Transition
May 2026 · 5 min read
Telling Your Staff: When And How To Announce A Sale
Tell them too early and you risk the sale. Tell them too late and you risk the staff. The sequence that protects both.
The hardest conversation in a practice sale is not with the buyer. It is with the three people who have run your front office for a decade and will hear about the sale from someone. Handled well, staff become the reason clients stay. Handled badly, a key departure in week two can cost a seller part of the deferred price and a buyer the practice they thought they bought.
Before the listing: nobody. A listing is a blind profile; buyers do not learn your name until they are screened and under NDA. Staff do not need to know you are exploring a sale, and telling them creates months of uncertainty for a process that may not produce a buyer.
At the accepted offer: your most senior person, under confidence. By now the buyer is real, the price is agreed and closing is a matter of weeks. The buyer will want to meet this person before closing in any case, and that meeting goes better if it is not the first they have heard of it. The conversation is about their role under the new owner, which is usually unchanged, and their compensation, which is usually confirmed in writing.
At closing, or the day after: everyone, together, with the buyer in the room. The message is the same one the clients will get: I am retiring, this is who is taking over, your job and your desk are the same, and I am here through the transition. Questions get answered that day. Letters to clients go out that week, after the staff know.
What goes wrong: a seller who tells staff at the listing stage and watches them job-hunt for six months; a buyer who changes titles or hours in the first month; a staff member who hears from a client first. Each is avoidable with a sequence agreed between buyer and seller and written into the transition plan.
Our transition plans include the staff sequence as a standard item, with the buyer’s written confirmation of roles and pay ready for the closing-day meeting.
Talk To A Broker
Daniel Roussel, CPA, CMA covers Québec, Manitoba And Saskatchewan. The first conversation is free and confidential.
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