Founder rebuilt her sale process after four deals collapsed
Christine Slocumb says one buyer walked a week before closing. She rewrote how she screened the next one.
Writing in Inc., Christine Slocumb describes a sale of her company falling apart seven days before it was due to close.
It was not the first. On her account, four deals collapsed before one completed.
What she did next was procedural rather than emotional. She rebuilt the sale process itself, tightened how buyers were vetted before diligence began, and says the eventual deal closed on stronger terms than the ones that died.
She does not name the buyers, the sector, the size of the business or the final price.
The useful part for a founder is the sequencing. Slocumb treats buyer screening as work to be done at the front of the process, not as something diligence will sort out later.
That reframes a collapsed deal as a screening failure rather than bad luck. A buyer who walks a week before closing has usually been signalling for longer than a week.
It also implies a cost worth counting. Four dead processes are four rounds of legal fees, management time and disclosure of internal numbers to people who did not buy.
Founders running a first sale can take one thing from it without knowing her figures: decide what would disqualify a buyer before you let them into the data room, and write it down while you are still calm.