Most owners carry a number in their head for what the business is worth, and it is usually wrong in one direction or the other. Too high, and you spend a year not selling. Too low, and you hand over something you spent a decade building for less than it would fetch.

A valuation is also useful well before any sale. It tells you what your largest asset is actually worth, which matters for your own planning, for a partner buy-out, for divorce or probate, and for understanding whether the thing you are working this hard on is building value or just paying you.

Get three years of clean financials together first. A valuation built on messy books comes back low, because anything a buyer cannot verify, a buyer discounts. This is the single biggest controllable factor in the number you get.

Know why you want it, because it changes what kind you need. A rough sense of range for your own planning is a different and far cheaper exercise than a formal valuation for a sale, a bank or a court.