Colleges & universities around the United States have commenced classes and football games will start on the gridiron this week. Tuition is an expensive burden for all families. Any financial help that is offered is always appreciated. Merit scholarships are offered by schools seeking to obtain the highest caliber students in their population as an incentive for enrollment. College is one of the universally and equally applied first times that American society begins to identify the top talent and leaders of the future. Merit scholarships are blind to a student’s ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, and economic status. Hard work, intelligence, and ability are what are used as metrics for their awarding. Similarly, winning college football teams are built on superior recruiting classes of talent. If you look at the top recruiting classes for incoming freshman classes of 2024 (https://247sports.com/season/2024-football/compositeteamrankings/), players now entering their junior seasons, you find 5 of the top six recruiting classes mirrored in the top seven ranked college football teams going into this season (https://www.espn.com/college-football/rankings) and the remaining one, Alabama, is ranked #11 in the nation. Talent matters when you seek to achieve success in the classroom, football field, or in life.
An entrepreneur seeking to select a business broker to facilitate the sale of their privately held company or family business is motivated to select the most talented professional possible for representation in pursuit of the objectives of the best possible value available in the marketplace, superior financial and legal terms, trailing liability mitigation, and a timely completed transaction. Selling a business is the endgame for an entrepreneur with that project. It is a project that needs to be done right with attention to detail or in hindsight it will not be viewed as a success. The following are the four metrics that should be used in the selection of a business sale intermediary to add to your team as a business owner seeking an exit strategy.
Valuation Knowledge
The pricing of a business for sale is a sophisticated, nuanced process that requires extensive knowledge, experience, and skill. A 10% valuation error on a $5,000,000 transaction could cost a business owner a half million dollars. Double the impact on a $10 million transaction. It is best to use a business broker who personally is involved in the business valuation process with sufficient accounting knowledge so they can justify the price and explain financial documents to a buyer, accountant, and/or bank or investors. A M&A intermediary should be an intelligent party who can articulate information, not someone who is simply parroting other people’s work. The party should also have the ability to incorporate current information about market conditions related to sales in the relevant industry and geographic area into their valuation.
Interview Questions for Business Owners for Potential Business Brokers: What is your involvement in the valuation process, does your firm do valuation in house or outsource the activity, how many businesses have you sold in my industry (What percentage of your go to market price was achieved at time of sale? IBA tracks this number for all of our projects), and how many businesses have you sold in my state, county, or city?
Marketing
The marketing of a business for sale has a level of complexity not found in the sale of most other products. Similar to the sale of everything, it is in the best interest of business owner selling their company to create a robust, competitive marketplace where the maximum number of parties are exposed to the acquisition opportunity. Achieving this objective requires systems, processes, and resources. A willingness to spend money on advertising can be the difference between finding the perfect buyer and an adequate one. The complexity in the sale of a business enters with the fact that if it becomes known in the public domain that a company is for sale it can result in the loss of customers and/or employees and potentially impact relationships with vendors. Again, the solution is having established systems and processes.
Interview Questions for Business Owners for Potential Business Brokers: Tell me about your last couple SUCCESSFUL projects. How were they advertised? How many buyers did you talk to about the acquisition opportunity? Was confidentiality preserved up until sale? How many offers were received by your client? I have personally completed three business sales in 2026. My clients in these transactions averaged a double-digit number of offers from qualified buyers negotiating in good faith to select from in sale.
Negotiations
In football, championships are won by teams who are efficient in the redzone. Last year’s college football national champion, Indiana, scored over 92% (https://cfbstats.com/2025/team/306/redzone/offense/split.html) of the time it got inside their opponent’s 20 yard line on offense (71 out of 77 times). As a business owner, if you are on the market to sell, you want to complete a transaction. The highest performing salespeople in the world embrace being paid on performance. This is true in business brokerage. 29% of business brokerage firms operate on a 100% paid on performance business model. They are commonly recognized as the best of the best in the profession (https://ibainc.com/blog/gregory-kovsky/why-a-business-owner-should-select-a-business-sale-intermediary-who-is-only-paid-a-success-fee/). In a business sale, negotiations are conducted on multiple tiers (Price, Financial Terms, Non-Competition Agreements, Transition Support, Representations/Warranties, Indemnification, etc.). A business broker should be selected who has the knowledge, experience, and skill to negotiate in all these domains and participate in both keeping the conversation moving forward and achieving the best possible negotiated result for their client. They also should negotiate with attention to detail. Unforced errors due to inexperience or lack of ability can cost positive achievement. Business owners hire business brokers because they want to delegate responsibilities to a professional. It is not happenstance that Indiana in route to their national championship averaged less than four penalties a game. It is equally not luck that IBA has sold more businesses than anyone else in the Pacific Northwest (Over 4400) and consistently sells more businesses than any other firm in the region annually.
Interview Questions for Business Owners for Potential Business Brokers: What percentage of the go to market price was achieved at time of sale in your last couple of projects? What percentage of your projects have you sold in the last three years? How many businesses have you sold? How many of the companies were in my industry? Do you seek to be paid at time of project completion or before?
Facilitation
Getting parties to “YES” with preliminary agreement on a Letter of Intent is a significant achievement, but it has no value if the transaction is not completed. Frequently, the difference maker in a transaction is having a business sale intermediary with significant knowledge & experience gained over numerous years, their affiliation with business brokerage with longevity and scale, and the size of professional network they can tap into for support. Most transactions cannot close without outside financing or investment. Can the business broker assist with sourcing that money? Both sides should have legal & accounting support. Can the business broker offer referrals of parties who can fill those seats at the transaction team table? Problem solving can be needed in domains of real estate, insurance, human resources, intellectual property etc. Can appropriate parties be brought in to address issues proactively?
Interview Questions for Business Owners for Potential Business Brokers: Can you provide me with references/referrals in the legal and/or accounting profession? Which bank financed your last deal? Would you work with them again? Can I talk to them about what I will need to provide to support acquisition financing for a buyer? How many brokers are at your firm? Who is the senior leadership at your business brokerage? Will they be supporting you/me actively in this sale?
The last five Super Bowl champion quarterbacks (Sam Darnold, Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes X 2, and Matthew Stafford) all were drafted in the 1st or 2nd round of the NFL Draft. Darnold, Mahomes, and Stafford were all picked in the top 10 of their respective drafts. Their talent was obvious at the high school and college levels resulting in their selection by their future employer. If you are seeking to hire a business broker to successfully execute a sale of your company for you as an entrepreneur, I recommend interviewing a minimum of three individuals. The difference in knowledge, experience, and ability should be evident after that process, especially if you ask the questions provided in this article. IBA welcomes the opportunity to interview for business sale projects in Washington and Oregon. All conversations with IBA are held in strict confidence.
IBA, the Pacific Northwest’s premier business brokerage firm since 1975, is available as an information resource to the media, business brokerage, mergers & acquisitions, and real estate communities on subjects relevant to the purchase & sale of privately held companies and family businesses. IBA is recognized as one of the best business brokerage firms in the nation based on its long track record of successfully negotiating “win-win” business sale transactions in environments of full disclosure employing “best practices”.