business resources
Greg Warnock on Building a Business Buyers Want to Own: Beyond the Founder, Documented Processes & a Valuation the Numbers Support
28 Oct 2026
Many owners spend years building a company and only a few months thinking about how to sell it. Closing that gap pays off. Owners who start preparing early tend to see smoother processes, stronger offers, and more options at the finish line. Greg Warnock, an entrepreneur and investor with more than 40 years of experience building, scaling, and guiding companies, has seen the sale process from several sides of the table. He has been a founder, a principal in more than 20 mergers and acquisitions, and a growth capital investor.
The good news is that what buyers look for is predictable. Three qualities come up again and again. Buyers want a business that runs well beyond its owner, processes that are written down rather than living in people's heads, and a price expectation grounded in the numbers. Each can be built with time and intention, and owners who understand how buyers see these areas can start strengthening them well before a sale is on the table.
What Buyers Are Really Paying For
A buyer is paying for what a company can do in the future, not just what it has done in the past. Every part of the business gets tested against one question, which is whether it will keep working after the transaction closes. Revenue that rests on a single relationship, a process only one employee understands, or a margin no one can explain can all make a buyer question whether results will hold up. That uncertainty shows up in the terms, whether as a lower offer, a larger share of the price tied to future performance, or longer obligations for the seller after closing. The reverse is also true. When a buyer can see that results will hold, that confidence shows up as a stronger offer and cleaner terms.
Warnock's early career gave him firsthand experience with these questions. Before moving into venture and growth capital, he founded and operated companies in technology, consumer products, biotechnology, and marketing, often serving as a technologist-founder who built products, assembled teams, and brought businesses from an initial idea to paying customers. As a principal on more than 20 M&A transactions, he evaluated markets, closed complex deals, and judged whether a company's results came from reliable processes or a few talented individuals. Buyers have to make that judgment when assessing each of the three areas below.
Building Leadership Beyond the Founder
Owner dependency is the most common challenge buyers raise, and often the most underestimated. In many small and mid-sized companies, the founder holds the key customer relationships, approves every significant decision, sets pricing by instinct, and answers the questions no one else can resolve. That arrangement can work well for years. When the founder is ready to step back, the question becomes whether that value stays with the company. Spreading it across a strong team is what makes it transferable.
The most valuable step an owner can take is preparing others to lead. Mercato Partners, the growth capital firm Warnock co-founded, works with the expansion-stage companies it backs to develop their leadership teams, strengthen go-to-market strategies, and enter new markets. Helping founders build teams that can lead alongside them has also been part of the mentoring work Greg Warnock has done over several decades.
For an owner preparing for a sale, that means identifying every decision that currently requires their involvement and assigning each one to a named person with real authority. Introduce key customers to other members of the team and let those relationships mature over years, not weeks. Hire or develop a second layer of managers who can run sales, operations, and finance without escalating routine issues. Then test the result. An owner who can step away for several weeks without revenue or service quality slipping has created something a buyer can value.
Documented Processes Make Diligence Easier
Due diligence quickly reveals whether a company documents its operations. A buyer's team will ask how customers are acquired, how pricing is set, how orders are fulfilled, how quality is controlled, how cash is collected, and how new employees are trained. If the honest answer to most of those questions is a person's name, the buyer has to price in the risk of keeping things running after the sale. Well-documented companies also move through diligence faster, and that speed protects both momentum and price.
Documentation doesn't mean binders nobody reads. It means writing down the handful of processes that generate and protect revenue, defining the metrics that show whether those processes are working, and reviewing those metrics on a regular schedule. Mercato emphasizes this kind of oversight with its portfolio companies, and the same principle applies to a business of any size. A company that can hand a buyer clean financials, clear operating procedures, and a consistent record of review is easier to evaluate quickly.
The restaurant sector offers a useful example. Savory Funds, the buyout and growth platform Warnock co-founded, works with emerging restaurant concepts to improve the financial performance of individual locations, expand to more sites, and refine supply-chain and site-selection strategies. Growth across many locations depends on documented, repeatable processes, because the second or tenth location can't rely on the founder standing in the kitchen. Preparing a business to repeat its success in another location also makes it easier to sell.
Building a Valuation Buyers Can Support
Even a well-run, well-documented company sells best when the owner's price expectation is supported by the evidence. Owners often base their expectations on a multiple they heard about in their industry, on the years of effort they invested, or on what they need to fund the next stage of life. Buyers look at cash flow, the quality of growth, risk, and comparable transactions. Closing the distance between those views early is what keeps a process moving.
Owners can make a stronger case for their valuation by looking at the business as a buyer would. That means separating recurring earnings from one-time gains, removing the owner's personal expenses from operating results, and being candid about dependence on a small number of customers, suppliers, or staff. It also means recognizing that the first two areas in this article directly affect price. Every risk a buyer sees reduces what they will pay, so strengthening leadership and documentation is often the most reliable way to narrow the gap between what an owner wants and what a buyer will accept.
Preparing to Sell Is Preparing to Grow
All three areas take time to build, which is why the months between deciding to sell and signing a letter of intent are rarely enough. Reducing owner dependency takes years of delegation and leadership development. Documenting processes takes repeated cycles of writing, testing, and revising. Supporting a valuation with evidence takes several years of clean, consistent financial results.
Preparing a company for sale therefore involves much of the same work as preparing it to grow. Stronger leadership teams, repeatable operations, and clear oversight help a company grow, and buyers look for the same qualities during diligence. An owner who builds them as part of running a better business ends up with more options, whether that means selling, bringing in growth capital, or continuing to run the business with less personal strain.
Greg Warnock has spent much of his career sharing this kind of practical knowledge. In 2008, he founded Junto Partners, an entrepreneurship education initiative that mentors emerging founders through the challenges of building a business. The most useful advice for a future seller is also the simplest. Start preparing long before the sale, and build a company that can thrive without you.
About Greg Warnock. Greg Warnock is an entrepreneur, investor, and mentor with more than 40 years of experience building, scaling, and guiding companies. He is co-founder and managing director of Mercato Partners, a Mountain West growth capital firm that backs expansion-stage companies, and co-founder of Savory Funds, a buyout and growth platform in the food and beverage sector. He earned a PhD in Entrepreneurship and Venture Finance from the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business.
