How long it takes to sell a business in Canada

1. The short answer

6 to 12 months from the day an advisor is engaged to the day the deal closes. That is the norm for a private company sale in Canada. 4 to 6 months is fast, and anything over a year usually has a reason you can name. Before the advisor comes the preparation, and for most owners that is the longer part: the owners who get the best price started 2 to 3 years before they wanted to leave.

So the honest answer to how long it takes is that it depends which clock you are asking about. There are 3 of them: the preparation, the sale itself, and the time after closing when you are still involved. This guide takes them in order, with the weeks, and ends with a calendar for an owner who wants to be out in 3 years.

2. The preparation: where the years go

A buyer pays for a company that runs without its owner, keeps its customers, and can prove its numbers. Each of those takes time to build, and none of them can be faked in the months before a sale.

• 3 clean years of financial statements. A buyer wants year-end statements prepared by an accountant for the last 3 years, with a clean line between what the company spends and what you spend. If this year is the first clean one, the third arrives in 2 years.
• 24 months for the tax structure. The lifetime capital gains exemption on a share sale has tests that run over the 24 months before the sale, described in section 8. Cash and investments that have built up inside the operating company usually have to be moved out first, and moving them without triggering tax can itself take up to 2 years.
• A year of somebody else running it. A buyer who believes the business depends on you holds back price until you have proved otherwise. The proof is a manager who has already run things, for long enough to show up in the numbers.

Start with the buyer readiness scorecard: 10 questions, 2 minutes, and a list of the 2 or 3 gaps that would cost you most. Every one of them is a project measured in quarters, not weeks, and the readiness checklist lays them out year by year. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business found that 76% of small business owners plan to exit within 10 years and only 9% have a formal written plan for it, which is another way of saying that most owners will run this clock late.

3. The sale, stage by stage

Once an advisor is engaged, a managed sale runs through 7 stages. The weeks here are typical, not promised, and the stages overlap at the edges.

1. Preparation: 4 to 8 weeks. The advisor works through your numbers, normalizes the earnings, agrees the strategy and the buyer list with you, and assembles the documents a buyer will ask for. A company with clean records finishes at the short end.
2. Materials: 2 to 4 weeks. The 1 page anonymous teaser and the confidential information memorandum. This usually overlaps with the end of preparation.
3. Buyer outreach: 4 to 8 weeks. Chosen buyers are approached directly, sign a non-disclosure agreement, receive the memorandum and ask their first questions. The advisor is working a list of dozens, and the calendar is set by the slowest serious buyer.
4. Indications of interest and meetings: 4 to 6 weeks. Interested buyers submit a price range and outline terms. The field is narrowed, you meet the shortlist, and they see the business.
5. Letter of intent: 2 to 4 weeks. The chosen buyer sets out price, structure and conditions. The letter usually grants exclusivity, commonly for 60 to 90 days, and that period is the budget for the next 2 stages.
6. Due diligence: 30 to 90 days. The buyer’s accountants and lawyers examine everything. Hundreds of questions, answered through a data room. A prepared company answers them in days. An unprepared one watches the exclusivity period run out.
7. Definitive agreement and closing: 4 to 8 weeks. This runs alongside the end of diligence. The purchase agreement, the representations and warranties, the non-compete and the transition terms are negotiated, consents are collected, and funds move at closing.

Add those up at the short end and you have about 6 months. At the long end, about 10. The guide to how a sale works describes what happens inside each stage.

4. What the survey says

The Market Pulse survey, run each quarter by the International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source among brokers and advisors across North America, is the closest thing to a public measure. For the second quarter of 2026 it reported that deals under $2 million in value averaged 6 to 10 months from engagement to close, and that deals from $2 million to $50 million averaged 11 to 12 months. The larger the company, the more there is to examine and the more buyers there are to run, so the process takes longer even when nothing goes wrong. The numbers move a little from quarter to quarter. The shape does not.

5. What makes a sale faster

• Numbers that need no explaining. Accountant-prepared statements, a monthly management report, and adjustments to earnings that are documented rather than remembered.
• A data room before there is a buyer. Contracts, leases, employment agreements, permits, insurance and the minute book, gathered and indexed during preparation, so diligence is a download rather than a search.
• A decided owner. Price expectations set with the advisor before outreach, and the answers to the hard questions settled before a buyer asks them: will you stay, for how long, and what about the family member on the payroll.
• Competition. 3 interested buyers move faster than 1, because each knows the others exist.
• An advisor who knows the buyers. A firm that has sold companies your size in your sector already has the list and the relationships, and skips the weeks of finding out who is buying. The guide to brokers and M&A advisors explains the difference that makes.

6. What makes a sale slower

• Tax planning that should have started 2 years ago. Either the sale waits, or the exemption is lost. Both cost more than the delay.
• A business that dips during the process. Buyers reprice on the latest numbers, and a bad quarter mid-process means renegotiation or a pause. Run the company as if you were keeping it until the money lands.
• 1 buyer and no competition. A single buyer with exclusivity has no reason to hurry, and every reason to use the calendar against you.
• Slow answers in diligence. The most common reason a 90 day exclusivity period turns into 6 months.
• Consents. Landlords, franchisors, licensing bodies and key customers whose agreement is needed to assign a contract. In an asset sale there can be dozens. Start them the day the letter of intent is signed.
• The buyer’s financing. A buyer borrowing part of the price brings a lender, and the lender brings its own diligence and its own calendar.
• Surprises. A dispute, a tax reassessment, an environmental question about the property, an ownership record that does not match. Each is a week or a month, and each is cheaper to find yourself, years earlier.

7. After closing: the time you are still involved

Closing is not the end of your involvement. 3 things commonly keep an owner attached to the company they have sold.

• Transition. A handover period agreed in the purchase agreement, commonly a few months to a year, during which you introduce the buyer to customers, suppliers and staff, and are paid for it as an employee or a consultant.
• An earn-out. Part of the price paid later, tied to results over 1 to 3 years. It moves risk from the buyer to you, so treat it as part of the price rather than an afterthought, and expect to care how the business is run after you leave it.
• Vendor financing. A loan from you to the buyer for part of the price, repaid over several years. Common in smaller deals and in management buyouts.

Put together, an owner who signs a full sale should expect to be involved, in some way, for 1 to 3 years after closing. That belongs in your plans from the start, and in the negotiation.

8. The clock nobody can shorten

Everything above can be compressed with money, effort or a good advisor, except 1 thing. The lifetime capital gains exemption on a share sale has 3 tests, and 2 of them run over the 24 months before the sale: for that whole period, more than half of the company’s assets must have been used in an active business carried on in Canada, and nobody outside your family may have owned the shares. At the time of sale, all or substantially all of the assets must be in the active business, which is where a company carrying a large cash or investment balance fails. Meeting the tests can mean moving assets out of the company, and doing that cleanly takes time of its own. The guide to share sales and asset sales covers the tests in full. What matters here is that this clock starts when your accountant starts it, and not before.

9. A calendar for an owner who wants out in 3 years

• 3 years out. Take the scorecard. See your accountant about the exemption and the structure. Get the first clean year-end done by an accountant. Name a second in command and start handing over decisions.
• 2 years out. The second clean year-end. Purification of the company’s assets under way if it is needed. Contracts with the 5 largest customers and suppliers in writing. The minute book and the share register tidied.
• 1 year out. The third clean year-end. Decide what kind of sale you want, and whether a broker or an advisor should run it. The manager has now run the company for a year.
• 6 months out. Engage the advisor. Preparation and materials. The data room built.
• The last 6 months. Outreach, offers, letter of intent, diligence, closing. Run the business as if you were keeping it.

It is a schedule, not a rule. Owners have sold well in 18 months, and some take 5 years. What the calendar does is put the slow items first. The readiness checklist has the full list for each year.

10. Where we fit

Sell My Company is a finder, and proudly Canadian. Owners of Canadian companies with $1 million or more in revenue tell us 4 things, and we introduce them to 1 vetted Canadian M&A advisory firm that has closed deals at their size in their sector. 1 introduction, never a list, and free to you at every stage, because the advisory firm pays our fee.

We do not run the sale or set its pace. What we can do is make the introduction early, because the owners who talk to an advisor 2 years out are the ones who close in 6 months. If you are years away, take the scorecard. If you are ready to talk, tell us 4 things.