How to Tell Your Employees You’re Selling

About the Episode

Sharing the news of a sale is the one topic that keeps business owners up at night more than taxes or price. If you disclose the news too early or without a strategy, you risk destabilizing your team, triggering key departures, and even killing the deal entirely. This episode provides a tactical roadmap for timing your announcement, building trust with your leadership, and ensuring your staff stays motivated to see the transaction through to a successful close.

The early disclosure can destabilize a team, trigger departures, and actually kill the deal. If it’s done right, it creates loyalty, trust, and a smoother transition. So the key is having a strategy, not winging it.

Jim Evanger

What You’ll Learn

• Master the Timing of Disclosure: Learn why keeping the circle small until the Letter of Intent (LOI) is signed prevents the rumor mill from devaluing your company. You will understand how to wait until the deal is nearly certain before involving the broader team to avoid unnecessary anxiety.
• Secure Key Management with Incentives: Discover how to use transaction bonuses and retention agreements to align your leadership’s interests with yours. These tools ensure your most important people contribute to due diligence rather than look for new jobs.
• Humanize Private Equity Buyers: Explore how to frame the buyer as a partner for growth rather than a cost slasher to reduce employee fear. You will learn to highlight the new resources and opportunities a sale brings to the company’s future.
• Handle Hostile or Emotional Reactions: Gain strategies for managing hostile actors or managers who may feel slighted by the sale. You will learn when to have serious meetings and when it is safer to wait until the day of closing to inform certain individuals.
• Execute a Professional All-Hands Meeting: Get a step-by-step guide for the big speech introducing the new owner to the entire staff. This lesson focuses on transparency and making the “unknown feel known” to maintain post-sale productivity.

Topics Covered

Want More? Related Resources:

• Informing & Retaining Employees When Selling a Business
• How To Maintain Confidentiality When Selling Your Business
• Everything An Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Selling to PE Firm

Meet Our Guest

Jim Evanger

Operating Partner and Interim CEO for PE-owned businesses | Florida, USA

Jim Evanger has had a diverse leadership career, having built executive teams in Fortune 100, middle market, and entrepreneurial start-up businesses. His industry experience spans healthcare, retail, franchising, light manufacturing, and private equity. Most recently, Jim has been a Private Equity Operating Partner and Interim CEO for PE-owned businesses ranging in size from $5 million to $100 million.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimevanger/