Why smart founders start PR years before they plan to sell

Most founders think about PR in the year before they sell. That’s about two years too late.

What is left is a sprint. A flurry of press releases, a LinkedIn push, maybe an award entry or two, all squeezed into the months before a sale process begins. It looks exactly like what it is. And the people on the other side of the table, the buyers and their advisors, have seen this pattern before. They know panic PR when they see it.

Don’t get us wrong- your business is still worth something. But good PR is the difference between a 3.5 x multiplier and upwards of 5.

And good PR can attract those buyers to you- and has in the case of one of our clients.

Reputation cannot be manufactured on a deadline

A genuine market position, the kind that makes a buyer believe they are acquiring something more than a set of financials, takes years to build. It is built through consistent press coverage, a track record of expert commentary, a body of thought leadership that shows real authority rather than a sudden, suspicious burst of visibility timed suspiciously close to a sale.

Buyers and their advisors are not naive. Due diligence increasingly looks beyond the numbers and into how a business is perceived in its market.

Think of it as compound interest, not a final push

Every piece of genuine, consistent PR activity, a press mention, a bylined article, a speaking slot, a piece of data-led commentary, is value banked. Not for a specific date, but for whenever an exit becomes real. That might be a planned process in three years. It might be an unsolicited approach from a strategic buyer next spring. Nobody fully controls the timing of an exit opportunity, which is exactly why the reputation work cannot wait until you do.

The businesses that command the strongest position at the negotiating table are rarely the ones that scrambled in the final year. They are the ones who had already, quietly and consistently, built a market position that the numbers alone could never have told a buyer.

What this looks like in practice

It does not mean obsessing over an exit you have not even decided to pursue. It means treating reputation the way you treat any other commercial asset: as something you build deliberately over time, not something you remember to think about when a deal is suddenly on the table.

That means consistent expert positioning in your sector, a steady drip of credible press coverage, a leadership team that is visible in its own right and not solely dependent on the founder's personal relationships, and a public track record that, if a due diligence team Googled you tomorrow, would tell a story you would be proud of.

This is the work that should already be underway. Not because you need to sell next year. Because the value it builds compounds whether you sell next year or in ten.

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Read our latest- how to become the go-to expert in your industry here.