Your best buyer is the one who cannot afford to let someone else buy you

Selling to the Strategic Buyer: shaping a sale around buyer motivation rather than the accounts

Many founders walk into a sale thinking their business is worth whatever the accounts suggest, but the biggest exits usually happen when the right buyer sees something the spreadsheet cannot fully capture. A company that looks steady to one buyer can look like a shortcut, a defensive move, or a growth engine to another, and that difference can change the offer dramatically.

Mark Mills OBE has built and sold five businesses, including Cardpoint at a £175 million valuation, and now helps owners shape the sale around buyer motivation rather than accepting a flat valuation. For founder audiences, this opens up a practical conversation about how to find the buyers with the strongest reason to buy, frame the business around strategic value, and create the tension that pushes offers upward.

About Mark Mills

Mark Mills, podcast guest

OBE Business Sale Advisor Helping UK Founders Maximise Exit Value

5 Businesses built & sold£175M Cardpoint exit valuation6,500 Cash machines in Cardpoint network£500M+ Monthly cash dispensed by Cardpoint network

Mark Mills OBE is a business sale advisor who helps UK founders sell their businesses for maximum value.

He got into this work after spotting overlooked value as a child selling broken biscuits at school and then carrying that instinct into founding and exiting companies. The early biscuit story taught him to see what others ignore and to turn small advantages into commercial wins, a thread that runs through his approach to identifying hidden value in mature businesses. Over time that practicality led him from founding companies to deliberately learning from each exit and packaging those lessons into a repeatable system.

He has built and sold five businesses, most notably building and exiting Cardpoint at a £175 million valuation; Cardpoint floated on AIM at £7 million, grew to 6,500 cash machines and 300 employees, and dispensed over £500 million a month. Since 2007 he has worked as a Non-Executive Chairman and advisor applying his methods to other owners. In December 2024 he was awarded an OBE for services to Business and Charity and he holds the title of Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire.

Day-to-day he steps in as Non-Executive Chairman, works directly with founders to uncover hidden value, and manages the full sale process from preparation through to finding the right buyer.

View profile →

Book Mark Mills for your show

5+ podcast & stage appearances. Remote or in studio, broadcast-grade audio.

Request an interview →
Don’t BE for Sale: Mark Mills on Building Leverage and Maximizing Your Exit
0:00 / 34:31
The Exit - Presented By Flippa· Listen to Mark Mills on air