By Richard Harroch

Preparing your company for sale can be difficult and time-consuming. Successful merger and acquisition (“M&A”) transactions require advance preparation, sophisticated advisors, a dedicated management team, and an understanding of the key business, financial, and legal issues that will be involved.

The following are a number of key preliminary steps that a private company positioning itself for sale should take in advance of the formal start of an M&A process.

1. Prepare an “Overview” or “Executive Summary” Slide Deck

Selling companies frequently prepare an “Overview” or “Executive Summary” deck. This deck is typically 15 to 20 slides in a PowerPoint presentation and is intended to showcase the company’s products, technology, team, financials, market opportunity and more to prospective buyers.

You will want your deck to cover the following topics, roughly in the order set forth below and with titles along the lines of the following:

1. Company Overview
2. Mission/Vision of the Company
3. The Team
4. The Problem
5. The Solution
6. The Market Opportunity
7. The Product
8. The Customers
9. The Technology
10. The Competition
11. Traction
12. Business Model
13. The Marketing Plan
14. Financials

Here are some tips for M&A decks:

• Don’t make the deck more than 15 to 20 slides long (at the beginning, buyers have limited attention spans). If you feel you need to add more information, include it as an appendix.
• Don’t have too many wordy slides.
• Don’t provide excessive financial details, as that...

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