The 90-Day Pre-Sale Sprint: how to prepare a funeral home for sale in 90 days

Owners who have decided to sell usually ask what to do first. If the long work is behind you, the answer is a tight quarter of preparation with a fixed sequence. That sequence is the Sprint, and it is one of the planning tools on our guide hub for selling a funeral home.

What is the 90-Day Pre-Sale Sprint?

It is a 13-week plan that turns a funeral home’s records into a buyer-ready package in four phases. Each phase has its own weeks, its own deliverables, and a clear finish line.

The Sprint is the last mile. It assumes the 12-to-24-month plan to prepare a funeral home for sale is done or underway: clean books, licensed staff who can run the place without you, and a facility you are not embarrassed to show. Ninety days can organize a good business. It cannot repair a weak one.

What gets done in weeks 1–3, the records phase?

Weeks 1–3 assemble the financial and operating history a buyer will test first. The goal is a set of numbers that reconcile to each other and to the tax returns.

Pull three years of financial statements and tax returns, the monthly P&L, and call reports split by year and disposition. Add case-level revenue so a buyer can rebuild average revenue per call. Collect General Price List (GPL) history too. The FTC Funeral Rule at 16 CFR 453.6 already requires keeping each price list for at least one year after its last distribution, along with each Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected, so most of this should exist.

The hardest item is the add-back schedule. Every adjustment needs a receipt, payroll record, or ledger entry. Our list of documents you need to sell a funeral home shows the formats buyers expect.

What gets done in weeks 4–6, the preneed phase?

Weeks 4–6 prove what the preneed backlog is worth. You finish the contract register and climb every rung of a formal reconciliation.

Run The Preneed Reconciliation Ladder start to finish: a complete register, every contract matched to its trust account or policy, values confirmed to current statements, guaranteed contracts re-priced at today’s GPL, and a single gap figure. Gather the trust statements, insurer confirmations, and any state examination reports while you work.

This is the phase most likely to surprise an owner. A gap found now is a number you can plan around. A gap a buyer finds becomes leverage.

What gets done in weeks 7–9, compliance and facility?

Weeks 7–9 confirm the firm is legal to operate and transfer, and they put a price on the building’s condition. A buyer’s attorney and lender will ask for every item on this list.

Gather the establishment license, every director and embalmer license, and the crematory license. Assemble Funeral Rule documents: GPL, Casket and Outer Burial Container Price Lists, and sample statements, checked against the FTC’s guide to complying with the Funeral Rule.

Then the safety and environmental file. Embalming exposure falls under the OSHA formaldehyde standard, 29 CFR 1910.1048, with a 0.75 ppm eight-hour exposure limit and a 0.5 ppm action level, so monitoring records belong in the file. Crematory air permits vary by state; in Texas, for example, the TCEQ permit by rule for crematories must be claimed before construction begins. Add maintenance logs, environmental history, a deferred maintenance list with estimates, the fleet list, and deeds, surveys, or leases.

Environmental history matters for financing. SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 treats death care (NAICS 8122) as environmentally sensitive, so an SBA-financed buyer’s lender must start with a Phase I environmental review regardless of loan size, unless no embalming or cremation happens at the property.

What gets done in weeks 10–13, marketing readiness?

Weeks 10–13 turn the cleaned-up file into a sale process. You set a valuation range, write the documents buyers read, choose whom to approach, and build the data room.

1. Set a valuation range using The Four-Number Funeral Home Valuation Screen, with real estate valued separately.
2. Draft the confidential information memorandum and a blind teaser that does not identify the firm.
3. Build the buyer list with The Buyer-Fit Matrix, starting with the two or three best-fit buyer types.
4. Prepare the NDA and a plan for who learns about the sale, and when, following our guidance on confidentiality when selling a funeral home.
5. Load and index the data room, using our funeral home data-room index as the folder structure.

What does a finished sprint look like in numbers?

A finished sprint produces measurable outputs: a supported add-back total, a reconciled preneed gap, a priced maintenance list, and a counted, indexed data room. The example below shows each one.

The $86,000 maintenance figure will not stay hidden; listing it with estimates lets you decide whether to fix, credit, or price it in.

How do sellers, buyers, and lenders use the Sprint?

Sellers use it as a schedule, buyers use its outputs to decide how fast to move, and lenders use the same file to underwrite. One body of work serves all three.

Sellers gain control of timing. When a consolidator calls mid-sprint, you can say the package is ready in six weeks instead of scrambling. You also learn your weak spots before anyone else does, which keeps you from defending a number you have not checked.

Buyers read a sprint-ready file as a signal of lower risk. A complete register and a tied-out add-back schedule shorten diligence, and a priced maintenance list keeps the inspection from becoming a renegotiation. Buyers who see the work done tend to submit cleaner letters of intent with fewer contingencies.

Lenders need the records phase for cash-flow analysis and the compliance phase for collateral and environmental review. For an SBA-financed buyer, SOP 50 10 8.1 requires a quality of earnings (QoE) report when the purchase price is $3 million or more and generally looks for at least 1.25x debt-service coverage on an initial acquisition. Records that already reconcile make both tests faster.

Who should work on the Sprint?

A small team: the owner, one trusted records person, the outside accountant, and the firm’s attorney, with an advisor coordinating. Each person owns specific weeks rather than the whole quarter.

In our experience the office manager carries weeks 1–3, the accountant joins for the add-back schedule, and the funeral director in charge handles licenses and the preparation room file in weeks 7–9. The attorney reviews real estate documents and the NDA. The owner’s job is decisions, not data entry.

What are the common ways owners misuse the Sprint?

The most common misuse is starting it too early, before the longer preparation, and expecting 90 days to fix structural problems. Other misuses come from skipping phases or reordering them.

Run the phases in order, finish each one, and the market sees your best-prepared version of the firm.