areas where delays concentrate, and all three can be prepared before anybody asks.

Do I need the business ready before I find out what it is worth?

No, and doing it in that order wastes a year. The baseline tells you where you stand and which two or three things are holding the number down, and that is what makes the preparation deliberate rather than generic. Preparing first and measuring afterwards usually means improving something that was never the constraint.

How long will a buyer expect me to stay after completion?

Commonly between three and twelve months for a handover, longer where relationships are deeply held by the owner or where part of the price is deferred against future performance. The length asked for tells you a good deal about how the buyer sees the dependency in the business, so treat it as information rather than only as a condition to negotiate.