Steele Platt, CEO, Yard House, Irvine, Calif.

Make sure you're picking the right person to buy your company. A lot of buyers have different objectives. So you have to make sure that your new partner matches philosophically and morally and thinks in a similar way that you do and the seller doesn't do it just for the money.

I could have chosen from three or four different people that wanted to purchase Yard House. One of them was in the restaurant business. And I didn't want that one because I felt it would affect the integrity of our concept based on old business methods in the restaurant business.

One reason I chose TSG [Consumer Partners LLC, a San Francisco-based private-equity firm] was they've never been in the restaurant business. So they have to rely on us to make sure that the concept retains its original architecture. And what they provide to us is what we needed, and that's that higher intellect, different level of thinking and structure and things like that.

Daryl Dollinger, president, Raving Brands, Atlanta

The buyer has got to be comfortable that the financials of the company are strong and that you're profitable. Just like with any other business, no one's going to come in and pay you top dollar or any dollar for your company unless you can show financial strength and growth over the years.

It's a matter of tightening it up and make sure that you have an audit done throughout every accounting year. You have to have good financials and [they have to be] transparent—it's very easy to understand them so there's not a lot of confusion from the buyer and their accounting people as to what's this and what's that and why did you pay this. Simple accounting is really the answer to that.

Cameron Mitchell, founder and president, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, Columbus, Ohio

Focus on running a great business and running your business no differently than what you would do if you weren't going to sell it. No one wants to hear or think you've done this, this and this to get the business ready to sell. That sounds artificial. You just want to run that business as well as you can and hopefully get it running on all eight cylinders. And when the time is right for you to sell, based on all sorts of factors that are important to you, then go out and sell that business.

And if you're not ready to sell today but you think you might sell in the future, make sure you're focused on running a great operation. So when the time does come to sell, you don't have negative same-store sales or declining profits or anything else.

Alan Hixon, president and chief operating officer, Freebirds World Burrito, College Station, Texas

We put a very detailed strategic plan in place that, if we accomplished it, would provide a certain level of compensation. There were financial goals involved. And in doing so, we just backed into the numbers. We needed to get X number of stores on the ground. They needed to produce specific revenues and incomes. And it needed to cost us a specific amount to build them. We defined our model in order to reach a point where we felt we would be able to enter into a transaction.

Kristi Nyhof, president, Bugaboo Creek Steak House, Atlanta

The sale process can be an enormous distraction and very time consuming. It is very pertinent and important to make sure [the organization] is structured in a way where focus will not be taken away from the business. Most specifically I would say in operations. Prior to the announcement of the sale, I promoted [a regional director to vice president] to make sure I had someone solely focused on operations [because] I might be distracted with management presentations for the sale.

Once the announcement's been made, routine communication is absolutely essential. Nothing can be more distracting to a business than speculation and worries and rumors. And to avoid those, I simply scheduled biweekly conference calls and I sent out Friday sales updates [to unit managers]. I called them every single week. And even if the news on the update was “there's no new news since the last time I updated you,” having routine communication and an opportunity for questions to be asked and concerns to be addressed really helped our process along.

MORE: Jim Parish of Parish Partners offers tips for preparing a restaurant concept for a successful sale.