The most common mistakes in handing over a business

The most common mistake is timing. Those who postpone succession until age or health force it lose the most important resource of a good handover: time. Without it, there is no choice, no proper handover, no calm.

Beginning early costs nothing — it only keeps every door open.

The second mistake is reducing the handover to a number. The highest price is worth little if the buyer takes the business apart, drops the name and loses the team. What was sold then was only the shell.

A fair price matters — but it is the result of a good handover, not its only goal.

The third mistake is silence. Those who inform staff only once everything is decided risk trust and knowledge — exactly what makes the business what it is.

Openness at the right time is not weakness, but the precondition for a handover to hold.

The costliest mistake is also the best evidenced. According to the chambers' advisory statistics, three quarters of companies approach an external contact only two years or less before the intended handover. There, 38 per cent of departing owners count as poorly prepared because they addressed the matter too late.

A second finding corrects a widespread assumption. It is often said that there are too few prospective buyers. In fact, 49 per cent of senior owners had not found a suitable successor at the time of counselling — and prospective buyers report almost exactly the same share at 48 per cent. When both sides fail to find each other in equal measure, the problem is less scarcity than matching.

The gap is widening nonetheless: 5,620 companies in chamber advisory work had no potential candidate in 2024, a record high, and it has almost doubled since 2019. These figures come from the chambers' advisory statistics, so they are not a representative sample of the whole Mittelstand — anyone citing them should say so.

DIHK, Report Unternehmensnachfolge 2025, published 2025 on the basis of chamber advisory statistics for 2024 (more than 50,000 personal contacts, assessments from around 300 succession experts across the 79 chambers).