Most owners have never seen this process from the inside, and nobody explains it plainly. So here it is, plainly.
This is the question we start with, and it’s a real question — not a formality on the way to signing you up.
For most owners, the hardest part — deciding whether now is the right time — happens before any advisor is ever in the room. It gets worked through alone, usually with people who love you but have never sold a company.
We’d rather be in that part with you. Some of the owners we talk to should sell this year. Some should spend eighteen months fixing two or three things first and sell for considerably more. And some shouldn’t sell at all, and mostly need someone to help them work out why they thought they should.
You’ll get a straight answer, including when the straight answer is “not yet.”
Have that conversationA conversation, not a pitch. Where you are, what you want on the other side of this, and whether the business is in a shape that gets you there. If it isn’t yet, we’ll tell you what would need to change and roughly how long that takes.
Real modeling on your actual numbers. What the business is worth today, where the value genuinely sits, what a buyer will push on in diligence, and what deal structures would mean for what you actually walk away with. No boilerplate valuation range.
We build the materials and run the outreach. That means the anonymous teaser, the full marketing book that tells your company’s story properly, and a researched buyer list — strategic acquirers, sponsors, or the right individual — rather than a name dump. We approach them, handle the NDAs, and control what gets released and when.
A narrower list, better prepared, beats a mass mailing every time.
Negotiation, diligence, and the long middle stretch where deals quietly come apart — requests pile up, momentum stalls, and you still have a company to run. We carry that load and stay in it until it’s signed.
The most common way a good deal goes wrong is that the owner gets pulled into it so completely that the business softens underneath them — and a buyer notices in month four. Our job is to absorb the process so you can keep running the thing they’re buying.
A good one starts somewhere most people don’t expect: with what you actually want. Not the valuation target — the personal goals underneath it. What you need this to fund, what happens to your people, how much longer you’re willing to stay on, whether the name survives, who you could live with owning it. Those answers shape the whole strategy, because a deal that hits the number and misses everything else isn’t a good deal.
From there: we work out what your business is worth and why, prepare it and its story for market, find and approach the buyers who align with our goals, run the competitive process, negotiate the terms, and manage diligence through to closing.
Put another way: buying and selling companies is what the people across the table do every day — it’s their whole job, and they have a team behind them. You do it once. We’re the team on your side of the table.
It’s the right question, and the honest version of it is: does an advisor add more than they cost? Usually yes, and for reasons that have little to do with paperwork.
Competition changes the price. One buyer negotiating with an unadvised owner sets the terms unopposed. Several credible buyers who know they’re not alone set them very differently. Creating that tension — properly, confidentially, and without looking desperate — is most of where the value comes from.
Preparation gets you paid for what you already have. Recurring revenue, contracted backlog, client tenure, a team that runs without you, the systems you built — these are worth real money and are routinely invisible in a set of accounts. Made visible and evidenced, they move the multiple. Left unexplained, a buyer either discounts them or never sees them.
The headline price isn’t what you keep. Earnout terms, escrow, working-capital adjustments, reps and warranties, how much rolls over, how it’s taxed — a great deal of money moves inside those terms, quietly, after the number everyone is talking about has been agreed.
And the negotiation isn’t only about money. The things you actually care about — what happens to your staff, how long you stay, what the business is called in two years, whether your clients are looked after — are all negotiable, but only if someone is deliberately trading for them. That’s the part we’re holding onto on your behalf while you’re still running the company.
What no one can honestly promise you is a specific figure. Anyone who quotes you an uplift percentage before seeing your business is selling, not advising.
The titles overlap and aren’t used consistently, so the honest answer is to judge the process rather than the label. That said, the typical difference is real.
A business broker generally works with smaller, main-street businesses and works from a listing: the company goes onto a marketplace, interested parties come to it, and it’s often handled one buyer at a time. It’s a volume model, and for a small retail or service business it can be exactly the right one.
An M&A advisor runs a targeted, confidential process instead of a listing. That means real financial analysis and modeling, a story and a set of materials built for your specific company, a researched list of strategic acquirers and investors approached directly and discreetly, several parties moving in parallel to create competition, and negotiation over structure and terms rather than just price — then managing diligence to the close.
The practical test: ask how they’ll find buyers, how many they expect to have at the table at once, and what they’ll do about anything other than price. The answers tell you which one you’re talking to.
Probably. We work with owner-led businesses across a range of sizes, and fit has far more to do with the business itself than with hitting a threshold. If you’re not sure where you land, that’s an easy thing to sort out in one conversation, and it costs you nothing to find out.
For a well-prepared business, plan on six to nine months from launch to close, and longer if preparation is needed first. Anyone promising a fast number without seeing your numbers is guessing.
Then you’re exactly the person we’d like to talk to. Most of our first conversations are with owners who haven’t decided. Nothing about that first conversation commits you to anything.
We’ll walk you through fees openly, before you’re asked to commit to anything. We’d rather explain it properly in context than post a number here that doesn’t fit your situation.
Not from us. Confidentiality is managed deliberately at every stage — what gets shared, with whom, and when. It’s one of the things a real process protects and an informal one usually doesn’t.
Thirty minutes to talk through where you are. Sometimes the answer is “not yet” — we’ll tell you.
Talk to usOr call us at (888) 828-4824.