The question lands differently when it is your business I saw the news this week about Goodwin considering selling part of their defence business. They supply components to frigate and submarine programmes for the UK and US. That is not a small decision. And it reminded me of conversations I have had with people running much smaller operations who face the same structural question: should I sell off part of what I have built? The scale differs. The weight of it does not. When you have built something yourself, every part of the business feels connected to you. Even the bits that drain your time or lose money. Deciding to sell a division, a product line, or a client segment is not like selling a piece of furniture. It changes what your business is. I have seen people make this decision based on a single bad quarter. I have seen others avoid it for years because they could not face the conversation. Neither approach works. What works is structure. Why gut instinct fails here Most people I work with are sharp. They trust their instincts because those instincts have been right before. But selling part of a business involves too many variables for intuition alone. You are weighing cash now against cash later. You are weighing operational complexity against strategic focus. You are weighing what buyers want against what you are willing to let go. You are weighing your team's morale against your own exhaustion. Gut instinct collapses when there are more than three or four factors to consider simultaneously. That is not a character flaw. That is how human cognition works. A decision matrix forces you to separate the factors, weight them according to what actually matters to you, and score each option against those weighted criteria. It does not make the decision for you. It makes the decision visible. How I structure this with clients When someone comes to me with this question, I start by asking them to list every option on the table. Not just "sell" or "don't sell". The real options might include: sell the whole division, sell 60% and retain a stake, wind it down over 18 months, spin it out as a separate entity, or find a partner to run it while you retain ownership. Once we have the options, we list the criteria. These vary by business, but common ones include: immediate cash generated, ongoing revenue impact, operational complexity reduction, effect on remaining team, strategic fit with where you want the business to go in three years, and personal time freed up. Then we weight the criteria. This is where most people discover what they actually care about. Someone might say cash is their priority, but when forced to assign percentages, they realise strategic focus matters more. I had a client last year who weighted "time freed up" at 35% of their total score. That told us more than an hour of conversation would have. Finally, we score each option against each criterion. Usually on a scale of one to five. Multiply score by weight, sum the totals, and you have a ranking. The number that comes out is not the answer. But it is a starting point you can argue with. And arguing with a number is more productive than arguing with a vague feeling. A real example I worked with someone running a marketing consultancy who had a training division bolted on. The training brought in about £45,000 a year but consumed roughly 30% of their operational attention. They had an offer from a competitor to buy the training arm for £120,000. We built a matrix with six criteria. Cash generated scored high for the sale option. Strategic focus scored high for the sale option. But "client relationship continuity" scored low, because many training clients also used the consultancy services. And "team morale" scored low, because two staff members would likely leave with the division. The weighted total showed the sale option ahead, but only by 12%. That slim margin told us the decision was genuinely close. In the end, they sold, but negotiated a referral arrangement that protected the client relationships. The matrix did not make the decision. It showed them where the risk sat. The tool I point people to If you want to run through this yourself, there is a Decision Matrix tool on alira.london. It walks you through setting criteria, assigning weights, and scoring options. You can do this on paper, but having a structured format helps you avoid skipping steps. I am not saying the tool makes the decision easy. Selling part of your business is never easy. But it makes the decision clearer. You can see which criteria are driving the outcome. You can test what happens if you change a weight. You can share it with a co-owner or advisor and have a conversation grounded in the same data. When not to use this approach A decision matrix works when you have genuine options and genuine uncertainty. It does not work when you have already made up your mind and you are looking for validation. If you catch yourself adjusting weights until the matrix gives you the answer you wanted, stop. You have already decided. Just own it. It also does not work if the decision is fundamentally emotional. If selling a division means betraying a promise you made to yourself ten years ago, no spreadsheet will resolve that. You need a different conversation. What to do this week First, write down every realistic option for the part of the business you are considering selling. Not just sell or keep. Include partial sales, wind-downs, partnerships. Get at least four options on paper. Second, list the criteria that matter to you. Be honest. If "I never want to think about this again" is a criterion, write it down. Then assign percentage weights to each criterion. The weights must total 100%. Third, run through the Decision Matrix on alira.london. Score each option against each criterion. Look at the output. Then ask yourself: does this match what I expected? If not, figure out why.