Do You Need Help Selling Your Business — or Should You Sell It Yourself?

Short version: You are not choosing “broker vs no broker”. You are choosing a risk profile. Selling on your own can work when you already have qualified buyers, clean evidence, and time to run a controlled process. A broker or M&A advisor becomes rational when confidentiality, buyer quality, deal complexity, financing, or negotiation risk can destroy valuation and terms.

1) The Real Decision (What You Are Buying)

Most owners frame the choice as: “Can I save the fee?” That is the wrong question. The right question is: where can this sale fail, and what is the cheapest way to prevent that failure?

Professional help pays for itself when it reduces one or more of these risk buckets:

• Proof risk: your earnings and add-backs do not survive buyer scrutiny.
• Transfer risk: the business breaks without you (sales, approvals, delivery, relationships, knowledge).
• Process risk: confidentiality leaks, buyers waste your time, or diligence becomes chaos.
• Negotiation risk: you get pushed into earnouts/holdbacks/escrows because the buyer cannot price uncertainty.
• Opportunity cost: you damage operations by spending months in sale mode while running the business.

2) Your Three Routes: DIY vs Broker vs M&A Advisor

In practice, you have three routes. The right route depends on deal size, complexity, confidentiality needs, and how much of the buyer universe you can reach and qualify.

You will also need legal and tax support in any route. A broker/advisor is not a substitute for lawyers/accountants; they are a substitute for you doing full-time dealmaking while trying to run operations.

3) Selling Yourself: The Actual Work (Not the Fantasy)

If you sell on your own, you are becoming the broker, the advisor, and the project manager. That means you must execute all of this without breaking operations:

• Build buyer-grade materials: clear financial normalisation, evidence pack, data room index, and a defensible valuation range.
• Find buyers: outreach, inbound handling, filtering, and qualification (funding, intent, timeline, fit).
• Run confidentiality: blind teaser, NDA process, staged disclosure, and access control.
• Manage negotiation: LOI terms, working capital logic, what stays/leaves, timelines, and risk allocation.
• Manage diligence: Q&A, document requests, reconciliations, red flags, and “panic questions”.
• Manage financing risk: proof quality, lender requirements, and buyer delays.
• Protect operations: keep revenue stable and staff calm while buyers examine everything.

4) Business Brokers: Where They Win (and Where They Don’t)

A good broker can be valuable when your business fits a “small business buyer” profile and the market is driven by broad exposure and buyer screening.

Where brokers often win

• Distribution: access to buyer databases, broker networks, and marketplace visibility.
• Buyer handling: filtering tyre-kickers and reducing your time on unqualified calls.
• Basic process: NDAs, showings, offer management, and deal shepherding.

Where brokers often do not solve the hard problems

• Buyer-grade proof: if your earnings adjustments and reporting do not tie-out, buyers will still chip price.
• Owner dependency: brokers cannot “sell around” a business that breaks without you.
• Complex structure: when working capital, deferred liabilities, or complex contracts dominate risk.
• Strategic buyer positioning: if the best buyer is a competitor or strategic acquirer, process design matters more than listing exposure.

5) M&A Advisors: Where They Win (and Where They Don’t)

An M&A advisor earns their fee when the deal needs a controlled process, targeted buyer outreach, stronger negotiation, and deeper readiness for diligence.

Where M&A advisors often win

• Controlled, confidential process: staged disclosure, curated buyer lists, tighter buyer qualification.
• Positioning to strategic buyers: framing synergy, integration logic, and risk reduction with proof.
• Negotiation leverage: competitive tension, better terms discipline, and sharper risk allocation.
• Complexity management: diligence project management and buyer narrative control.

Where an advisor cannot save you

• Bad underlying business: weak unit economics, unstable revenue, or unfixable compliance problems.
• Founder dependency you refuse to address: a deal can close, but terms will punish you.
• Unwillingness to provide evidence: no one can negotiate against missing proof.

6) Fees, Incentives, and How to Avoid Getting Trapped

You must understand fee logic because fees shape behaviour. Here is the buyer-grade way to think about it.

Business broker fees (common pattern)

• Success-fee commission: typically a percentage of sale price, sometimes with reduced percentage above a threshold.
• Small deals: sometimes flat fees for very small transactions.
• Negotiable: fees vary by region, business type, and broker quality.

M&A advisor fees (common pattern)

• Retainer + success fee: upfront fee to cover work and seriousness, plus a success fee at close.
• Minimum success fee: common in the market; protects advisors from doing heavy work for small outcomes.
• Scaling by deal size: success fee percentages usually decrease as deal value increases.

How to protect yourself (owner-side terms to insist on)

• Staged scope: readiness / materials / outreach / LOI / diligence support as defined deliverables.
• Confidentiality controls: no public listing without explicit permission; NDA gating; staged data room access.
• Clear term length and exit: reasonable term, clean termination, and no “forever tail” without fair logic.
• Fee clarity: success fee basis (enterprise value vs equity value), treatment of earnouts, seller notes, and working capital adjustments.

7) Timeline, Workload, and Operational Risk

Most owners underestimate the time and the operational disruption. There are two clocks: the deal clock and the business clock. The deal clock does not pause your daily operations.

• End-to-end time: commonly measured in months, not weeks.
• LOI-to-close: diligence, financing, legal docs, and approvals drive the critical path.
• Operational exposure: long sale processes increase the chance of revenue drift, staff leakage, and customer churn.

8) Confidentiality and Buyer Quality (Why Process Design Matters)

Confidentiality is not just “being secretive”. Confidentiality is a valuation tool. Leaks create staff panic, customer risk, and competitor games. The right process protects you.

Buyer-quality control (what good looks like)

• Blind teaser first: enough to qualify interest without exposing identity.
• NDA before details: no exceptions for “serious buyers”.
• Staged disclosure: you release sensitive proof only when the buyer proves seriousness (funding, timeline, intent).
• Data room discipline: one source of truth; version control; tracked access; written Q&A.

9) How to Choose a Broker/Advisor (Due Diligence on Your Advisor)

Hiring the wrong intermediary is worse than DIY. Here is a clean checklist.

Questions you should ask (and expect crisp answers)

• Process: “Walk me through your exact process from day 1 to close. What are the milestones?”
• Buyer plan: “Which buyer categories are you targeting and why? Show sample outreach logic.”
• Proof standards: “How do you handle add-backs and normalisation? What evidence do you require?”
• Confidentiality: “How do you prevent leaks? What goes out pre-NDA?”
• Deal mechanics: “How do you handle working capital, debt/cash, and typical price adjustment fights?”
• Negotiation: “How do you create competitive tension without spooking the market?”
• Time + workload: “What do you need from me weekly? Who does what?”

Red flags

• They avoid evidence and push storytelling as the main lever.
• They want to blast a public listing immediately without a confidentiality plan.
• They cannot explain working capital and price adjustments clearly.
• They promise a price instead of explaining what drives price and terms.
• They cannot define what makes a buyer “qualified” in writing.

10) Decision Scorecard: Which Route Fits Your Situation?

Use this as a fast, honest filter. If you answer “no” to multiple items in a route, that route is high risk.

Route A (DIY) is viable if you can say “yes” to most of these:

• I already have 1–3 qualified buyer candidates (funding + intent + timeline).
• I can produce buyer-grade financial evidence quickly (P&L, balance sheet, schedules, tie-outs).
• Owner dependency is low, or I have a credible transfer plan.
• Confidentiality risk is manageable (staff, customers, competitors).
• I can absorb months of negotiation and diligence without damaging operations.

Route B (Broker) is rational if:

• I need broader buyer exposure and screening.
• Deal complexity is moderate and the buyer pool is typical “small business buyers”.
• I still commit to readiness: evidence pack, proof standards, and clean disclosures.

Route C (M&A advisor) is rational if:

• Confidentiality is critical and buyer quality must be tightly controlled.
• The best buyer is strategic (competitor, industry consolidator) or the deal needs structure.
• Diligence will be heavy and negotiation risk is high (working capital, contracts, liabilities, key-person risk).
• I want competitive tension and terms discipline (not just a signed LOI).