Which business sale statistics are worth knowing?
Five, each opened at its source: how few small-business exits are sales, how much could be sold, what a small business sold for in 2025, what lower-middle-market companies sold for in Q2 2026, and how many offers the larger ones drew.
| Figure | Measure | What it covers | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | Share of small-business exits that were sales | About 510,000 US small businesses that left the market in 2022; 92 percent closed and 3 percent passed to new ownersEvery exit is counted, including owners who closed without trying to sell, so it is not a failure rate for sales. | McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility, The Great Ownership Transfer: A new era of business stewardship, 2026 | October 2026 |
| $5 trillion | Enterprise value of the small businesses viable for sale, at most | More than one million of the roughly six million US small businesses expected to change hands over the next decadeA projection over the next decade, not a count of sales. | McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility, The Great Ownership Transfer: A new era of business stewardship, 2026 | October 2026 |
| $350,000 | Median sale price | 9,586 small-business sales reported to BizBuySell in 2025; sellers received 94 percent of their asking priceDeals brokers chose to report to one marketplace: a large sample, not a count of every US sale. | BizBuySell, 2025 Year in Review: BizBuySell Market Recap, 2025 | October 2026 |
| 5.8x | Multiple of EBITDA | Businesses of $5 million to $50 million in enterprise value, Q2 2026; 181 deals reported by 255 brokers and advisors in all bandsIts highest since Q1 2022 (IBBA's release of August 25, 2026). The highlights do not say whether it is a median or an average. | IBBA and M&A Source, Market Pulse Survey, Q2 2026 Highlights, 2026 | November 2026 |
| 87% | Share of deals that drew at least three offers | Deals over $5 million closed by the advisors surveyed, Q2 2026; a third of them drew ten or more | IBBA and M&A Source, The Market Pulse Survey Q2 2026 reports the latest trends in business sales up to $50M, 2026 | November 2026 |
Each one measures something narrower than it first sounds. McKinsey's 5 percent (2026) counts every small business that left the market in 2022, including the owners who closed without trying to sell, so it says how rarely an exit is a sale, not how often a sale attempt fails. BizBuySell's median of $350,000 for 2025 is the deals brokers reported to one marketplace. IBBA and M&A Source's figures for Q2 2026 come from a survey of the brokers and advisors who closed the deals.
Read together, they say two things. Most small businesses leave the market without being sold, and the companies that do sell with several buyers at the table are the larger ones: 87 percent of the deals over $5 million that IBBA and M&A Source's advisors closed in Q2 2026 drew at least three offers.
Which statistics about selling a business have no study behind them?
Five figures owners hear often trace to no study we could find, and beside each the nearest measured figure either says something different or nothing has been measured.
| What owners hear | What was measured |
|---|---|
| 70 to 80 percent of businesses never sell | No study found. McKinsey (2026) measured something else: 5 percent of the roughly 510,000 small-business exits in 2022 were sales, counting owners who closed without trying to sell. |
| 75 percent of owners regret selling within a year | No study found. In BNY Wealth's 2025 survey, 94 percent of the 77 owners who had sold were confident or very confident it was the right decision; 92 percent of the businesses surveyed had $50 million or more of revenue. |
| $10 trillion of businesses is changing hands | No study found. McKinsey (2026) estimates more than one million small businesses viable for sale, worth up to $5 trillion in enterprise value. |
| 80 percent of an owner's net worth is in the business | Nothing measured. No survey we found measures it. |
| Half of agreed deals never close | Nothing measured as a rate. No study we found counts how many signed deals fail to close; the published ones give the reasons deals break. |
A claim stays in the left column until a study behind it is found at its source.
| Figure | Measure | What it covers | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 94% | Share of owners who had sold who were confident it was the right decision | 77 US owners who had sold a business, of 127 private business owners surveyed with The Harris Poll; 92 percent of the businesses surveyed had $50 million or more of revenueBNY says outcomes from small samples in the report are directional only. | BNY Wealth, Mastering the Sale: 2025 Insights for Private Business Owners, 2025 | November 2026 |
A figure that cannot be traced is left off these pages however often it is repeated, and the measured figure beside it is shown with what it actually counts.
What does FNDRS's own data show?
FNDRS's own figures describe the founder-led companies it works with, each with the number of companies behind it: of 133 companies scored on the Value Builder assessment, 85 scored zero on recurring revenue.
founder-led companies FNDRS assessed scored zero on recurring revenue, one of the first things a buyer tests.
Value Builder assessments of companies FNDRS works with, 2023 to 2026; the 133 with driver-level scores.
They describe the companies that come to FNDRS, not every business, which is why each figure carries its base. FNDRS has assessed 201 founder-led companies since September 2023, each on the Value Builder assessment.
How were these figures checked?
Each figure was opened on the page or in the report that publishes it, and is shown only when the number, its publisher, its year, and what it measures were all found there.
- At the source. A figure is read where its publisher printed it, not in a summary of it, and each row links to that page.
- On its own measure. A median and an average, a multiple of SDE and a multiple of EBITDA, a price and a revenue are kept apart, and each row says which it is.
- With its month. Each row says the month it was last checked. Multiples and deal terms are checked again each quarter, the rest each year.
- Left off when it cannot be found. A figure that is repeated widely but could not be found at a source is not shown.