Most field service owners can tell you what a new van costs, which customers are slow to pay and roughly how busy the next few weeks look. Ask what the business itself would sell for and the answer is often much less certain.

That's pretty normal. You can run a good company for 20 years without ever needing to put a price on it.

Eventually, though, there may be a reason to find out. Retirement might be getting closer. Another company could make an approach. You may want to step back, bring someone else in or simply turn some of the value you've built into money you can actually use.

For many owners, selling the business will be the biggest financial transaction they ever make. By the time a serious offer arrives, it's a bit late to discover that the company depends too heavily on you, the accounts need cleaning up or a tax relief required planning years earlier. A better approach is to understand what buyers look for while you still have time to do something about it.

How a business like yours gets valued

Turnover matters, but it usually isn't the number a buyer bases the price on.

A buyer wants to know what the business actually earns and whether those earnings are likely to carry on after ownership changes. That means looking past the headline sales figure and getting to a sensible measure of adjusted profit.

For many established businesses, that figure is EBITDA, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. The name sounds like something designed to keep accountants in work, but the idea is fairly simple. It gives a buyer a cleaner view of the operating performance of the company before financing and certain accounting costs are taken into account.

Smaller owner-run firms may be looked at using seller's discretionary earnings instead. That can add back the owner's pay and some owner-specific expenses to show the economic benefit the business produces for one working owner.

The exact calculation matters because buyers will challenge adjustments that look optimistic. If you've put your spouse's car, a family phone bill or a one-off personal expense through the company, those may be legitimate add-backs in a valuation. A vague claim that "there's another fifty grand of profit in there somewhere" won't carry the same weight.

Once an adjusted earnings figure has been agreed, a multiple is applied to it.

You'll often hear three to six times adjusted earnings mentioned as a rough range for smaller service and trades businesses. Treat that as a starting point rather than a price list. Company size, sector, margins, customer mix, recurring work, management depth and the deal market at the time can all move the number.

The difference becomes obvious with a simple example. A company producing £200,000 or €200,000 of adjusted earnings is worth £600,000 or €600,000 at three times earnings. At five times, the figure is £1 million or €1 million.

Nothing happened to the profit in that calculation. What changed was the buyer's view of the business behind it.

A company that looks dependable tends to command a better multiple. One that appears fragile gets marked down.

What makes a buyer pay more

Owner dependence is usually one of the first things a serious buyer notices.

Plenty of field service businesses work well because the owner is holding more of the operation together than they realise. Customers have their mobile number. They quote the awkward jobs. They remember what a particular commercial customer was charged last year. Staff come to them when something goes wrong. The owner may even be the only person who really understands which jobs are profitable. That can work perfectly well while you're there. It becomes a problem when somebody is considering buying the company from you.

Say you disappear for a month after completion. Can somebody else deal with the biggest customer, approve a quote, sort out a staffing problem and make sense of the numbers? If the answer is no, part of what the buyer thought they were purchasing is leaving with you. That tends to show up in the price, the deal structure or both.

Recurring work helps for the opposite reason. A company with maintenance agreements, inspections or other regular work already in place gives a buyer something they can see beyond next month's diary.

That's why a good base of service agreements can become particularly attractive at sale time.

There is a real difference between entering January with a large amount of work expected from existing customers and entering January hoping enough people ring. Both companies might have made the same profit last year. One gives the buyer more confidence about the year ahead.

Customer concentration gets looked at in much the same way.

A large customer can be brilliant for the business right up until they represent too much of it. If one account is responsible for a third of sales, losing that customer could change the company overnight.

Buyers notice that exposure quickly.

A wider mix of customers makes the revenue less dependent on any single relationship. That's already a sensible reason for diversifying your revenue, even if selling the company isn't on your radar yet.

Then there are the accounts.

Nobody expects the finances of an owner-managed trade business to read like those of a listed company. They do need to make sense, though.

During a sale, the buyer's accountant will want to trace the story behind the figures. They'll look at margins, payroll, customer revenue, one-off costs and the adjustments being made to arrive at the profit number used for the valuation. Good records make that easier. Poor records create arguments.

If reported profit keeps changing depending on who is explaining it, or large chunks of income can't be backed up properly, the buyer has to decide how much faith to put in the numbers. Usually they'll protect themselves rather than give the seller the benefit of the doubt.

The same work that helps with increasing profitability can help here. Knowing where the money is made, keeping the books current and being able to explain the figures puts you in a much better position when somebody starts examining them closely.

People and systems matter as well, although owners sometimes leave those until surprisingly late.

A buyer doesn't want to spend the first six months discovering that the scheduling process is Sarah's notebook, the pricing system is in your head and a customer contract was agreed verbally seven years ago.

You don't need a giant operations manual gathering dust on a shelf. You do want the normal running of the company to be recorded somewhere sensible.

Job history, pricing, customer details, contracts, scheduling and responsibility for day-to-day decisions should survive a change of owner.

The same applies to the team. A business with people who can make decisions and keep things moving without waiting for the owner is simply easier to take over.

The tax question, and why it starts years early

Tax is one part of an exit where timing can make a large difference.

In the UK, qualifying owners may be able to claim Business Asset Disposal Relief. For qualifying disposals from 6 April 2026, the CGT rate is 18%, and qualifying gains remain subject to a £1 million lifetime limit. For a sale of non-EMI shares, the conditions include a two-year qualifying period and tests around employment or office-holding, trading status, share ownership, voting rights and economic entitlement.

That last part is worth paying attention to. The often repeated version of the rule, "own 5% for two years," leaves out some of the detail.

Ireland has Revised Entrepreneur Relief. It applies a 10% CGT rate to qualifying gains rather than the standard 33%, with a €1.5 million lifetime limit for gains arising from 1 January 2026. For company shares, Revenue's rules include a 5% ordinary shareholding requirement and a three-year ownership test. The owner must also meet working requirements, including spending at least half of their time in a managerial or technical role for a continuous three-year period within the five years before disposal.

Irish owners aged 55 or over may also be able to claim Retirement Relief. Despite the name, Revenue makes clear that you do not necessarily have to retire. The limits depend on factors including your age, who receives the business and the value involved.

For Irish businesses, it also makes sense to have the wider tax position in good order, including areas such as VAT, before a sale process begins.

If there's a decent chance you might sell within the next few years, talk to an accountant who deals with business disposals.

Doing it early gives them something useful to work with. Doing it after you've agreed a price with a buyer can turn the conversation into damage limitation.

The details vary with the owner, company and transaction, so this is an area for individual advice rather than rules picked up from another business owner's sale.

How the sale itself works

On paper, selling a business follows a fairly recognisable process. Living through it feels a bit different because a buyer will want to inspect parts of the company you've probably never had to explain to an outsider before.

Preparation normally comes first. An accountant, broker or corporate finance adviser may help organise the numbers, decide how the business should be presented and collect the material prospective buyers are likely to request.

Potential buyers will usually sign a non-disclosure agreement before receiving sensitive information.

A serious buyer may then put forward an offer and, if talks progress, the broad commercial deal is often recorded in heads of terms. That gives both sides a framework before the lawyers start working through the detailed agreement.

Due diligence is where things get more intrusive.

The buyer may want accounts, tax records, customer contracts, supplier arrangements, employment information, leases, insurance, asset records and details of any disputes. They'll also be checking whether what they were told during the early discussions matches the paperwork.

This is where forgotten problems tend to reappear.

A customer arrangement that has worked happily on a handshake for ten years might suddenly attract attention because the buyer wants certainty. An unexplained adjustment in the accounts may lead to another round of questions. A contract nobody can find can become a negotiating point.

Sometimes the issue is easily fixed. Sometimes the buyer asks for protection in the sale agreement. Sometimes they try to reduce the price.

Once due diligence is dealt with, the solicitors work through the sale and purchase agreement and the deal moves towards completion.

It's also worth knowing that the headline price and the amount hitting your bank account on completion aren't always the same thing.

A buyer might pay the whole amount at once. They might hold some back for a period, agree deferred payments or use an earn-out where part of the consideration depends on future results. The structure can matter almost as much as the number at the top of the offer.

The process takes time. Several months is normal, and a deal can easily occupy a large part of a year from preparation through to completion.

The exit routes you might not have considered

Selling the whole company to another trade business is the obvious route, but owners have other choices.

A competitor or larger operator may want your geography, engineers, customer base or recurring contracts. A private equity-backed group may see the business as part of a wider buy-and-build strategy.

That sort of buyer can make sense if your priority is a commercial sale to an outside party.

A management buyout feels very different. If you already have a strong management team, the people who know the company best may be interested in taking it on themselves. Funding still has to be worked out and the transaction needs proper advice, but the handover can be less disruptive because the new owners already know the staff and customers.

Family succession is another route for some businesses. That needs more thought than simply deciding which child gets which shares. Ownership, control, fairness between family members and tax can all become part of the conversation.

There are owners who don't want a clean break at all.

Selling a stake first, bringing in a partner or handing over control in stages can make sense if you'd prefer to reduce your involvement over time rather than stop on a Friday and become the former owner on Monday morning.

The best route depends partly on the numbers and partly on what you actually want your life to look like afterwards.

That second part is easy to ignore while everybody is talking about valuation.

What to do now, even if selling feels far off

If a sale is five years away, you don't need to spend the next five years behaving as if the company is permanently for sale. You can still make it easier to buy. Start with the areas that depend on you.

One useful test is to look at what happens when you're away. Do jobs keep moving? Can somebody else price work, deal with a complaint, speak to a major customer and make a decision without waiting for you to answer your phone?

Anything that repeatedly gets stuck is showing you where the dependency sits.

Fix those areas one at a time. Give capable people more authority. Write down the processes that currently rely on memory. Make sure customer history and job information are stored somewhere the company owns rather than buried in personal phones and inboxes. Then look at the shape of the revenue.

You may be able to move more customers onto maintenance or service agreements. There may be too much turnover sitting with one commercial account. Some customers might buy additional services from you if anyone actually offered them.

The financial side deserves the same treatment.

Get used to producing accounts that you can understand without a long explanation from the accountant. Know which parts of the business make money. Keep unusual or personal costs clearly identified. Make sure the numbers used to run the company agree with the story you'd eventually tell a buyer.

There's no need for a frantic clean-up shortly before going to market.

A few years of tidy records and steadily improving operations are far more convincing than a business that suddenly becomes organised the month a broker turns up.

And if you never sell? You still end up with a company that's less dependent on you, easier to manage and easier for somebody else to run when you want a week off. That's a decent result on its own.

What makes the business sellable

A buyer is paying for the business that will still exist after you leave. That's the part owners sometimes miss.

The vans will still be there. The tools will still be there. What the buyer really needs to know is whether the customers stay, the work keeps coming in, the staff know what they're doing and the profit survives without the person who built the company standing in the middle of everything.

If those things are already true, selling becomes a much easier conversation.

If they aren't, they're usually fixable. Better still, you don't have to wait until you're ready to sell before fixing them.

The best time to make a business easier to sell is while you still have enough time to change it without a buyer looking over your shoulder.

Business valuations and sales depend heavily on individual circumstances. Get advice from a qualified accountant, tax adviser and appropriate corporate finance or legal professional before making decisions. In the UK, see GOV.UK on Business Asset Disposal Relief. In Ireland, see Revenue on Revised Entrepreneur Relief.

FAQS

How is a field service business valued?

Most valuations begin with the earnings the business can reasonably continue producing after the sale.

For a larger company, that often means adjusted EBITDA. Smaller owner-run firms may be looked at using seller's discretionary earnings instead.

A valuation multiple is then applied. Three to six times adjusted earnings is sometimes used as a rough starting range for smaller service businesses, but it shouldn't be treated as a standard rate. Size, margins, recurring work, customer concentration, management and current buyer demand all affect the result.

Turnover helps describe the scale of the company. Earnings usually tell a buyer much more about what they're buying.

What makes a field service business worth more when selling?

A buyer usually feels more comfortable with a company that doesn't need its current owner involved in every important decision.

Regular contracted work helps because some future income is already visible. A broad spread of customers reduces the damage one lost account could cause. Good accounts make the earnings easier to verify, while capable staff and sensible operating systems make the handover less risky.

The common thread is fairly simple: the buyer wants confidence that the company will keep working after the sale.

How much tax do you pay when selling a business in the UK or Ireland?

There isn't one rate that applies to every business sale.

In the UK, Business Asset Disposal Relief can reduce CGT on qualifying disposals. The rate is 18% for qualifying gains on disposals from 6 April 2026, subject to the relief's conditions and £1 million lifetime limit.

In Ireland, Revised Entrepreneur Relief can apply a 10% CGT rate to qualifying gains, with a €1.5 million lifetime limit for gains arising from 1 January 2026. Ireland also has Retirement Relief for qualifying owners, with separate rules and limits.

The structure of the transaction and the seller's circumstances can change the answer considerably, so get individual tax advice before agreeing a deal.

How long does it take to sell a field service business?

Several months is a sensible expectation for the transaction itself.

There is preparation to do, buyers to speak to, offers to negotiate, due diligence to get through and legal documents to agree. Any issue uncovered along the way can add time.

The preparation needed to get the best version of the business to market can take much longer. Reducing reliance on the owner or building a larger base of recurring work doesn't happen in a few weeks.

When should I start preparing to sell my business?

A few years ahead is far more useful than a few months ahead.

That gives you enough time to change how the business runs and then show a buyer that those changes have stuck. It also leaves time to deal properly with tax planning, ownership questions and anything untidy in the records.

You don't need a buyer lined up before doing any of this. A company that can function without the owner at the centre of every job is generally a nicer company to own in the meantime as well.