Who Should Sell Your Business? A Founder's Guide to Brokers, Advisors, and Banks

Quick Answers

The Most Expensive Decision You Make Before You Sign Anything

Before you settle on what your business is worth, and long before you negotiate a single fee, you make one quiet decision that shapes everything that follows: who takes your company to market. The intermediary you choose determines which buyers ever learn your company is available, how those buyers are made to compete, and who is in the room when the number is decided.

Three Tiers, Three Very Different Processes

All three intermediaries sell companies. But they occupy different deal-size lanes and — this is the part that matters — they run fundamentally different processes. A business broker handles Main Street deals up to roughly $2M. An M&A advisor runs a managed auction in the lower middle market. An investment bank adds capital-markets capability for the middle market and up.

Match the Intermediary to Your Deal Size

Deal size is the first filter, and for most companies it settles the question cleanly. The only complication is that the bands overlap at the edges, and in those overlap zones size stops being the deciding factor.

Where Size Stops Deciding — and Goal or Capability Takes Over

The genuine overlap between broker and advisor is $5M–$7M enterprise value. Above $20M, a focused boutique that staffs your deal with partners will routinely out-execute a bank that staffs the same deal with juniors.

Four Things That Matter More Than the Title

Deal size tells you the lane. It does not tell you whether a specific intermediary is any good. Four axes do: buyer-universe reach, preparation and process, seniority, and fee shape.

One $25M Company, Taken to Market Three Ways

Same company, three very different buyer universes and three very different levels of senior attention. The fee gaps are real but secondary. What moves the outcome is reach and attention.

Does Your Advisor Even Need a License?

Business broker and M&A advisor are unregulated job titles. An investment bank is a FINRA-registered broker-dealer whose deal staff must hold the Series 79 qualification. The 2023 federal M&A Broker exemption created a narrow statutory carve-out for stock sales of eligible private companies.

The Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Ask every candidate the same concrete questions — and listen for numbers and names, not adjectives. How many buyers will you contact by name? Show me closed deals in my sector. Who will run my deal day to day? Is this a managed process or a listing?

Why Founders Choose EXIT-BOSTON

EXIT-BOSTON works exclusively in the lower middle market, representing founder-led New England businesses in the $10M–$100M range. Every engagement is a managed, targeted process staffed by the partner who wins the mandate, with businesses prepared against the Seven Pillars of Institutional Readiness before going to market.