How to Grow Your Business’s Value Before You Sell: An Introduction to Value Growth Planning

Most business owners spend years thinking about how they’ll eventually sell their company. Far fewer spend the same amount of time thinking about how to actually grow business value before they sell, the work that determines what that company is worth in the first place.

That distinction is the entire premise behind value growth planning, an area of focus for John Sanders, a member of the Portus Wealth Advisors team who holds the Certified Value Growth Advisor (CVGA) designation.

Most discussions about preparing a business for sale tend to focus on the transaction itself: structuring the deal, navigating due diligence, minimizing taxes at closing. Those are all critical pieces of the process. But they all assume the business is already worth what the owner believes it’s worth. Value growth planning exists to address a question that comes before any of that: how do you actually increase what the business is worth in the years leading up to a sale?

What Drives Business Value, and Why Most Owners Underestimate the Opportunity

Growing business value before selling isn’t about a single dramatic change. It’s about systematically strengthening the specific factors that buyers use to determine what a company is worth: financial performance, operational efficiency, customer concentration, management depth, and recurring revenue.

One of the most striking findings in this area is this: most privately held, middle-market companies have the opportunity to double their value over a three to five year period by following a disciplined, methodical approach to value growth. Not through some dramatic reinvention of the business, but through the steady, deliberate work of closing the specific gaps that are holding the company’s valuation below its potential.

That’s a significant number for any business owner to sit with. It also reframes the entire exit planning conversation. The work of growing your business’s value and the work of preparing it for a future sale aren’t two separate projects. They’re the same project, and the earlier it starts, the more value there is to capture.

The Certified Value Growth Advisor Framework

The methodology behind this work comes from a professional credential called the Certified Value Growth Advisor, or CVGA, designation, which John holds at Portus. CVGA-trained advisors are equipped to diagnose where a specific business is strong, where it’s vulnerable, and what a realistic short-term and long-term plan to close those gaps actually looks like, based on the categories that most directly drive valuation.

At Portus, this approach works hand in hand with the CEPA, or Certified Exit Planning Advisor, designation held by firm founder William Bissett. The two frameworks approach the same underlying goal, a successful, well-prepared business transition, from two different and complementary angles.

The CEPA framework is built around the full arc of an exit: defining the owner’s personal vision for life after the business, structuring the transaction, preparing a successor, and navigating the legal and financial mechanics of a sale. You can read more about that approach in our Founder’s Final Act framework.

The value growth framework focuses specifically on the work that happens before any of that, the disciplined process of identifying and closing the specific gaps that are holding a business’s valuation below its potential. It is, in many ways, the engineering work that makes everything in the exit planning process more valuable when the time comes to execute it.

Together, these two approaches mean Portus clients have access to a team equipped to address both halves of the exit planning equation: growing what the business is worth, and then structuring a transition that captures that value fully.

What Growing Business Value Before You Sell Actually Looks Like

For a business owner, working through a value growth plan typically starts with an honest diagnostic of where the business currently stands across the key categories that drive valuation.

That includes an assessment of customer concentration, where a business with a small number of clients representing a large share of revenue is flagged as carrying real risk that suppresses its valuation. It includes a look at owner dependency, where a business that cannot operate without the founder’s daily involvement is treated as a structural weakness rather than a strength. It includes financial statement quality, recurring versus transactional revenue, and the depth and documentation of the management team.

From there, the work becomes building a specific, prioritized plan to address the gaps that matter most. Not a generic list of best practices, but a sequenced plan based on which improvements will move the needle most for that specific business, in that specific industry, given that owner’s specific timeline.

This is closely related to the work we describe in our overview of business succession planning, since many of the same factors, reducing owner dependency chief among them, drive both a stronger valuation and a smoother eventual transition, whether that transition is a sale or an internal succession.

Why This Matters Whether or Not You’re Selling Soon

One of the most important things to understand about growing business value before you sell is that it doesn’t require an imminent sale to be worthwhile.

A business that has addressed customer concentration risk, built out management depth, and strengthened recurring revenue is simply a healthier, more resilient business, regardless of whether the owner sells in two years or twenty. The same work that increases what a buyer would pay also tends to reduce the owner’s day-to-day stress, increase the business’s ability to weather disruption, and create more optionality for the owner down the road, whether that means selling, bringing in a partner, or simply continuing to run a stronger company.

That’s a meaningful distinction. Value growth work isn’t a transaction-preparation checklist. It’s good business strategy that happens to also be the foundation of a successful eventual exit.

A Note From Portus

John’s work in this area reflects an approach we hold throughout the firm: that the most effective exit planning doesn’t start with a transaction. It starts years earlier, with a disciplined, honest assessment of what a business is actually worth today and a clear plan to grow that value over time.

As John continues to apply this framework directly with clients, we’ll be sharing more specific insights and case studies from that work. For now, the principle stands on its own: if you’re a business owner thinking about your eventual transition, the most valuable conversation you can have isn’t about the sale itself. It’s about what your business is worth today, and what it could be worth with a deliberate plan to grow it before you sell.

Ready to Start the Conversation?

If you’re a business owner generating between $5M and $50M in revenue and want an honest assessment of where your business stands today and what it would take to grow its value before a future transition, we’d welcome that conversation.

Our approach to business financial planning integrates value growth, exit planning, risk management, and retirement planning into one coordinated strategy built around your timeline and goals.

Portus Wealth Advisors is a Charlotte, NC-based wealth management firm serving business owners throughout the Southeast and eastern seaboard. We specialize in integrated financial planning for business owners/founders, executives, and retirees navigating growth, transition, and legacy.