In the last few notes, I have written about buyer noise, multiple hype, and the growing role of technology in the M&A process. Another trend we are seeing more often is that advisor pitches are becoming more aggressive in how they frame fees, timelines, and the scope of what they say they will do.
To get the owners attention, the fee pitch is being packaged together with a very optimistic version of the process. Sometimes that means no upfront fee. Sometimes it means a large retainer. In either case, the offering is often paired with aggressive assumptions about speed, buyer reach, and how much the advisor is supposedly going to take care of. That does not automatically make the model flawed, but it does reflect a market where getting the engagement has become its own sales process.
One part of that pitch worth paying close attention to is how it downplays the amount of work the seller will actually have to do. We recently heard from a former client that another firm claimed they would handle all buyer questions themselves. That sounds appealing until you stop and think about it. No broker can answer all of the questions about a business. They can help manage the process, organize the information, and prepare the seller for what is coming. But they cannot replace the owner in explaining the business, its history, its customers, its risks, or how it really operates.
That is where some of these pitches start to lose touch with reality. Selling a business is not a process the owner can simply hand off and watch from a distance. The advisor should carry a great deal of the burden, but not all of it, and pretending otherwise does the seller no favors. It creates the wrong expectations at the front end and usually makes the process harder once it is underway.
That is why we try to be direct with owners about what the process requires, what our role is, and what theirs is. Most owners only sell one business. They deserve a process that is grounded in reality and handled in a way that gives them the best chance of getting the right deal done the right way.
Taken together, these four notes really come back to the same point. There is no shortage of activity in today’s M&A market. There are plenty of buyers, plenty of multiple talk, plenty of technology, and plenty of confident promises. What is harder to find is judgment. And in our view, that is still the thing that matters most.
